Location: In A Magical Place Made Entirely Of Food
Posted: Sat Dec 08, 2007 10:37 pm Post subject: A Question for Jade....
... I'm not sure if you're able to answer this or not, but what can you tell me about the spinal cord regeneration of leeches and where might I be able to get some good information on that? I'm writing an incomplete research proposal for my scientific writing class, and I thought it might be a good topic to work on. _________________
Location: In A Magical Place Made Entirely Of Food
Posted: Mon Dec 10, 2007 3:03 pm Post subject:
You've probably already done so. I only made this a public topic because I thought it would be an interesting subject to discuss and learn about for everyone. Supposedly the leech is the only organism that can regenerate its spinal cord. _________________
I don't know anything off of the top of my head right now, hopefully later in the day I'll have some time to look it up. Got a crazy itenerary today with TWO seminar speakers to attend and an immunoblot to finish before 4:00. _________________ It's just four more miles. Everybody smile!
Okay, hellish schedule day is over, at least one of the seminar speakers had some useful advice for me.
Anyhoo....
If this is a scientific writing class, then it is imperative that your sources be primary literature. Hopefully, your instructor has already gone over this, and if they haven't, then they aren't doing their job.
Primary literature refers to peer-reviewed scientific journals. This is where new science knowledge comes from. New articles come out every day. You generally have to have subscriptions to get the full text of the article, but each university should have access to them, so use a school or library computer. Primary literature involves an Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Data and Results, and finally, a Discussion. A second type of peer-reviewed scientific literature is a Review. An expert of a field will write a synopsis of several papers from other scientists, draw conclusions on what is known, and what the next steps are .
For your proposal, you should read Reviews to get a basic general knowledge, and then use primary literature as your references for ideas on how to do actual experiments.
My favorite searches for primary literature are Google scholar, Pubmed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez), and the ISI Web of Knowledge. Use search terms like leech, neuron, regeneration, mollusk, etc....
To write a really good proposal that will deserve an A+ means a proposal that some funding agency would actually consider giving you money to do. I realize that for a class, it is a mock-proposal...but the more you write about what the knowledge you would discover would help the economy, medical field, agricultural field, whatever...the more likely it is that you would be funded...which means you'd get an A. In my research, we constantly have to push how important our plant defense research is for producing pest-resistant crops without use of chemical insecticides, good for economy (less crop loss) and good for the environment (less introduction of harmful chemicals into the groundwater).
Another important thing to keep in mind is the date on the papers you use for resources. If it was written in the 80's or 90's, it is now common knowledge and nothing exciting. ( I got a research paper from a student who used resources from 1981, and the student wrote about things that have since been proved incorrect. She got a D )
Location: In A Magical Place Made Entirely Of Food
Posted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 2:59 am Post subject:
You have made me very happy! I'll tell you in a couple of weeks whether I did "A" work or not. Luckily, since we're not actually doing the experiment, it only has to be three pages and include abstract, introduction, and materials and methods. 7-10 primary sources, this that and the other thing... It shouldn't be too difficult, from the recent sources I've found and the one you've given me.
That review is a good starting point. You may only be able to see the abstract, a school computer hopefully will allow you access to the full text.
Neural regeneration is sort of a holy grail of medical research. Wouldn't it be great to just grow back some severed neurons in a paralyzed person? I know a professor that studies proteins that serve as motors or "trucks" to carry around other proteins. She crushes the nerve in the leg of a mouse, and then observes how the motor proteins bring other signaling proteins to the damaged area.
But actual regeneration does not happen in mammals. (Except for Claire Bennet in Heroes of course ) Mollusks, however, can. Leeches, snails, starfish, etc... These are good organisms to study, because they are small, relatively easy and cheap to house, and easy to experiment on.
A good thing to look into is NOS, Nitric Oxide Synthase. When a leech's neurons are severed, there is an activation of NOS, which of course, will synthesize Nitric Oxide. (the "-ase" means an enzyme, the "synth" means synthesis, so it is an enzyme that synthesizes nitric oxide.)
Nitric oxide is a gas, that signals other molecules. In humans, NO is one of the key signals responsible for the male erection. (Don't ask, my physiology prof was a reproductive biology specialist--I just think he was a perv. )
In leeches, the NO clearly is the first step in neuronal regeneration. There is more information out there on what happens next. You may use a regular google search for basic information and ideas, but Google scholar is the more appropriate source of material for a paper. Scientific papers are full of jargon, and will probably be mostly incomprehensible to you. That's okay. They're only slightly less incomprehensible for me.
Location: In A Magical Place Made Entirely Of Food
Posted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 3:58 am Post subject:
There's so much research going in several different directions, I don't know which to choose. They all seem pretty interesting to me, given the limited amout I actually understand....
BTW: I read your abstract there and I only have one question.... what exactly were you writing about?? Now THAT was incomprehensible to me. I can usually get a decent idea on what's going on, but that was simply too many abbreviations and system words that I wasn't at all familiar with, lol! _________________
Yeah, I know, science jargon gets so ridiculous sometimes, especially when two or more things end up having the same acronyms.
In a nutshell....
There are two types of plant defense....a pathway for defending against pathogens and a pathway for defense against insect chewing/wounding. An early event that happens in both pathways is ion fluxes across the membrane. This is a measurable pH change.
When pathogens or insects attack, another measurable event is MAP Kinase activation. MAPKs are proteins that phosphorylate other proteins to signal a change (think of a phosphate group as a flag being passed around until the person who gets it knows that the flag means they're supposed to turn on a light switch). After kinase activation, things get turned on so that the plant can actually make the compounds and chemicals that kill the pathogen or repel the insect.
I was using these two things, pH change and MAPK activation, to look into the differences between the two pathways.
If you're still reading this and haven't gone comatose yet...then AWWWW Thanks for caring about me!!!!!
If you need any explanations of anything you come across, just forward it to me and I'll translate. _________________ It's just four more miles. Everybody smile!
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) Mollusks, however, can. Leeches, snails, starfish, etc... These are good organisms to study, because they are small, relatively easy and cheap to house, and easy to experiment on.
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