The Ghost In Your Genes (BBC Documentary) – Video


The Ghost In Your Genes (BBC Documentary)
Biology stands on the brink of a shift in the understanding of inheritance. The discovery of epigenetics -- hidden influences upon the genes -- could affect every aspect of our lives. At the heart of this new field is a simple but contentious idea -- that genes have a #39;memory #39;. That the lives of your grandparents -- the air they breathed, the food they ate, even the things they saw -- can directly affect you, decades later, despite your never experiencing these things yourself. And that what you do in your lifetime could in turn affect your grandchildren. The conventional view is that DNA carries all our heritable information and that nothing an individual does in their lifetime will be biologically passed to their children. To many scientists, epigenetics amounts to a heresy, calling into question the accepted view of the DNA sequence -- a cornerstone on which modern biology sits. Epigenetics adds a whole new layer to genes beyond the DNA. It proposes a control system of #39;switches #39; that turn genes on or off -- and suggests that things people experience, like nutrition and stress, can control these switches and cause heritable effects in humans. In a remote town in northern Sweden there is evidence for this radical idea. Lying in Överkalix #39;s parish registries of births and deaths and its detailed harvest records is a secret that confounds traditional scientific thinking. Marcus Pembrey, a Professor of Clinical Genetics at the Institute of Child Health in London, in ...From:BlueBagBrigadeViews:1 0ratingsTime:49:06More inScience Technology

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2011 Greek All-Starâ„¢ Awardâ„¢ Acceptance Video ~ Emmanuelle A. Bailey-Greene (AKA) – Video


2011 Greek All-Star trade; Award trade; Acceptance Video ~ Emmanuelle A. Bailey-Greene (AKA)
2011 Acceptance Video for Ms. Emmanuelle A. Bailey-Greene. HER BIOGRAPHY: Ms. Emmanuelle A. Bailey-Greene; a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha® Sorority, Inc. at Bradley University and a 2011 National Greek All-Star trade; Award trade; winner. A young lady from Tennessee, majoring in Biology and Psychology with a... See the rest of her biography @ http://www.GreekAllStars.comFrom:GreekAwardsViews:0 0ratingsTime:01:30More inEducation

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2011 Greek All-Starâ„¢ Awardâ„¢ Acceptance Video ~ Emmanuelle A. Bailey-Greene (AKA) - Video

Engineered bacteria can make the ultimate sacrifice

Engineered bacteria can be used to demonstrate the conditions where programmed cell death becomes a distinct advantage for the survival of the bacterial population. Credit: European Molecular Biology Organization

Scientists have engineered bacteria that are capable of sacrificing themselves for the good of the bacterial population. These altruistically inclined bacteria, which are described online in the journal Molecular Systems Biology, can be used to demonstrate the conditions where programmed cell death becomes a distinct advantage for the survival of the bacterial population.

"We have used a synthetic biology approach to explicitly measure and test the adaptive advantage of programmed bacterial cell death in Escherichia coli," said Lingchong You, senior author of the study and an associate professor at the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Duke University, and the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy. "The system is tunable which means that the extent of altruistic death in the bacterial population can be increased. We are therefore able to control the extent of programmed cell death as well as test the benefits of altruistic death under different conditions." The lead author of the study is Yu Tanouchi, a graduate student in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. Anand Pai and Nicolas Buchler also contributed to the work.

Scientists have known for some time that programmed cell death can be linked to the response of bacteria to stressful conditions, for example starvation of amino acids or the presence of competitor molecules. However, it is not clear why cells should choose to die under such conditions since it gives them no immediate advantages. Some researchers have suggested that programmed cell death allows cells to provide benefits to their survivors but until now it has been difficult to test this directly in experiments.

The researchers used synthetic biology procedures to engineer Escherichia coli in such a way that the bacterial cells are capable of suicidal behavior and promoting the good of the bacterial population. To do so they introduced a gene circuit, which consists of two modules, into the bacteria. If the "suicide module" is active it leads to the rupture and death of some bacterial cells when they are challenged with the antibiotic 6-aminopenicillanic acid. If the "public good" module is expressed, a modified form of the enzyme beta-lactamase is produced, which protects surviving cells from rupture or lysis by breaking down the antibiotic. This protection only occurs when the enzyme is released from inside the bacterial cells that make the ultimate sacrifice and die after rupture.

"Our results clearly demonstrate that it is possible to have conditions where the death of some bacteria confers an advantage for the overall population of bacteria," remarked You. "The optimal death rate for the bacterial population emerges after sufficient time has passed and is clearly visible in our system."

The scientists were also able to provide a possible explanation for the "Eagle effect", an unexpected phenomenon where bacteria appear to grow better when treated with higher antibiotic concentrations. "Overall our results fill in a conceptual gap in understanding the evolutionary dynamics of programmed bacterial death during stress and have implications for designing intervention strategies for effective treatment of bacterial infections with antibiotics," concluded You.

More information: doi: 10.1038/msb.2012.50

Journal reference: Molecular Systems Biology

Provided by European Molecular Biology Organization

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Indian scientists unravel secrets behind hospital infections

Kolkata, Nov 20 (IANS) Giving an insight into how and why hospitalborne infections spread, scientists at the Indian Institute of Chemical Biology here have said bacteria play hide and seek with the human body's defence cells by surrounding themselves with sugar molecules to fool cells.

Researchers led by scientist Chitra Mandal have unravelled the sinister mechanism by which the bacteria that goes by the name of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, responsible for hospitalborne infections, invades the human body, eludes the neutrophils (immune cells responsible for defence) and establishes infection.

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a rod shaped, airborne diseasecausing bacterium, a pathogen commonly found in patients with low immunity and in patients who have been hospitalised.

Besides hospitalborne infections like pneumonia, Pseudomonas aeruginosa is also responsible for urinary tract infections (UTIs), respiratory infections and other afflictions.

These infections can lead to complications and even death.

"Be it burns, wounds, you name it, this bug is present," Mandal, head of the Cancer Biology and Inflammatory Disorder Division, Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR)Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, told IANS.

Neutrophils, which form the first line of defence, are the most abundant class of white blood cells that help the body to fight infection.

They protect the body against invading pathogens like bacteria and parasites and remove wastes, foreign substances and other cells in a process where they eat or engulf these particles.

According to the study published in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology in 2012, as part of the evasive tactics used by the bacterium, it first picks up specific sugar molecules called sialic acid (sias) from its environment (the human body in this case) and surrounds itself with it.

Highlighting the importance of the research, microbiologist Nemai Bhattacharya of the School of Tropical Medicine told IANS: "These bacteria are difficult to deal with because of their capability to resist common antibiotics. They have been found to grow in antiseptic solutions as well. Studies such as the one done by the scientists provide valuable insights into the bacterium's activities."

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Indian scientists unravel secrets behind hospital infections

Harvard scientist calls for an integrated approach to studying ancient Earth: systems paleobiology

A decade ago, the emerging field of systems biology was seen as a major shift in the approach to studying life; zooming out from a focus on smaller and smaller building blocks of biology to scrutinizing the whole vast, interlocking system. More recently, scientists appropriated the concept to the study of how drugs interact with biology, calling the new field systems pharmacology. Now, those who study the ancient Earth and its environment and inhabitants want in.

Andrew Knoll, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at Harvard University, wrote a part-essay, part-manifesto for the 125th anniversary of the Geological Society of America, calling for a rethinking of the way those who study the evolution of ancient life and the Earth think about their fields. He called his essay Systems paleobiology.

Knoll concedes the title was a bit tongue-in-cheek, since the systems label has been a trendy one in science lately. But the idea, he insists, is utterly serious and could provide scientists the framework to delve more deeply into evolution and understand whether life could have existed elsewhere in the solar system.

What does the systems label really mean? Biologists, empowered by the discovery of DNA, had for decades been working out the function of genes. But as the field matured, Knoll noted, they realized that it would be important to understand the contextthe network of interactions between genes and proteins that give rise to organisms or disease.

Over the past decade, the earth sciences have traveled a comparable path, recognizing that the physical Earth and the biological Earth are not separate entities but rather interacting components of an integrated Earth system, Knoll wrote in his essay. Indeed, environmental history provides a necessary framework for understanding the history of life.

Paleontologists often narrowly focused on the structure of the specimens, Knoll said. But physiologythe study of how living things functioncould be integrated with geology, the fossil record, and even atmospheric chemistry, to understand ancient life and the ancient Earth in context. In an e-mail, Knoll explained that scientists could, by looking at fossils of leaves, reconstruct aspects of climate and atmospheric history, by modeling the flow of water vapor and carbon dioxide through leaves like the ones preserved in fossils. Geologists, he wrote, could come up with many kill mechanisms to explain a mass extinction 252 million years ago. But to narrow those possibilities, the physiological effects on organisms are key, and the fossil record squares with the idea that carbon dioxide rapidly increased.

On other planets, Knoll goes on to argue, a systems astropaleobiology approach might help evaluate the viability of life on Mars. Just because there is evidence of water on Mars, for example, that doesnt mean that life would have been viable. He drives home that point with a quote from Samuel Taylor Coleridges The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, in which the water is too salty to quench the thirst of a sailor: Water, water every where, Nor any drop to drink. That's why a systems approachone that looks at what might have been dissolved in the water and the tolerance life on Earth has for such conditionsmight be informative.

Science has been taking increasing notice of the systems that shape how the world behaves, acknowledging that studying biology in isolation can be limited. It remains to be seen whether its possible to tease apart all the complexity of the whole system in a meaningful way that will help cure disease, build better drugs, or understand biology.

But its also a perspective most of us cant escape in our daily lives, as we log into various social networks and see displayed in our list of friends and likes how we are embedded in an environment that feeds back, informing who we are, what we are like, and what we know.

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Harvard scientist calls for an integrated approach to studying ancient Earth: systems paleobiology

Why the Frontiers of Biology Might Be Inside a Computer Chip

When David Harel started the experiment, the petri dish of mouse cells looked just like any other. Genes were being expressed, proteins were being made, and the tissue was being perfused with oxygen-rich blood.

But then things started to change.First one cell changed position and moved across the plate, followed quickly by another. Eventually, through migration and other changes in cell functionality and signaling, the cells had differentiated, with the lucky ones becoming fully-fledged thymus gland T cells. And it all happened in a fraction of the time that biologists would have expected based on several decades of physiological and development studies; after all, this experiment was happening inside a computer, in virtual organs modeled by complicated diagrams, simulating their real-world counterparts.

Harel, a Professor of Computer Science at Israels Weizmann Institute, sees his teams work at the leading edge of a dramatic shift in scientific thinking. Biological research is ready for an extremely significant transition, he writes, from analysis (reducing experimental observation to elementary building blocks) to synthesis (integrating the parts into a comprehensive whole).

Harel presented his views on the changing landscape of biological research during a talk at the Falling Walls Conference in Berlin, where curious attendees filled a re-purposed water pumping station to hear about coming scientific breakthroughs. My approach is to get a holistic view on an entire system, he tells me after his talk. I think the excitement comes not from breaking it down to the last detail, but from the fact that you can build a model to understand something and then you get emergent properties; those complex, not always predictable, responses that come from millions of tiny interactions.

One of the most prominent trends in biology during the era of modern science has been the reductionist pursuit of ever-smaller biological components. In an attempt to understand the flora and fauna around us, we looked closer and found cells; cells led to DNA and genes and proteins and metabolites a dizzying constellation of interacting small molecules that, together, make life possible. Harels approach suggests a complementary path: the computational re-construction of biological systems (or reverse-engineered biology as he describes it) to run experiments that would be impractical or unwieldy in the lab. Its a way, in essence, to test the untestable.

A model is only as good as the data you put into it, and Harels models of worms or organs, and his recent project on modeling a cancerous tumor, depend upon thousands of previous studies of gene behavior of enzyme kinetics. If you put everything thats known into the model in a consistent manner, he says, you can carry out intricate runs of the model under a variety of circumstances, and begin to make inferences. That makes our models realistic, interactive, and modifiable as new data becomes available.

But what if the unpredictable properties that emerge run into practical, un-modeled limits of the real world, like nutrient limitation or faulty gene circuits? To Harel, such a disconnect is actually an opportunity, an attitude that reflects his thinly veiled penchant for pressing biologists buttons. You have to put things in your model that make sense, he warns, but not always. If you make the biologists angry enough, they will go and do an experiment to prove you wrong, and thats what makes for exciting new discoveries.

By way of an example, Harel describes how once, when no one knew the reason for a stage of worm development, he added an unreasonable artifact something with no basis in reality into his model in order to make it act like the real thing. My crazy insertion caused the model to behave properly, but was clearly wrong, he recalls with a mischievous grin. But it caused the biologists to get to work and discover the real answer.

By playing provocateur, Harel believes he can push our knowledge of living systems forward. Why model things? Harel asks philosophically, overlooking the Spree River. Because Id like to truly understand life, to uncover gaps, correct errors, and form theories. The magnitude of the things you can do with such models of biology is mind-boggling. The skys the limit.

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Seth Bordenstein: Discover the Microbes Within! The Wolbachia Project – Video


Seth Bordenstein: Discover the Microbes Within! The Wolbachia Project
Professor Bordenstein gives a basic introduction to Discover the Microbes Within! The Wolbachia Project. It is designed for high school biology students and educators in an effort to bring real-world scientific research into biology labs and lesson plans with inquiry, discovery, biotechnology, and a culture of excellence.Science influences everything we do and there is no better way to teach science than to experience it. Experience leads to empowerment and empowerment creates the foundation for critical thinking skills and ultimately a scientifically-literate public. The video was recorded live on January 8, 2008 for the National Sciece Digital Library / National Science Teacher Association webinar series. Some of the links to the Wolbachia Project are outdated. Updated link is discover.mbl.edu. The Wolbachia Project FaceBook page is at httpsFrom:Seth BordensteinViews:1 0ratingsTime:43:03More inEducation

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Seth Bordenstein: Discover the Microbes Within! The Wolbachia Project - Video

"Photosynthesis" –An Original Biology Honors Extra Credit Song – Video


"Photosynthesis" --An Original Biology Honors Extra Credit Song
Credits in the video. Made for Mr. Wong #39;s Period 6 Extra Credit opportunity. By: Robby Claude and David Gallab Lyrics and Intro Written by: David Gallab Technical Stuff: Robby ClaudeFrom:tchildproductionsViews:0 0ratingsTime:01:23More inMusic

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"Photosynthesis" --An Original Biology Honors Extra Credit Song - Video

2012 Professional of Distinction – Discovery Awards – Video


2012 Professional of Distinction - Discovery Awards
Ron O #39;Dor, Ph.D., is a Professor of Biology who joined Dalhousie University in 1973. His research has focused primarily on cephalopods, including octopuses and squids. In addition to administrative positions at Dalhousie, he was named Senior Scientist of the Sloan Foundation Global Census of Marine Life located in Washington DC in 2001. There he coordinated its 17 global projects that spent over $650 million to compile information about the history and likely futures of marine animals, in addition to over 30 million records of marine species. He is a Lead Scientist for the Ocean Tracking Network, a spinoff project run from Dalhousie, with core funding from Canadian and international funding agencies. The funding is valued at $150 million and will make, based on Ron #39;s expertise, the Halifax-based company Vemco the global leader in acoustic tracking technology. He was named Canadian Geographic #39;s Environmental Scientist of the Year in 2009 and received an honourary degree from Lakehead University. Also featured in this video: James (Brendan) Murphy, Ph.D., Professor and Chairman, Department of Earth Sciences, St. Francis Xavier University, and Jaroslav Dostal, Ph.D., a geologist whose research in ore deposits and geochemistry of rare earth metals and minerals containing uranium has furthered the understanding of the formation and changes in the Earth #39;s outermost layers.From:discoverycentre1593Views:2 0ratingsTime:07:46More inScience Technology

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2012 Professional of Distinction - Discovery Awards - Video

ZigCell3D – Building a Reaction Network for a Simple Signalling Cascade – Video


ZigCell3D - Building a Reaction Network for a Simple Signalling Cascade
This is a realtime capture from the user perspective in the systems biology tool ZigCell3D. Work in progress. http://www.facebook.com http://www.sciencevisuals.comFrom:ScienceVisuals SàrlViews:3 0ratingsTime:04:03More inScience Technology

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ZigCell3D - Building a Reaction Network for a Simple Signalling Cascade - Video

ZigCell3D – Building a Reaction Network for a Simple Signalling Cascade II – Video


ZigCell3D - Building a Reaction Network for a Simple Signalling Cascade II
This is a realtime capture from the user perspective in the systems biology tool ZigCell3D. Work in progress. http://www.facebook.com http://www.sciencevisuals.comFrom:ScienceVisuals SàrlViews:1 0ratingsTime:01:30More inScience Technology

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ZigCell3D - Building a Reaction Network for a Simple Signalling Cascade II - Video

Stating Theories (Bidlack Biology extra credit) – Video


Stating Theories (Bidlack Biology extra credit)
A Parody of Sweating Bullets by Megadeth with educational videos. I do not own the rights to the music or the videos. No Copyright Infringement intended... This is for extra credit in Bidlacks Biology class. I apologize for my atrocious singing. The lyrics are below: Hello Thee meet Biology It is the study of life the way a cell divides it #39;s called mitosis meiosis starts with 23 and 23 but crossover makes the genes fuzzy being classified genus homo -- species SAPIEN viruses attacking me and I get sick now and then the double helix thing controls it all I bet Hydrogen is bonding it in transcription it is split Stating Theories Hello Thee, it #39;s B again you can #39;t ignore or ever deny me it takes the mitochondria converting energy at cellular level Yeah, just know it #39;s the same as moms got and chloroplasts are for photosynthesis mankind has got to grow it #39;s evolution Being heterotrophic like my foods not from within blood runs through my veins and that #39;s just one organ system the double helix thing controls it all I bet found by Watson and Crick in transcription it is split Stating Theories Well, thee, it #39;s nice talking of myself a credit to academia hope this works both sides of your brain now use muscles to grin if one ear falls off your head you #39;ll have to learn to walk again Alveoli the little lung sacs exchange gases again. being classified genus homo -- species SAPIEN viruses attacking me and I get sick now and then Being heterotrophic like my foods not from within blood ...From:DrajinnTheOnlyViews:3 0ratingsTime:05:33More inPeople Blogs

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Stating Theories (Bidlack Biology extra credit) - Video