AskScience AMA Series: We are human genetics experts here to discuss how research of complex and Mendelian disorders impacts you. Ask us anything! |
- AskScience AMA Series: We are human genetics experts here to discuss how research of complex and Mendelian disorders impacts you. Ask us anything!
- AskScience AMA Series: Been watching "The Dropout" on Hulu about the Theranos scandal? We're experts in the field of medical diagnostics here to answer your questions about how different tests (blood, urine, saliva) are ACTUALLY run, analyzed and regulated. AUA!
- Before Fleming's accidental discovery of penicillin in 1928, was bread mold a "folk remedy" for treating wounds at home?
- Can red blood cells be produced anywhere besides bone marrow?
- At a molecular level, how do softened butter and melted butter interact with dough differently?
- Will radon gas ever stop being generated and leaking to the surface at some point in the future?
- Is holding your breath as an infant a learned reaction or one you are born with?
- In the absence of artificial light, do moths attempt to fly towards to the moon?
- Tissue engineering: using decellularized donor scaffold/ECM, and we want to regenerate an ear. If donor scaffold is not natural size of the host supposed ear , will the host correct its size after ECM remodeling?
- 2 Part Question. Why does the James Webb telescope need to be cooled when already in the frigid environment of space? And how do they go about cooling it?
- How does a person's music taste change throughout their life?
- Why does lithium plating in LiPo batteries occur specifically below 0 degrees C?
- How important was the element Argon in the development of life on earth?
- How much CO2 is converted to oxygen worldwide, annually?
- Could positive feedback loops legitimately dwarf Human emissions?
- Why are northern regions only somewhat warm in the summer despite receiving crazy amounts of sunlight?
- How do synthetic rubbers improve the grip / durability of a tyre when looking at it on a molecular level?
- Toxoplasma gondii (often transmitted to humans via cats) infection has been linked to psychiatric issues in humans. If a psychiatric condition has been caused by this parasite can the psychiatric symptoms be reversed by killing the parasite or are the results permanent?
- Do vaccines help at all against latent/dormant viruses?
- Can you be more colorblind in one eye then in the other?
- How come back when news shows used satellite to get picture from their field anchors it was so much clearer and smooth than something like facetime?
- Why is Mars a "dead planet"? How long was it "alive" for?
- Do pain medications actually relieve pain or do they rewire the brain to feel pain differently?
- How does lactate cause acidosis, and how is it metabolised to bicarbonate?
| Posted: 25 Apr 2022 04:00 AM PDT Happy DNA Day, Reddit! We're a group of scientists who study human genetics, and have expertise in pharmaceuticals, precision medicine, cancer genetics, pharmacogenetics, policy and advocacy. This year is the 200th anniversary of Gregor Mendel's birth. Known as the "Father of Human Genetics," he established fundamental laws of inheritance using pea plants in the 1800s that helped us understand why and how certain traits are passed to offspring. Mendelian traits or disorders are caused by variation in one gene while complex traits and disorders are caused by variation in many genes and, often, environmental factors. Nearly 200 years later, human genetics research continues to build upon this foundation and has led to many discoveries and breakthroughs in the time since. For example, research has helped us understand inheritance, and sometimes treatment, of disorders such as Tay-Sachs, Cystic Fibrosis, and many types of cancer. We're here to answer your questions about how human genetics research of Mendelian and complex disorders impacts the health of all people.
DNA Day commemorates the completion of the Human Genome Project in April 2003 and the discovery of the double helix of DNA in 1953. ASHG celebrates through the DNA Day Essay Contest, which is open to high school students around the world and asks them to write an essay about a topic in human genetics. The 2022 winners will be announced today, April 25 at 12pm U.S. Eastern Time. Check them out! The American Society of Human Genetics was a partner in organizing today's talk. For more information on human disease genetics, check out their Discover Genetics page: https://www.ashg.org/discover-genetics/genetics-basics/ [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 26 Apr 2022 04:00 AM PDT Anyone who has visited a doctor knows that medical diagnostic tests (which analyze biomarkers contained in fluids like blood, urine and saliva) are critical in helping to diagnose and interpret a whole variety of signs of health. But did you know that there are roughly 13 BILLION diagnostic medical tests performed every year, just in the United States? With such a high level of demand, there is a constant need for the development of diagnostic approaches with increased accuracy, higher sensitivity, and lower costs. Unfortunately, as illustrated by several recent scandals (such as that involving former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes, recently the subject of the Hulu show The Dropout), such great need means that the field of medical diagnostics can also be prone to great fraud. So how do professionals ensure the efficacy, safety and utility of diagnostics tests? What requirements and standards have regulators put in place to protect against fraud and abuse? Join us today at 3 PM ET (19 UT) for an open discussion, organized by the American Society for Microbiology, to discuss the field of medical diagnostics. We'll answer your questions about the research, regulatory and policy aspects of diagnostics. Ask us anything! With us today are:
Links: [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 25 Apr 2022 11:07 AM PDT The title is the TL;DR, but I'll also add my personal interest in this question (a family legend), and some preliminary Googling that makes me believe this is plausible. My grandfather was born in 1906 in Poland (bordering Russia, so sometimes Russia, but that's another story.) It was a tiny subsistence farming village. My grandfather barely attended some elementary school and then worked on the family farm before emigrating to the USA just after WW1. There was no modern medicine or medical education in this rural area, but my grandfather described an interesting folk remedy for wounds on the farm. Basically, his family had a large wooden bowl that was designated for mixing and kneading bread dough. It was never washed or even scraped clean, never used for anything but bread, and it was used a LOT (poor farming family, so something like 14 siblings, parents and assorted uncles and aunts). No one knows where the tradition came from, but when there was an injury with a open wound-- say, my grandfather fell and a stone scraped his shin or knee badly enough to bleed-- the others would take a sharp spoon, scrape out a spoonful of the old dried-out layers of residue in the bowl, and create a poultice out of it. When penicillin was discovered a decade or two later, my grandfather was like, "ha! We knew about penicillin on the farm long before that." And often repeated this story to illustrate that modern medicine sometimes "discovers" health information already known in folk remedies. So I was reading more about the discovery of penicillin on the web, and almost every website repeats the familiar story about Fleming. He goes away on holiday, leaves a window open, returns to find mold growing on some of his petri dishes, and then notices that the petri dishes with mold appear to have inhibited the growth of the staph bacteria he was cultivating. I can't find much information about what if anything was known prior to this, but there are some suggestive sentences. For instance, from the Wikipedia article on Penicillin (Discovery subsection): "Starting in the late 19th century there had been reports of the antibacterial properties of Penicillium mould, but scientists were unable to discern what process was causing the effect." The citation for this sentence is: Dougherty TJ, Pucci MJ (2011). Antibiotic Discovery and Development. Springer Science & Business Media. pp. 79–80. I do not have access to the full text, so my easiest question is whether someone with access can provide the context in that text? More generally, I'd be interested in any other sources on mold being used in "folk medicine" prior to 1928. If anyone out there has expert knowledge on this esoteric question, I would be delighted. I know the rest of my family would be delighted to learn more, too, as this is one of the more intriguing bits of family apocrypha. Thank you for any information or sources you might be able to share about this topic. [link] [comments] |
| Can red blood cells be produced anywhere besides bone marrow? Posted: 26 Apr 2022 05:43 AM PDT I really want to know if all of a human's bone marrow stopped producing blood, if the body could compensate for it elsewhere. [link] [comments] |
| At a molecular level, how do softened butter and melted butter interact with dough differently? Posted: 25 Apr 2022 03:13 PM PDT |
| Will radon gas ever stop being generated and leaking to the surface at some point in the future? Posted: 25 Apr 2022 09:06 PM PDT So radon gas leaks from the soil beneath us, but will it ever stop being generated or at least decrease enough to that it's not a threat to public health at all? If so, how long would that take? [link] [comments] |
| Is holding your breath as an infant a learned reaction or one you are born with? Posted: 26 Apr 2022 09:23 AM PDT Got into a heated argument with my biology teacher whether or not it's one you are born with. She says that it is learned because when a baby gets water in it's lungs it "learns" to not do so again. [link] [comments] |
| In the absence of artificial light, do moths attempt to fly towards to the moon? Posted: 25 Apr 2022 05:51 PM PDT |
| Posted: 25 Apr 2022 09:19 PM PDT |
| Posted: 25 Apr 2022 09:51 AM PDT |
| How does a person's music taste change throughout their life? Posted: 26 Apr 2022 07:57 AM PDT |
| Why does lithium plating in LiPo batteries occur specifically below 0 degrees C? Posted: 25 Apr 2022 05:19 AM PDT It is stated that LiPos get permanently damaged when charged below 0 deg C. It annoys me that this temperature matches the freezing temperature of water. Is this related? Why 0C? Is lithium plating occurrence temperature binary or linear? What I mean - is there a specific temperature at which plating suddenly starts or is it happening more and more aggressively the colder the cell is and 0 degrees C is just where we decided to draw the line? I read this answer from 5 years ago and it stated that we don't know why lithium plating happens at cold temperatures: Is the answer still "we don't know"? [link] [comments] |
| How important was the element Argon in the development of life on earth? Posted: 25 Apr 2022 07:20 PM PDT |
| How much CO2 is converted to oxygen worldwide, annually? Posted: 25 Apr 2022 03:49 AM PDT I can find figures for CO2 emissions, but I can't find how much CO2 the environment converts to oxygen (or how much oxygen the environment produces). I calculated a rough estimate: using the average increase in CO2 concentration as approximately 2.5ppm annually, the atmosphere having a mass of 5.5\10**15* t, and global greenhouse emissions as ≈49.4\10**9* t annually, I calculated that the annual increase in CO2 is 13.75\10**9* t annually, meaning that 35.55\10**9* t of CO2 is converted to oxygen annually. Is there a better figure for this/is this correct? [link] [comments] |
| Could positive feedback loops legitimately dwarf Human emissions? Posted: 25 Apr 2022 06:42 PM PDT There is a claim that activism is ultimately pointless because positive feedbacks, such as permafrost methane or the ice-albedo affect, are going to cause so much warming that trying to limit emissions will make little to no difference. I'm somewhat skeptical of this claim. Not because I don't think that tipping points represent existential threats to the stability of our society and ecosystems, because they do, but because it sounds suspiciously similar to fossil fuel propaganda. The whole idea that activism and mitigation is meaningless because the problem mostly stems from natural mechanisms, rather than Human activities, has been a corporate go to for years. So is there any basis to this claim? Or is it just defeatism? [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 25 Apr 2022 05:22 AM PDT For example: Despite getting more sunlight, Northern Europe is on average colder than Southern Europe in the summer. What is keeping the north cool or warming up the south? [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 25 Apr 2022 03:26 AM PDT How do things like synthetic rubber increase the grip the tyres can provide? I'm wondering more at a molecular level and how a different polymer can 'grip' the road better / not wear as fast. I understand the ideas behind how a less tightly wound polymer will be more grippy as the road can 'bite' into it better, but what about the polymer itself changes this property? Looking a isoprene (rubber) vs butadiene (synthetic rubber), what chemically alters how tightly wound the polymers are? Thanks. [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 24 Apr 2022 07:33 PM PDT |
| Do vaccines help at all against latent/dormant viruses? Posted: 25 Apr 2022 03:52 PM PDT So I know that vaccines work by making your immune system create antibodies so that when/if the virus enters your body, there would be antibodies (B and T cells) ready to fight off the virus and prevent it from further reproducing. Correct me if I am wrong: when you have an active infection (i.e. the virus is reproducing), getting a vaccine is useless because your body has already produced antibodies from the virus infection itself. Now, what happens with latent/dormant viruses? We've heard about viruses such as HPV being able to remain dormant/latent for years before becoming active and start reproducing and attacking healthy cells. What would happen if, say, I have a dormant HPV variant in my body, and before it becomes active I get vaccinated against it. My body will still develop antibodies against this virus, so if the virus becomes active would my immune system be able to clear it from the antibodies I developed from the vaccine? [link] [comments] |
| Can you be more colorblind in one eye then in the other? Posted: 24 Apr 2022 11:53 PM PDT I've seen people say that you can be colorblind in only one eye but can you have different severities of colorblindness in both of you eyes? [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 25 Apr 2022 01:11 AM PDT Title. Here's an example of what i'm talking about if you skip to the 19:35 mark of the video. It's such high quality, much higher than the average internet video call. What's the technology behind this magic Edit: thank you for the thoughtful replies. Today I learned [link] [comments] |
| Why is Mars a "dead planet"? How long was it "alive" for? Posted: 24 Apr 2022 07:21 PM PDT I know that it lost its atmosphere due to solar radiation, but what killed the tectonics within the planet? [link] [comments] |
| Do pain medications actually relieve pain or do they rewire the brain to feel pain differently? Posted: 24 Apr 2022 06:28 PM PDT |
| How does lactate cause acidosis, and how is it metabolised to bicarbonate? Posted: 24 Apr 2022 08:31 PM PDT Hi Reddit, I'm an ICU doctor and wanted a second opinion on some concepts that are often repeated in medicine/biochemistry, but I can't find a good explanation for – they both involve lactate/"lactic acid". I have posted this on more than one subreddit to canvas a wider range of thoughts. 1. Anaerobic metabolism produces lactic acid In the absence of oxygen to facilitate oxidative phosphorylation, "lactic acid fermentation" then converts pyruvate into lactate and NAD+, however this consumes an H+ ion in the process So combining both steps gives us the net equation of: In effect, the H+ generated by glycolysis is consumed by the conversion of pyruvate to lactate, with NO net acid generation. So why do we constantly refer to "lactic acidosis"? I am aware of the Stewart model (which is controversial in its own right), whereby any negative charge should cause acidosis due to a change in the strong ion difference. Is this then the only mechanism by which acidosis is caused by lactate? Does that mean that lactate is equally acidotic as any negatively charged substance (eg: albumin, phosphate etc)? 2. Lactate metabolism yields bicarbonate The two most commonly proposed mechanisms (though they are only mentioned superficially) involve pyruvate and the Kreb's cycle, and are: Neither of these mechanisms make any sense to me In fact, lactate's conversion to pyruvate and then CO2 should produce 2 H+ ions and 1 bicarbonate, which represents net acid *production* from the metabolism of lactate I feel like I must be missing something here. Does anyone have an explanation for how lactate generates bicarbonate, or how lactate causes acidosis? [link] [comments] |
| You are subscribed to email updates from AskScience: Got Questions? Get Answers.. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States | |
No comments:
Post a Comment