MSG allergy is fake science

In May of 2009, the medical journal Clinical and Experimental Allergy published a review of more than a decade of scientific research into "the possible role of MSG in the so-called 'Chinese restaurant syndrome'".Chinese restaurant syndrome is the popular slang for allergies or adverse reactions that some people claim they get after eating food containing the flavor-enhancer MSG, that is widely used in many processed foods and also added to many Asian dishes.

What is amazing about the publication of this research is not that it concludes MSG allergy is a myth, but that a scientific journal still needs to bother debunking such pseudoscience at all

'Lab on a Chip' device to study Malaria

 
British Columbia researcher Hongshen Ma has developed a simple and accurate device to study malaria. This disease affects 500 million people per year worldwide and claims a million lives. Malaria is spread by mosquitoes this tiny parasite that infects human red blood cells. Ma and his team have designed a "lab on a chip' device to better understand the changes in red blood cells caused by this parasite (plasmodium falciparum, the most common species of malaria parasites). The device will help those conducting laboratory research of clinical trials evaluate the efficacy for different compounds in treating malaria.

Epigeneic Modifications To DNA Caused By Exercise

Did you ever think that DNA can be changed when you exercised. In the Cell Metabolism, has found that when healthy but men and women work out for a couple of minutes, it produces a fast change in their DNA. Also not only does exercise do this but also study's have shown that coffee could influence muscle in the same way. When exercising the DNA molecules within the muscles are being chemically and structurally altered (changed)  in very important ways. These modifications to the DNA at exact location  appear to be easily events in the genetic reprogramming of muscle for strength in the structural and metabolic benefits of exercise. This article I just explained just goes back to my last blog post showing how genes are being tuned on and off when needed. This is another big step for understanding genetics because it might help us by understanding how genes are being turned on and off.

Guiding Question: Approximately how much time do cells spend in each phase of the cell cycle?

Interphase--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------20

Prophase------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------10

Metaphase----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3

Anaphase-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2

Telophase------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1

Conclusion: These graphs represent how much time it takes each cells spends in each stage. What I found interesting is that the first stage takes the longest and after that they take shorter and shorter time that it spends at each stage. I really liked this experiment because it shows you how long the cell spends at each stage.

How Insecs 'Remodel' Their Bodies Between Life Stages

       How can an insect remake itself so completely that that it appears to be a different creature altogether, not just once but several times in a lifetime? A team led by Ian and Dianne Ducan of Washington University  are working with fruit flies rather than butterflies. The fruit flies go through 3 main stages: the larva, the pupa, and the adult. In earlier work it had shown that larva and adult forms are patterned by the same "signaling systems," that transfer a signal from receptor on the surface of cells to target genes within cell nuclei. But what they did not understand is how the same signaling system can form the larva in one case and the adult fly in the other. They were then able to show that a gene expressed only in the pupal stage redirects genes than in earlier stages. This gene itself controlled by a steroid hormone that turns on many other genes as well.

      I found this article very interesting because it shows how genes are being turned on like for example how this one gene can do this difficult process of changing the flies. I really enjoyed reading this article because we find flys so annoying but at the same time they are very unique because of there different stages of transformation.