Mikrobiotch - 🔬🧪🧫🧬

When I was in the hospital, they gave me a big bracelet that said ALLERGY, but like. I'm allergic to bees. Were they going to prescribe me bees in there.

FOTD #066 : cornflower bolete! (gyroporus cyanescens)

the cornflower bolete (AKA bluing bolete) is a species of bolete fungus in the family gyroporaceae. it is found in asia, australia, europe, & eastern north america. most often, this bolete grows on the ground in coniferous & mixed forests :-)

the big question : can i bite it??yes !! it is choice. there are many online tutorials on how to cook it, too.

g. cyanescens description :

"the yellowish to buff cap surface is fibrous & roughened, & reaches up to 12 cm (4.7 in) in diameter. the thick stem, roughly the same colour as the cap or lighter, is hollowed out into chambers. all parts of the mushroom turn an intense blue colour within a few moments of bruising or cutting."

[images : source & source] [fungus description : source]

When sodium hypochlorite (bleach) solution is added to luminol, a chemical reaction occurs that releases energy in the form of light. This is called chemiluminescence. The bleach solution acts as an oxidizing agent, which means it takes electrons away from the luminol molecule. This causes the luminol molecule to become excited, and it releases the energy as light.

🎥 Courtesy: Kendra Frederick

The luminol molecule is made up of two amino groups, a carbonyl group, and an azo group. The amino groups are electron-rich, while the carbonyl group is electron-poor. The azo group is a conjugated system, which means that the electrons in the double bonds can move freely from one atom to another.

When sodium hypochlorite (bleach) solution is added to luminol, the bleach molecules react with the amino groups of the luminol molecule. This reaction takes electrons away from the luminol molecule, which causes the luminol molecule to become oxidized. The oxidized luminol molecule is in an excited state, which means that it has more energy than it normally does.

The excited luminol molecule then releases the extra energy as light. This light is called chemiluminescence. The light emitted by the chemiluminescence reaction is blue because the luminol molecule has a blue fluorescence.

The chemiluminescence reaction between luminol and sodium hypochlorite is catalyzed by the presence of a metal ion, such as iron or copper. The metal ion helps to stabilize the excited state of the luminol molecule, which makes it more likely to release the extra energy as light.

The chemiluminescence reaction is very sensitive to impurities, so it is important to use pure chemicals. The reaction can also be affected by the pH of the solution. The optimal pH for the reaction is around 9.

The chemiluminescence reaction between luminol and sodium hypochlorite can be used to detect blood, as the iron in hemoglobin can catalyze the reaction. The reaction is also used in some commercial products, such as glow sticks and emergency lights.

I hope you enjoyed learning about this. ❤️🙏

Chlorociboria cup fungi and Hemitrichia decipiens slime mold by Alison Pollack

Was watching an online Mycology lecture, blacked out and came to with this on my screen

*Cryptomycota is a phylum of the Fungi family, but honestly not explaining that kinda makes this post funnier

Can a bat protein treat human inflammation?

A protein from bats shows promise for fighting inflammatory diseases in humans.

“Bats have attracted great attention as a likely reservoir of the SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic,” says Professor Wang Lin-Fa of the Duke-NUS Emerging Infectious Diseases (EID) Programme and senior author of the study in the journal Cell. “But this unique ability to host yet survive viral infections could also have a very positive impact on human health if we can understand and exploit how they achieve this.”

The research is focused on multi-protein complexes called inflammasomes that are responsible for the overactive inflammation that causes serious symptoms in many diseases. Inflammasomes are also implicated in functional decline in aging.

The researchers discovered that a bat protein called ASC2 has a powerful ability to inhibit inflammasomes, thereby limiting inflammation.

“This suggests that the high-level activity of ASC2 is a key mechanism by which bats keep inflammation under control, with implications for their long lifespan and unique status as a reservoir for viruses,” explains Matae Ahn, first author and co-corresponding author of the study and an adjunct research fellow with the EID Programme and the SingHealth Duke-NUS Medicine Academic Clinical Programme.

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Recent Research Unveils New Genomic Landscape of the Human Gut Microbiome

BGI-Research introduced CGR2, the expanded cultivated genome reference landscape for the human gut microbiome.

Scientists from BGI-Research developed a new version of the Cultivated Genome Reference (CGR), a repository of high-quality draft genomes of the human gut microbiome. The current version of CGR, which is CGR2, has been further expanded to incorporate numerous high-quality draft genomes generated from cultivated bacteria. CGR2 classifies previously unidentified species and uncovers the functional and genomic diversity of bacterial strains. An in-depth analysis of carbohydrate-active enzymes (CAzymes) reveals the phyla with the largest and most diverse repertoires of these enzymes. CGR2 also enabled the identification of genes involved in the synthesis of secondary metabolites in the gut microbiome. The unraveling of the gut microbiome genomic landscape will enable the development of therapeutics and provide a deep insight into the evolution of the human gut microbiome.

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could you explain why/if we can't just copy the genes of one animal and splice them into another animal, for example why we couldn't give humans cat ears?

There's no one easy way to answer this, but the basic answer is that it's not that simple. There's no one gene, or even easily reducible set of genes, that just is "make cat ears". Not only is there a network of genes activated within a cell, there are a myriad of signals from nearby cells (the "microenvironment") as well as cues from the rest of the body and environment.

So each one of the cells making your ear isn't just encoded to be a cell that makes your ear. In fact, most of them don't have any "ear" genetic characteristics or activation. They're generic cartilage or skin cells that were told to grow more or less by neighboring cells or distant cells during carefully coordinated times during growth and development. Each cell interprets this signal in different ways, and also receives multiple signals at a time, the combination of which can produce unique results.

The easiest to interpret example of this is finger development. During development, when your hand is still a fingerless paddle, a single cell on the pinky side of your hand (or thumb side, it could be reversed) releases a signalling molecules to nearby cells. A cell receiving the highest dose will start to become a pinky, and send a signal for the cells immediately around it to aide in that. The next cell that isn't aiding that, but still receives the initial signal, receives a lower concentration of that signal since it's further away. That lower concentration signals a ring finger, and it repeats until you get thumbs at the lowest concentrations.

That's the most visible example, but it's similar to what happens all over the body- signals that are dependent on the structure and genetics of the microenvironment, not just the genetics of the developing cells alone.

This careful network of timing, signals, gene activations, and spatial placement of cells is the core of the field of Developmental Biology (which, technically, my PhD is in as well bc it's often wrapped in with molecular bio lol).

So making cat ears on a human genetically would essentially require not only genetic manipulation, but also babysitting the fetus the entire time and adding in localized signals to the microenvironment of the developing ear cells, which is essentially impossible. There's too much "human" flying around to realistically get that result, and an attempt at doing so would essentially be akin to molecular sculpting. That's why *my* preferred approach would be epithelial stem cell manipulation/printing and subsequent grafting, but that's an entirely different thing.

If you're interested in this kind of thing, the most approachable and engaging summary of developmental biology is the book "Your Inner Fish", by Neil Shubin, the discoverer of Tiktaalik. He summarizes a lot of dev biology through the lens of evolutionary biology, which is a great way to see how differences in structures have arisen and differentiate across the tree of life.

If you want a shorter introduction, and like cute but kinda "cringey in the way you love" science parodies: the song evo-devo by a capella science is really fun and gets stuck in my head a lot:

But yeah, hope that answered your question!

microscopy lab dump :]