This is neat – imagine if your house plants could BBM you?  Picture it – “OMG, thanks for the fertilizer!”

1. Read the below article – check out the video, etc.
2. Write a reflection about the article, and post it as a comment response to this post.  When writing your reflection, please summarize the article, and comment on potential applications for this technology.  Also, please comment on one other person’s response.
3. You will be evaluated using the rubric that is linked to in the sidebar on the right.

Article:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2009/0101-thirsty_plants_text_for_help.htm#

Thirsty Plants Text For Help-1

ScienceDaily — Interactive telecommunications researchers designed a soil-moisture sensor device that can allow a house plant to communicate with its owner.  The device can send short messages to a mobile phone or, by using a service called Twitter, it can send short messages to the Internet.  The messages can range from reminders to water the plant, a thank you or a warning that you over- or under-watered it.  To communicate, probes in the soil emit electric waves. A voltage level based on the moisture content is sent through two wires to a circuit board that compares the optimum moisture level with the current one.  A local network receives this data and allows the plant to send a message through the device.

House plants look good, brighten a room, produce oxygen, purify indoor air, eliminate noxious gases and reduce carbon monoxide levels. So why do so many of us forget to water them? Now, there may be a solution to solve that problem. Thirsty plants can now let you know they need water.

Knowing what your plants need isn’t always this simple. For most of us, it’s more of a guessing game. Phyllis Bilowich believes her porch plants like sharing her morning cup of joe.

“The hibiscus has grown taller than me,” said Bilowich. “I contribute that to the coffee.”

Now she can not only see the results, but Phyllis’ plants can tell her exactly what they need. A new system called Botanicalls, developed by interactive telecommunications researchers, allows your plants to send “tweets,” or short text messages, to your mobile phone or messages to the Internet.

“They’ll recognize when they’ve been watered, and they’ll say thank you, and they’ll also let you know if you’ve over-watered or under-watered,” said Botanicalls developer Katie London.

Botanicalls researchers have created units with a soil-moisture sensor.

“We have a little micro-controller unit that’s basically a little computer that’s hooked up to your plant,” said developer Kate Hartman.

Probes in the soil send out electrical waves. Based on amount of moisture in the soil, a voltage level is sent through two wires to a circuit board that compares current moisture levels to the optimum moisture level. This data is received by a local network, which allows the plant to send a message for help.

“We decided to tap into existing communication systems and allow them to talk like people,” Hartman said. Not only is it for growing botanists — it’s also for budding engineers. Each device has to be assembled from basic parts.

Each Botanicalls kit is $99. Developers say it’s worth it if you like your plants but don’t always remember to take care of them. The new kit is the third generation of the Botanicalls system. The team is continuing to innovate and hopes to make it smaller, cheaper and easier to use.

Here’s an interesting article from Science Daily News – essentially a species of zooplankton has managed to incorporate genetic information from something it ate into its own genome!  That would be like us incorporating broccoli genes into our DNA just by eating it.

Crazy.

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Reflect on this article.

1. Read the article.
2. Do a bit of background research
3. Write a reflection, keeping the following guiding questions / ideas in mind:

• Summarize the article.
• How does this relate to the “endosymbiotic hypothesis” of mitochondria and choroplast evolution? (you might have to do a bit of background research on this)
• What are some implications / future applications of this?

Post the reflection as a comment.  Refer to this rubric for evaluation criteria.

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Single-Cell Marine Predator’s Unique Survival Mechanisms Revealed

enlarge

Oxyrrhis marina has evolved extreme survival mechanisms, including acquiring a gene from its prey to convert light into energy. (Credit: Susana Breglia)

**UPDATE (June 16): This has been posted for over a month now.  If you haven’t already done so, please add your comment.  Comments are due by midnight on Wed. June 16th.

Check out this news article!

Nature News

Reflect on this article.  Consider the following:

1. Why are mitochondria important in cancer cells.
2. How can mitochondria be targetted in cancer treatment?
3. Discuss pros and cons of this treatment.

You will need to refer to other websites – please include references.

Wow!  What are the chances?  This is a very interesting article that also makes reference to the endosymbiotic hypothesis (mitochondria used to be bacteria).  The link is here.

How Trauma Leads to Inflammatory Response: Mitochondria May Be at Root of Dangerous Complications from Injury

ScienceDaily (Mar. 4, 2010) — Inflammation is at the root of most serious complications occurring after both infection and injury. But while the molecular course of events that leads from microbial infections to the inflammatory condition called sepsis is fairly well understood, it is far less clear how and why physical injury can result in a similarly dangerous inflammatory response.

Now a study led by investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) suggests that mitochondria — the body’s cellular “power plants” — are released into the bloodstream following physical injury. And because mitochondria closely resemble the bacteria from which they originated, they appear to elicit a sepsis-like immune response, changing from a vital source of cellular injury to a dangerous “enemy within.”

Appearing in the journal Nature, the findings could eventually lead to new strategies in the management of trauma as well as to the development of new tests to help clinicians discriminate between infective and non-infective inflammation.

“The body’s vital organs can become dysfunctional when traumatic injury triggers the Systemic Inflammatory Response Syndrome, or SIRS,” explains senior author Carl J. Hauser, MD, a trauma and critical care surgery specialist at BIDMC and Visiting Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School. “Trauma kills 5 to 10 million people worldwide per year and among U.S. individuals under age 35, trauma accounts for more deaths than all other illnesses combined. Inflammatory complications are directly responsible for about one-third of those deaths.”

Hauser, whose laboratory studies focus on neutrophils, circulating white blood cells that can attack the body’s organs, wanted to find out how neutrophils might be participating in this dangerous inflammatory cascade.

The mechanisms that underlie both SIRS and sepsis are rooted in the body’s “innate immune” response. Unlike “acquired immunity,” which develops over time, innate immunity is present from birth, ready to immediately respond whenever immune cells encounter molecular patterns typical of external pathogens such as bacteria or viruses. These “pathogen-associated molecular patterns,” or PAMPS, are in turn, detected by pattern recognition receptor molecules (PRR).

“When an infection strikes, PAMPs activate PRR very rapidly, initiating a group of cellular responses collectively described as the ‘Danger Response,’” explains Hauser. This response underlies both SIRS and sepsis, and can ignite early reactions to cell threats as well as act as an adjuvant for later acquired immune responses. However, as Hauser notes, infectious pathogens and PAMPs aren’t the only cause of the Danger Response.

“Injured or necrotic tissues can activate very similar immune responses,” he explains. “Blunt-force trauma can result in the death of significant amounts of tissue, as can burns, cancer chemotherapy, major surgeries and many other diseases. We wondered if tissues that die by such pathologic means, rather than via programmed cell death or apoptosis, were releasing into the body molecular debris not normally encountered by the immune system.”

Some normally intra-cellular molecules can activate PRR, and when they do they are called Damage-Associated Molecular Patterns, or DAMPS. Hauser hypothesized that DAMPs might be triggering inflammatory responses after trauma in the same way that PAMPs triggered inflammation in the face of infection — and that mitochondria might be ultimately responsible.

Mitochondria are structures within cells that burn nutritional energy sources using oxygen and convert it into the ATP that powers the cells. They function autonomously, having their own DNA which is separate and very different from the genetic material contained within the cell’s nucleus, and their own machinery for protein synthesis. Because mitochondria share so many similarities with bacteria — including their method of reproduction, the molecular nature of their DNA and their synthesis of n-formylated proteins — it is believed that they were once free living bacterial saprophytes that survived by scavenging the waste products of eukaryotic cells. Over time mitochondria took up residence in the cell and became true symbionts, but many of their molecular signatures remained those of bacteria.

“Mechanical trauma disrupts cells, so we hypothesized that injury might be releasing mitochondria and their DAMPs into the circulatory system, activating immunity in the same way that infections do when they release PAMPS,” explains Hauser.

To test this hypothesis, the investigators first assayed mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from blood samples obtained from a large group of patients who had suffered multiple trauma. As predicted, they found that mtDNA levels were increased but surprisingly, they found that levels were often thousands-of-fold above normal levels.

Through a series of subsequent experiments, the researchers showed that mitochondrial peptides acted as classical G-protein coupled chemoattractants, activating white blood cells through the FPR1 receptor (a receptor that normally senses bacterial proteins) and associated downstream kinases. They similarly showed that mtDNA activates white blood cells through the PRR known as toll-like receptor 9 (TLR9 normally senses bacterial DNA) and its downstream kinases. Interaction of these two DAMPs and their PRRs work synergistically to activate neutrophils. The investigators also found that injection of mitochondria into rats caused peritonitis and reproduced the pulmonary and hepatic inflammation typical of traumatic SIRS.

“This study suggests that mitochondria — which can spill into the bloodstream following a physical injury — look enough like the bacteria they originated from to elicit an immune response,” notes Scott Somers, PhD, program director at the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. “This work offers important insight into why the body’s response to physical trauma mirrors that of bacterial sepsis, and may lead to new strategies for treating severely injured patients.”

Adds Hauser, “Since external injuries and events causing sterile tissue death seem to have just as much potential for causing SIRS as does infection, many of the conditions that we’ve traditionally treated with antibiotics may turn out to not be infections and may, in fact, require very different types of treatment. Going forward, we hope to collaborate with researchers who are working to identify the origins of inflammation in other clinical conditions.”

In addition to Hauser, coauthors include BIDMC investigators Qin Zhang, Mustafa Raoof, Yu Chen, Yuka Sumi, Tolga Sursal, Wolfgang Junger, and Kiyoshi Itagaki; and Karim Brohi of Queen Mary University of London.

This study was supported by a grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences.

Here’s an interesting article about enzymes in the news.

New enzyme makes biofuel

Another article about the same topic

Comment on this article.  You will need to do further research about biofuel, and the controversies surrounding these biofuels.  In your response, you should include references, and refer to the following guiding questions:

1. What is biofuel?
2. Why has it been seen as beneficial?
3. What controversies has it ignited?
4. Briefly summarize the news articles about the enzyme.
5. How are these addressed in this most recent advancement, if at all?
6. What is your opinion of this advancement, using enzymes?

You will have to also respond to or refer to one other person’s comment.  Please refer to the rubric (it is also available on the course calendar online).

I so infrequently encounter articles about photosynthesis, especially when we are about to cover it in class.  Well, we are in luck!  Here’s a neat article:

Algae Uses a Physics Trick to Boost Efficiency

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2010/02/04/quantum-leaf-algae-use-a-physics-trick-to-boost-efficiency/

Hi everyone!  Salmon are in the news, especially out in British Columbia.  Please check out the news article posted below:

Salmon are in trouble

1. Please reflect on this article.  What, if anything, concerns you about this?
2. Why are the salmon populations collapsing, according to the article?
3. Do some further research – are there any other things that might impact salmon populations?

Please post your reflection as a comment to this post.  Your comment should have at least 3 references.  Please refer to the rubric seen in the margins.  You are also invited to comment on the posts of your colleagues.

Hi gang!  Although it’s early in the semester, I feel compelled to do some blogging.  There has always been debate about ‘nature vs. nurture’, meaning, are personalities and personality disorders influenced more by genes (nature) or upbringing and environment (nurture)?  Check out this article in Discovery Channel online.

Nature v.s. Nurture

Write a reflection on this article.  How relevant is it?  Discuss the sampling procedure and sample size – are there any recommendations you would make to the scientists?

In your response, please comment on the posts of your colleagues as well.  You will be evaluated using the rubric seen in the side margins.

That video conference was great! I wish that we would have had more time, but I was impressed with your questions, and at least everyone had a chance to ask a question. Now it’s reflection time! Please reflect on the conference. You can either write specifically about your question, or you can write in more general terms about what you learned. Consider the following:

1. Were you surprised at what you discovered? Why or why not?
2. How will this affect you? Will your findings change how you live?

You don’t have to necessarily answer those questions, just consider them. The rubric is attached.

Reflection Rubric

I’d also like to add that the newt ate today!  I guess he likes worms…

We will be videoconferencing with Dr. Alison Allan, an Oncologist from University of Western Ontario – this is taking place on Tuesday May 6th at 12:15. Dr. Allan will be presenting her work for the first 15 minutes. Then, a 30-45 minute interactive session will follow where you will have an opportunity to interact with her, and have questions answered. Most of you have learned a bit about cancer already, so I hope that you will look to expand upon your existing knowledge. After the conference, I will ask you to post a reflection on your specific cancer question / topic on this blog.

Dr. Alison Allan is an Oncology Scientist at the London Regional Cancer Program and an Assistant Professor of Oncology and Anatomy & Cell Biology at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario. She holds an Honors BSc in Molecular Biology and Genetics and a PhD in Biomedical Sciences, both from the University of Guelph in Guelph, Ontario. Her current research program is focused on cellular and molecular mechanisms of breast cancer metastasis; in particular the study of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and cancer stem cells (CSCs) in patients and pre-clinical animal models.  I ask that you comment on this post by telling me what sort of question / discussion you will be asking Dr. Allan.  This way, nobody will ask the same question twice, and everyone will have a chance to see what others are interested in.

It is important that you have some basic cancer knowledge. Please refer to the following websites – you should understand the differences between regular cells and cancer cells.

Cancer Education – UK

Nova – Cancer Warrior

You must post your question by Thursday, May 1.

edited May 1: I’ve also posted an article sent to us by Dr. Allan about cancer – please read it in preparation for our conference.

Fighting Cancer