Do men face extinction?

For a long time now men have been faced with the absolutely devastating news that the thing that makes you a man, that stumpy little thing that serves very little purpose, is getting smaller and smaller, and may soon disappear completely. Don't panic, I'm not talking about... that... I'm talking about the Y chromosome.

The human chromosomes are arranged into 23 pairs with 22 of those pairs being identical. The 23rd pair determines our sex, and is either an XX, making us female, or XY making us male. When our parents came together on the day of our conception (as horrible as it may be to think about), it was a flip of the coin whether we'd become male, or female. For those of us who were lucky enough to to gain that little Y, we were endowed with a gene which would become responsible for what dangles between our legs which makes us a man.

Over a decade ago now, scientists predicted that Y chromosome, and the genetic information it carries, would soon degrade into non-existence. They came to this conclusion because of evidence suggesting that recombination, which is the sharing and shuffling of pieces of DNA between chromosomes, was very low between the X and the Y. This would result in damaged genes which could not be replaced, eventually leading to its total degradation, giving men an expiration date of around 5-10 million years (which would make our best before slightly after a tin of beans).

In the mad panic that ensued, scientists turned to our common ancestor, the chimp, to determine our fate. These experiments actually showed that the chimps Y chromosome is much smaller than our own. This is because there is a much higher level of necessity for the chimp to produce quality sperm, owing to the female chimps promiscuity. This has resulted in genes for producing sperm being selected for and enhanced, with other non-sperm-related genes on the Y being lost. In this instance, our monogamy could have saved our Y chromosome, as there is a much lower selection pressure for producing sperm, with other qualities also being selected for.

Even with this information, there are still skeptics who believe the Y chromosome is degrading, and has been since it first came into existence. Whilst this may just be some wishful thinking, it's still important to remember, its not the size of the Y, it's how you use it.   

What do you think would happen if we lost the Y chromosome? Would humanity somehow carry on as monosexual? Comment below and let me know, or email newsinscience@gmail.com with any questions.

What causes antibiotic resistance?

There's been a lot of talk lately around the issue of antibiotic resistance, but very few accounts of what this is or how its formed. 

Antibiotics work by acting against bacteria which have infected our natural system. The development and use of antibiotics has allowed for huge developments in healthcare over the past few decades, causing us to extend our lifetimes far beyond what would be our natural limits. 

However, many believe that we may have taken antibiotics for granted, and through the combination of overuse, and not completing the full course subscribed, we have allowed the development of microorganisms who are no longer killed by widely used antibiotics. 

In Europe alone, 25,000 people die every year from infections of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.This is bad news for modern healthcare, and an issue that should be fully understood by the public at large. 

A bacteria can acquire genes for antibiotic resistance in several ways. Firstly, a micro-organism may have taken on a spontaneous, or induced genetic mutation, which leads to a change in a bacterium to such an extent that antibiotics can either no longer attach, or whose products are deemed ineffective.

A more important method of resistance comes about through the acquisition of resistance genes from other bacteria who are resistant. These genes can be found on plasmids in most transferring bacteria. Plasmids can contain several genes, including those for resistance, which can be transferred to other bacteria through horizontal gene transfer. In a human population this would essentially be the same as borrowing something from a neighbour. The only difference with bacteria is that they're borrowing genetic information, genetic information which is keeping that bacteria alive!

It is this method which allows for the rapid sharing of resistant genes in a local population of bacteria.  If this process were to carry on for multiple generations of bacteria, the end result would be a population of bacteria which are completely unaffected by antibiotics. This could set our healthcare system back a hundred years or more. Operations and infections that we now consider common, could quickly become deadly. This problem is only made worse by the slow rate at which new antibiotics are being produced, an area which is crying out for further development.

What do you think? Should we be worried? What should we be doing about it? Comment below or email newsinscience@gmail.com with any questions. 

Ever struggled to remember where you left your keys?

For some of us it can be an almost daily challenge. As humans we are in an ever changing environment, from things as small as remembering where we put our keys down, to bigger things like where we parked our car. This can put a strain on our brain, and the Stalk institute for biological sciences attempted to explain how our brain can keep track of where everything is.

This resulted in research that showed a subregion of the hippocampus called the dentate gyrus keeps the different memories that we have of similar environments and events separate. This region allows for individual recordings of our changing environments, which is what allows us to remember where we may have left our various possessions. In some cases however, this system can be at fault, leaving us fumbling around and looking under sofa cushions.

This type of research can give us a much stronger understanding of how the brain stores and recollects different memories. This could also be important when considering neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimers, which strip us of our ability to recollect certain memories.

What happens if you stick some eyes on the tail of a tadpole?

Since the dawn of time man has sat and pondered the universe, questions have come to us like, whats the meaning of life? Why are we here? Who created us? and, probably most importantly... What happens if you stick some eyes on the tail of a tadpole? Well, Finally, after centuries of wondering we have an answer to this question.

The phrase "eyes in the back of your head" is given new meaning after the discovery that transplanted eyes in tadpoles are actually capable of distinguishing different colours of light.

Recent research has produced tadpoles with these ectopic eyes on their tails that, whilst in an unusual location and not being directly connected to the brain are capable of processing visual information from their environment.

Tadpoles have had a pretty hard time of it over the years, as if life weren't hard enough for them as it is, these experiments have put them through even more hardship. This is because, in these experiments, the tadpoles eyes were removed, with cells that would develop into eyes being transplanted into their tails. The tadpoles were then placed into chambers where half of the chamber was illuminated in blue light, and the other half in red light. Every time the tadpoles were in one half of the chamber they were shocked with electricity. This eventually lead to the tadpoles associating one particular colour with the shock, and avoiding that colour, proving that these transplanted eyes were capable of processing light information from their environment.

With a lot of experiments you could ask, 'well what was the point?'. Well in this case this data could prove important when treating certain cases of blindness, or even one day in the development of artificial eyes.

What do you think of this new piece of research? Was it pointless? Or is this actually the next step in the path of producing a bionic human? Comment below with your opinion, or email newsinscience@gmail.com with any questions.