Hairy sweaty bodies are better…really!

It’s true, in a round about way! Thousands of years ago when us Homo sapians were still evolving and deciding weather or not standing on two feet was a good idea or not something else was going on too. Our bodies were becoming hairless. Like most mammals, our predecessors’ bodies were covered in hair, much like the great apes we see today. It was this hair that protected ‘us’ from the biting flies, mozzies for example. After we lost the hair from most of our body we were more susceptable to biting insects. Therefore, our bodies became a feeding station for more and more species of biting insects. Consequently more and more parasites evolved to depend on Homo sapians for food and development during their life cycle. For the most part the parasitic diseases we hear about today would not be round if we humans weren’t around. (N.B. The majority of human parasites have evolved from animal parasites, if humans weren’t around these strains would most likely prevail).

Well that is all very well, but an obvious question has to be asked, why on earth would ‘we’ evolve to be ‘almost’ hairless if it was potentially detrimental to our evolutionary ‘fitness’? (N.B. That last sentance just beat the world record for the most inapropriate use of inverted commas 🙂 )  Think of the where human ancestorial line originated and the climate, you should be thinking about Africa and hot…mid-day sun – very hot. Now think about what most of the animals are doing during the mid-day sun, especially the predators. I’m having flash backs of the BBCs’ Big Cat Week – Live where Simon King would say “now lets move to the lions…(dramatic pause)…oh and there is movement, no no that our producer with a big poking stick!”. What I’m trying to say is they do very little.

So why…?

Answers in the comments section, one person I’m sure will know this is Alan Gunn (Lecturer at JMU), can you out smart the Gunn ;-)?

The devil that is a cancer cell!

The intricate world of cells are becoming more and more intricate the more we find out. Consider a single cell floating on its own in a media/liquid. It will die, all but one type of cell. Firstly why will other cells die? Well if you were a cell, all alone no-one to talk to, no-one to share a friendly nudge with when something happens that makes you laugh. Why hang around(?), cells don’t, they will die. Cells need something, they need to be attached to something – adhesion.

Adhesion to another cell or a surface indicates to the cell that something else is there and it’s worth growing for, the cell can then multiply, and grow further to fill a space. Cells won’t grow on top of each other to any great extent, all except one type of cell. Most cells will get to a point of 100% confluency, this is where  the cells can not grow any further. They will grow on top of each other but will die soon after. This is caused by contact inhibition, communication of some kind between cells indicate the presence of to many cells and programmed death will occur.

There is only one thing I can do now 😦

One cell type in particular  does not share the  characteristics described above. If you haven’t already guessed, cancer cells are different in their behaviour. A cancer cell has the ability to survive on its own, it does not need surrounding cells to tell it that it is worth growing. A single caner cell is every bodies nightmare. Metastasis is the term given to the spread of cancer, to a different organ or area of the body. This can happen as a break away cancer cell can travel in the blood for example, lodge itself somewhere within the body and therefore spread the cancer. It is unknown or certainly unclear how these cells can do this.

On the other extreme, cancer cells will not die in overcrowded conditions. Normal cells will signal to one another that space is no longer available and we can’t keep growing. Cancer cells seem to do the opposite, “no space lets grow more” type of thing. They are prolific and can multiply very quickly, relative to their neighbouring host (normal) cells. There is no mechanism for switching off the cell cycle and thus growth.

Research is on going and has changed in resent years to concentrate on what happens around the cancer cells. What they are communicating to each other rather than concentrating research on the tumour itself. This has opened up a very interesting area of research that I was lucky enough to be involved with for my final year dissertation.

Why is cell communication important?

by Samuel Waldron

AIMS- is African aid being wasted?

Yes – according to Neil Turok, chair of mathematical physics at Cambridge University and I tend to agree with him. I have lived and travelled in Africa several times. I was working in various places but the most stand out was Gods Golden Acre (GGA). An orphanage type place where local people and volunteers worked hard to provide for the children and teenagers that were there with a home and means to an education. Set in rural South Africa about 30mins from Durban, GGA supported various outreach programmes in addition to the main building, the orphanage type place. The outreach programmes supplied mainly basics (candles, stable foods, etc.), vital for the Gogo’s (Grandmother) raising the numerous generations of Grandchildren left to her after AIDS took its toll on their parents.

Within GGA there was schooling for nursery age, often taught by volunteers (mostly) from Western countries. Older children could go to local schools and receive a good education. But it often struck me that once the kids reached 18 there was very little for them to do. Some joined the staff at GGA, there is a lot of building work and maintenance going on for the young men and similarly cleaning and cooking roles for the young women to fill. And the rest?

I’m not too sure. I explain the situation as I knew it. It was a concern several years ago and I have lost contact with many who have been there since, but it struck me when reading the article on the BBC website about AIMS (African Institute for Mathematical Sciences). It is exactly what Africa and especially the young adults from GGA were missing. AIMS would take away some of the millions of dollars of aid going into African countries, if the articles calculations are correct then it would be 0.1% of the current African Aid budget. I suppose the name AIMs says it all, a suitable substitute for AID. The AIMs programme is ‘aimed’ at setting up higher education facilities (Universities!?) to enable Africa to become ‘AID’ free by producing more skilled people at a higher level relative to the western world.

The first AIM centre is set up in Cape Town and aimed at Mathematics, people are coming from all over Africa to enroll. I thought (more on topic for the blog) that an AIMS institute focusing on Biological Sciences (Ecology, Biology, Zoology, Molecular Sciences) would help to kill two Springbok with one stone. Creating environmental awareness within Africa, within African communities and at a level where meaningful research could occur. Potentially creating ideas and skills where there would have been only a few. The children of GGA being given the opportunity to fulfill their ambitions and their AIMS. Finding out about their own country and how they could discover and find ways to support their environment and people without the need (eventually) for foreign AID.

by Samuel Waldron

Lets start at the very beginning…

…it’s a very good place to start. (by Samuel Waldron)

OK I will skirt round all the stuff about what came before the single-celled organism or we could be here all day. Basically I want to start small and get bigger. I mean in terms of the size of the subjects I will initially write about. I will inevitably get to the behavioural side of things as well as the physiological aspects of zoology, but I must practice what I preach and start by talking about small things.

The reasons (the preaching), I have outlined on the page about-the-zoological-blog  and, for me, make complete sense! Cells are the classic small thing for a Biologist. What goes on inside and around them are often too small to consider. Why this is for the Microbiologists!

But, what goes on in and around the cell is equally if not more fascinating and in some way or another they all go on in every walk of life, so they must be important, no? There are three basic branches of life, bacteria, archaea and Eukaryotes. They have evolved in this order, the simplest form of cell comes first (bacteria), a prokaryote (single-celled organism) consisting of no internal compartmentalisation. By this I mean no organelles, no nucleus or ribosome’s, all the organisms’ contents are floating around within a membrane and surrounded by a cell wall. The Archaea branch comes next, another form of prokaryote, this time the processes within the cells are more closely related to the eukaryotes.

Although it is difficult to distinguish between bacteria and archaea species from the outside, the mechanisms within make it more clear. The processes the archaea use to handle important genetic information (DNA and RNA) are similar to the eukaryotes. Conversely, the production of energy and the way it is used by the archaea seem to be more closely related to the bacterial branch. Does this suggest or show the path taken from simplest to the more complex forms of cells? Most would say YES!

So what was I talking about…oh yes the interesting things that go on inside and outside the cells. Take our cells for example, they make up our body. This overall structure, mass of cells is what defines a Eukaryotes. An organism made up of more than one cell and more often than not a host of different cells doing different cell things. We have liver cells, nerve cells, brain cells, etc. etc. they all look very different and have very different roles within our bodies, however they all have something in common. Another important characteristic of the evolution towards greater complexity is compartmentalisation. It is like the Monica factor in the T.V. series Friends; I make this comment in jest. For anyone who knows the character they will know she is always filing things, putting things in order, categories for red, green and blue folders each have a different subject, they can be cross referenced with big, small and medium sized yellow folders and can then be arranged alphabetically in accordance with…ok you get the idea, (anyone know a good episode to highlight the Monica factor please let us know). 

What I’m getting at is by putting things into a compartment is basically putting things into an order. By putting all the DNA of a cell into the nucleus it is becoming organised. Anything that wants to communicate with the DNA must ask the relevant people (in the case of the cell-receptors). This goes for all the organelles within a cell. The endoplasmic reticulum and golgi apparatus organise the production of proteins. The mitochondrion is in charge of the energy production. The cell membrane is the gatekeeper and in most part receives signals from other cells and restricts the flow of materials in and out of the cell. This is it, this is the interesting things that go on in and around the cell. In the cell you have lots of different little soap operas going on between the organelles. You have movie sets, where the main stage is the surface of the cell. The stars of The West End are the proteins, fulfilling there roles, not always perfectly…but they try. All this in one type of cell…only one type of cell!!! What is going on in the others, who are the stars what is their role. That is it, I must get the next issue of LOOK, no no HEAT noooooo NUTS…go on get a copy of Nature https://secure.nature.com/subscribe/nature

Comments are very welcome 🙂