Final Blog Post

 I think that this was my favorite guest speaker that we have had all year! This topic of Autism Spectrum Disorder really hits home for me because my brother has Autism and it has been a big part of my life and has always sparked my interest and I've always wanted to learn more about it. The thing that stood out to me was that there is a difference in cell size and just overall cell size. This came to a real shock for me because I've lived with a person with autism basically my whole life and didn't know that there was a difference in our cells. I always knew that there was a difference in the brain, but I didn't know that there was a cellular difference too. Dr. Schwartz told us that there is a volumetric difference in the brain/nerve cells of a  person who has Autism Spectrum Disorder compared to someone who doesn't have the disorder. 

After doing a little bit of research I found this study that included the above image and it talks about how a current hypothesis is that autism could be caused by a mutation in regulating calcium which would then affect the kinetics of the brain and the pausing of RNA polymerase 2. The image above shows how when the mutation occurs you can see a significant increase in Ca2+ which makes sense when you think back to what Dr. Schwartz said about an increase in volumetric cell size because all of this calcium would increase the cell size and would fill it up and increase the volume of the cell.

Something that Dr. Schwartz touched about that I wanted to learn more about was whether the gene mutation that causes autism comes from the mother or the father. After doing some research I found that most people with autism are males which made scientist believe that the mutated gene came from the mother because most genes that males get come from their mother since the mothers have two X chromosomes and the male sons only have one. This thought process that mothers carry the mutated gene is still the leading hypothesis today. However scientist are now saying that the fathers are more likely to pass more severe and rare types of autism spectrum disorder on to their children because the father is more likely to pass the non-coding genes on to their kids. These non-coding gene mutations can be caused by the fathers age or random mutations, but since its a non-coding mutation this leads to the child having a unique new mutation which can cause the autism spectrum disorder to be worse. 

Thank you all so much for following my blog! I hope you all have enjoyed it. Dr. Sly and Dr. Johnson I hope you both have a wonderful summer and I'll see you both in the fall! 

Nano Particles and Cancer

 This blog post I'll be sharing what I've learned about a clinical trail done on head and neck squamous cell carcinoma. Let's start off at the basics. Squamous cell carcinoma is the seventh most common kind of cancer in the world and thankfully it has a high rate of survival when caught early enough. The squamous cells are one of the first layer of skin cells on the human body and can also be found in your 

throat, digestive tract and respiratory tracts. Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma is a very treatable cancer when caught in time and it can affect the skin under your hair, your neck skin and your throat. The most common symptoms are: persistent sore throat, lump in neck or throat, long term sore on skin red or white patches in mouth or throat.

The study is looking at adding nanoparticle albumin-bound paclitaxel to cetuximab and radiation therapy in order to find the correct dosage in order to help kill the head and neck cancer cells. Nanoparticle albumin- bound paclitaxel is an interesting drug because its main function is to target fast dividing cells which in this case are the cancer cells. The nanoparticle part of the medicine allows for the medicine to target the rapidly dividing cells and allows for the medicine to travel through smaller spaces and penetrate the cancerous cells more easily. The nanoparticle also has an interesting role in the brain because nanoparticles in cancer drug treatment have a unique ability to be able to cross the blood brain barrier (BBB) which for most drugs is an impossible thing to do. However this addition of nano technology allows for albumin-bound paclitaxel to target rapidly dividing cells in the brain if there are any there. It is truly crazy that nanotechnology has allowed us to be able to target cancer in the brain without surgery.

The study was a clinical trial that had 25 participants in it both males and females ranging from 18-100 years of age could participate as long as they had head and neck squamous cell carcinoma. They would keep the patients on their normal radiation therapy and would give the patient 250mg/m2 of cetuximab weekly throughout the 7 weeks, and they would increase the levels of albumin-bound paclitaxel every week in order to see how it affected the cancer. The mechanism of the action was they would give the patient albumin-bound paclitaxel in different amounts to see how it affected the patient because they knew that the medicine would kill the cancer, but they didn't know how the different dose levels would affect the physical and mental wellbeing of the patient. The conclusion of this treatment took a while to find because it wasn't listed on the website, but from my research I found that when the albumin-bound paclitaxel got around 425 mg/m2 that is when they started to see some physical affects in their patients.

Sources:

“Squamous Cell Carcinoma of the Head and Neck.” Pennmedicine.Org, www.pennmedicine.org/cancer/types-of-cancer/squamous-cell-carcinoma/types-of-squamous-cell-carcinoma/squamous-cell-carcinoma-of-the-head-and-neck. Accessed 18 May 2023.

Smith, Yolanda. “What Is Squamous Cell Carcinoma?” News, 27 Apr. 2021, www.news-medical.net/health/What-is-Squamous-Cell-Carcinoma.aspx.

“Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma: Medlineplus Genetics.” MedlinePlus, medlineplus.gov/genetics/condition/head-and-neck-squamous-cell-carcinoma/#:~:text=Frequency&text=HNSCC%20is%20the%20seventh%20most,among%20younger%20individuals%20is%20increasing. Accessed 18 May 2023.

“Nanoparticle Albumin-Bound Paclitaxel Injection.” Cleveland Clinic, my.clevelandclinic.org/health/drugs/18735-nanoparticle-albumin-bound-paclitaxel-injection#:~:text=NANOPARTICLE%20ALBUMIN%2DBOUND%20PACLITAXEL%20(Na,lung%20cancer%2C%20and%20pancreatic%20cancer. Accessed 18 May 2023.

 

Charli Fant Post

 Listening to Charli lecture was a very interesting and cool conversation. As a pet owner I've always been interested in animals and I thought about being a veterinarian for a while. Some of the things Charli talked about really sparked my interest for example when talking about the difference between dogs and cats it really stood out to me that we all know they're different, but to hear how they have to do different research and test in order to make a medicine that does the same thing is crazy. I think the funniest thing Charli said was that "cats are just so weird" which is funny to hear, but when she explained about how cats are difficult to make medicines for because they are not as similar to humans as dogs are and that they're genetics are just so different it makes it difficult. The example that comes to mind when talking about this is that dogs and cats have two different medicines that target different genes to treat osteoarthritis. For dogs its a medicine called Librela and for cats the medicine is Solensia and even though these two medicines treat the same thing they have a completely different mechanism of how they work. 

Something that I really loved about Charli's presentation was the continuum of care: 

I just think that this is so cool because its such a simple idea of what they want to do with their company and they found a way to put it into an image. The was that they have steps between the categories in order to help them find new treatments and other products for animals is a very inspiring and interesting thing.

I was looking through there website and something that caught my attention was under the livestock category and to be more specific I was looking at pig medication. I was looking though them and I kept seeing that they had multiple different medicines that treated pigs for SRD. Now I had no idea what SRD was, but it stands for "Swine Respiratory Disease" and it is the leading cause of death in pigs. SRD is responsible for 44% of nursery pigs deaths, 61% of grown pig deaths. Not only does this disease kill the pigs, but it also cost the farmers on average $15 per pig that gets SRD, and over all cost the pig industry over 1 billion dollars a year. After doing all of this research it makes sense why Zoetis spends so much time and money to find a treatment/cure for SRD. The way the drug works by my understanding (there wasn't a whole lot of research on it in pigs) is that the NAXCEL will prevent the bacterial (SRD bacteria) from building up its cell wall and then the EXCEDE (which is an anti-biotic) will kill the virus. So the this is a tag team duo right here that helps prevent the SRD from infecting and killing the pig. 

At the end of the presentation she Charli asked us a few questions and the reason why she asked these questions is to really get us to think about our future. It's easy to say I want to be a doctor I want to be a vet, but when you think about who you are and the challenges you'll face along the way you realize no path is easy, and I think she tried to get us to think about this by posing these questions. The question I'm going to focus on is "what is your why?". It's such a short simple question that in reality is one of the most important questions you need to ask yourself when it comes to the future. For me the reason why I want to become a doctor is simple. I sounds like every body else but I love people and I love helping others. From a young age I've watched my parents sacrifice things in order to help other people no matter the consequences and I want to do the same thing with my life and that's why I want to be a doctor. I've had many experiences in my life where my first reaction was to help somebody despite it being inconvenient and potentially dangerous for me. These experiences and my love for people is definitely  going to help me in my career in the future. I have many stories to tell on my med school application, and it will help me break the stigma of other doctors because I feel like while most doctors help people they can come off as arrogant and standoffish, and I truly want to change that by treating patients with respect, and care. I think this is what will set me apart from others because I like to think that I'm not a cocky future doctor, but a person who just cares about the well being of everyone around him. 

Source: 

https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/medicines/veterinary/EPAR/naxcel#:~:text=How%20does%20Naxcel%20work%3F,of%20the%20bacterial%20cell%20walls. ( How NAXCEL works)

https://www.zoetis.com/products-and-science/livestock (picture)

https://www.zoetisus.com/products/dairy/excede#:~:text=HOW%20IT%20WORKS,%C3%9F%2Dlactamase%2Dproducing%20strains. (How EXCEDE works)

https://www.zoetis.com/products-and-science/products/excede-naxcel-for-swine (Link to EXCEDE/ NAXCEL page)

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/water-bears-will-survive-end-world-we-know-it

This is potentially my new favorite animal. At least it has made my top 5. The name of this incredibly ugly yet somehow cute animal is Tardigrade or also called "water bear". These creatures are incredibly small as they are about 500 micrometers big which if I did my math right is about 500000 nanometers big. This is pretty big when it comes to the nano world, but it is incredibly small to us humans. These water bears can be photographed by using a scanning electron microscope. This image was taken looking at a mossy substance and they saw this little water bear roaming around the terrain. The coolest thing I've learned about this animal is their resiliency. according to sciencenews.org these guys can survive extreme radiation, the cold down to -272 °C, the heat up to 150°C, and can survive without food and water for years. The coolest story I found was on national geographic and they said that there was a dried out piece of moss that sat in a museum for a 100 years and when they added water to moisten the moss up the dried up water bears came out of their hibernation and were alive and thriving. My final cool fact is that water bears can survive the vacuum of space and they can live out there without anything! These are easily the coolest animals I've ever heard of!

Citations

• “Tardigrade.” Animals, kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/invertebrates/facts/tardigrade. Accessed 8 May 2023. 

• Temming, Maria. “Water Bears Will Survive the End of the World as We Know It.” Science News, 8 Aug. 2019, www.sciencenews.org/article/water-bears-will-survive-end-world-we-know-it. 

 Post 3 UK Lab Equipment

The first instrument I'll be talking about is the scanning electron microscope. No just as a warning I've never heard of any of these instruments before and I had to do a lot of research to understand what they do and how they work. The scanning electron microscope or SEM is used to produce high resolution images of solid objects at the micro and nano level. The SEM is able to produce picture at a resolution of 10 nanometers which is incredibly small. This incredibly powerful microscope allows scientist to study the characteristics of solid objects. The way this SEM works is that it produces a focused stream of electrons over the solid surface that can be used to create an image. The image is created because as the stream of electrons is reflecting off of the solid object it will bounce off at different frequencies and signals which allow the scientist to gather the data and make a topography and composition of the solid sample. Some applications of this microscope are interesting because people use SEM in todays world to check their superconductors, nano tubes, and other nanoscopic technology they will use SEM to make sure that what they're creating will work. 

The second piece of equipment is the focused ion beam. The FIB works the same way SEM does with the exception that instead of using electrons the FIB uses ions in the beam which allows for the beam at low rates to create images and at high rates cute the solid at a nanoscopic level. From the research I've done there are multiple ways in which the focused ion beam can be used, it can be used with a gas or it can be used side by side with the SEM. The focused ion beam is used to help create images and preparation of solid objects. The most common technique is FIB-SEM which is used to produce 2D and 3D images of topography of the nanoscopic level of a solid object. The way this works is the FIB adds a second beam to the SEM part and that second beam will cut into the material while the SEM beam will create the image of the topography and of the solid sample. The other FIB use if found was the FIB-TEM. FIB-TEM works the same way as FIB-SEM, but it is a more precise beam which allows for the machine to create more detailed and smaller images. The difference between FIB-SEM and FIB-TEM is that FIB-SEM is used to see the whole big picture of the sample while as I mentioned above the FIB-TEM is used for a more precise smaller picture. The modern applications of FIB are used to help make semiconductors and other mechanical nano tools that help run our technology. There is an interesting biological use for FIB in which scientist use FIB-TEM/SEM to look at specific parts of the cell which allow them to study them in a greater detail than before.

The final instrument is the Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy on SEM. now the normal EDS is a type of x-ray spectroscopy that can be used to look at elemental and chemicals compositions of of certain materials and by looking that the compositions you can learn more details about the elements or chemicals you're looking at. The EDS on SEM is used to identify unknown compounds, reverse engineering, and can be used for surface analysis. Now this is very complex, but I think this works by having the SEM beam (full of electrons) focus on the material which irritates it which results in the emission of x-ray characteristics which correspond to the element/elements in the compounds. I struggled a lot trying to find the applications of the EDS on SEM, but for biology this can be used to look further into cells, and this can be useful to study parts of the cells that we don't quite understand fully. I think that this machine can help in the chemical field a lot thought, Since the main point of this machine is to look at the chemical and elemental composition of the compound this can be used to help identify unknow compounds, but also help us study the physical and chemical characteristics of certain elements  

 Nano at UK

The first image I want to share with you is the electronic beam scanning microscope that was in the basement. 

Unfortunately this machine didn't work for our group and we weren't able to see the extent of what exactly it could do, but what I thought was really interesting about this machine is that the sample had to be kept in a vacuum in order to get a clear image. I think the reason why it had to be in a vacuum was because they didn't want any photons from the overhead lights to interfere with the images of the sample. This is also cool that it uses energy-dispersive x-ray microanalysis which we have talked about x-ray technology today in class when learning about DNA.

The second image the AFM (atomic force microscope)

This was really cool to learn about and look at. I think its so cool that there is a incredibly tiny and sharp blade that pokes the sample and all of those tiny pokes can generate an image down to the nanoscopic level. The fun fact that we learned was that the blades wear out quickly and so big companies that take nanoscopic image's on the regular will have machines that's only job is to replace the tip when it gets dull so they can continuous image different samples.

The third image is the picture of the research done on "a hybrid time-amplitude analog arithmetic based optical acceleration"

This image was pretty interesting because he explained it to us as best as he could since we had no knowledge of electrical engineering, but what we all took away from this poster and from the room is that technology is heading in a direction where we will us photons instead of electrons in our electronical devices because they are much faster.

The final image was take in the room where we got dressed to go into the clean room. This image is of this microwave using plasma to clean something at the microscopic level.

This was the coolest thing we saw in my opinion because we saw what looked like a normal microwave and it had been converted into a plasma cleaner which the guy told us it got up to 600 K in the microwave which is just crazy since it looks like you could cook a pizza in there.

The first piece of technology that was really cool to me was the AFM and its just so interesting that this thing has a blade that is so small we can barely see it, and yet it can create a map at the nanoscopic level of various samples. It interesting that it has to poke the sample over and over again to create the image. but I think that it is super beneficial. This machine is used to make a lot of conductors and semiconductors and other parts of our electronics that we use everyday. After doing some research I've found that this machine can be used in molecular biology and that it can be used to map out cell and get detailed images of them which allows biologist to study the structure and different types of cells what we can't normally see. 

The second piece of technology is Nano scribe. This machine is super cool because it can create images and structure that can fit on the end of a piece of your hair. We learned more about this machine today in class but it's interesting how it has a light source that focuses on the sample and that carves into it. Its also incredibly cool that the light doesn't move to do the carving but that the sample platform moves around to create the image and it makes a 3D images since it moves in 3 dimensions. This has so much potential for applications because you can create small gears and springs and other mechanical tool which can eventually be learned to make new machines at the nano level. This new technology could revolutionize medicine and can be used to help treat people with low blood pressure and other diseases like that. 

The personal highlight of my UK experience was watching Dr. Johnson stick his whole head into a machine when the graduate student opened the door to it. I wasn't expecting him to do it and it made all of us in the group laugh.