The name’s Moonie. I am a Science student from Alberta who majors in Biological Sciences and Chemistry. This is a studyblr/dark academia blog ran by me where I post random bullshit based on whatever is on my mind at the time.
This blog is purely for personal study purposes, where I will use it to document what I’ve learned during my degree as well as a support for learning. I may also use it to post about scientific topics that interest me. However if you’re interested in learning some of the stuff I’ve learned, feel free to chill here for a while.
Will this blog be maintained in the long term? Don’t know!
Will this blog be consistent to one subject? Don’t know either!
I’m just here to vibe, now leave me and my test tubes alone
scientists in the 1990s, putting a Get More Purple gene attached to a harmless plant virus into an already purple petunia: please get more purple
the petunia, sensing an apparent honest to god Get More Purple Disease, using the previously undiscovered RNAi antiviral ability to shut down all other purple genes along with it just in case: you put VIRUS in petunia? you infect her with the More Purple?? oh! oh! her children shall bloom white! jail for mother, jail for mother for One Thousand Years!!!!
Book I’m reading: Sweet clover actually contains a naturally occurring aromatic compound known as coumarin, and can be used as a natural sweetener similar to vanilla.
Me: neat!
Book: ....but should you ingest any sweet clover that is moldy, a chemical reaction occurs where it becomes dicoumarol, which is a blood thinner that is used in rat poison.
Surprising discovery shows scale of plastic pollution and reveals enzymes that could boost recycling
The increasing amount of plastic being added to our environments has created intense selection pressure for microbes that can break down plastic for energy.
Looking at environmental DNA samples, researchers have found 30,000 different enzymes capable of digesting different types of plastic. Almost 60% did not fit into any known enzyme types.
While previous plastic-eating microbes had primarily been found in garbage dumps or recycling plants (locations with very high levels of plastic), the enzymes in this study were collected from soil and ocean water throughout the world, meaning this phenomenon is even more widespread than we thought.
The goal is to utilize these enzymes for more efficient recycling–essentially breaking plastic down into its basic building blocks to reduce or even eliminate the need for new virgin plastic. An enzyme created in 2020 is already being used to recycle plastic bottles in only a couple of hours.
Thanks to the anonymous individual who sent this in!
i have a HUGE question: can i both believe in mystical explanations for things as well as science-based explanations? it seems contradictory to believe in both
More importantly: Throughout the vast majority of Human history scientific advancement and development has, in fact, been driven by the innate Human desire to understand the beauty of the divine and otherworldly. The idea that they are separate realms which cannot coexist and are at odds with one another is a wholly modern way of thinking which blatantly did not exist until recently in the grand scheme of human existence.
That’s not to say that means we should throw all skepticism out the window, and abandon all reason. Skepticism and rationalism, pragmatism, reason, and logic, etc, are good, and healthy, and should be valued! But it is to say that holding the “contradictory” opinion that both the metaphysical / supernatural and the scientific may be true at once, that we don’t know everything, that science cannot (as of yet) explain everything, and that everything cannot (as of yet) be observed or understood, is not as new or as contradictory as it seems.
Humans have, in fact, been doing is for as long as we’ve been alive.
"this! im both artistic and scientific" no shut the FUCK up you don't get it
There is no difference. None. Science and art are both fueled by passion and romance. They are cycles of understanding, intimacy, and expression that have no beginning or end, that sustain one another in a wheel. Without artistic passion there would be no science. Without scientific understanding there would be no art. They are the exact same wonder and amazement with the world around us expressed through different yet interdependent media.
Here, we will cover what tight junctions are, their components, and their importance.
Tight junctions are a specialized cell junction that are particularly important in epithelial cells. They serve as a contact site that seals the gaps inbetween epithelial cells, which are important for cell anchoring but more importantly, maintaining cellular barriers and apical-basolateral polarity.
In other words, tight junctions regulate paracellular transport, acting as physical fences. As such they provide a selective barrier for extracellular fluids, which can maintain the blood-brain barrier for example, but also regulate the movement of molecules between cells.
In a real life example, junction integrity can be hijacked by pathogens and viruses, such as the Ebola virus. This virus purposefully targets tight junctions, which breaks them apart and allows all fluid to leak through. This not only includes disrupting the blood-brain barrier, but the leakage of blood cells and extracellular fluid out of the eyes, ears, nose, and other orifices.
We know that there are proteins associated with tight junctions that are important for their function, here we will cover occludin and claudin. Occludin can be identified by the two large “loops” on the outside face of the protein, whereas claudin can be identified by its singular single loop.
Occludin is highlighted to be important for the function of tight junctions due to the structure of it’s 2nd extracellular loop (the one closer to the C end of the protein). By measuring the trans-epithelial resistance between the apical and basal sides, occludin loop 2 is the sequence that disrupts the TER, but not occludin loop 1. As such, the 2nd loop of occludin serves structural importance to the function of tight junctions.
As for claudin, these proteins serve as entry factors for crossing tight junctions. Typically in the epithelial layer, if a white blood cell needed to cross the barrier to reach an area of infection, they would be detected via binding sites to allow extravasation and allowed to cross. However viruses may also hijack these entry factors to break open the tight junctions. For example with West Nile Virus, the virus specifically targets claudins and allow entry across the blood-brain barrier. As such, claudins serve as important barriers for monitoring entry across right junctions.
The ramblings of a science major @quaecumquevera - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
