Tom and Jerry: A friendship fueled by parasites?

Parasites have been shown to permanently remove the innate fear that mice have towards cats, which could give us key information in the treatment against schizophrenia. 

For as long as there have been mice, there have been cats to chase those mice around. Neither of them can help it, it's in the cats nature to chase, and the mouses to be chased. It's built into the mouses brain at a cellular level to fear cats, and run from any sign of them. This is a very important reaction for a mouse to have, as any other reaction would probably result in their untimely demise. 

However, recent research has suggested that the parasite Toxoplasma, which is a very common infection in humans, may be able to alter the brains of mice and eradicate their innate fear. Not only this, but it has also been shown that the effect of Toxoplasma is retained in the mouse long after the infection has cleared, suggesting that this change in the mouses behaviour is permanent and causes structural changes within the brain. 

An infection by Toxoplasma induces a disease called Toxoplasmosis. Whilst most mammals and birds can be infected by this disease, the fear eradicating side effect seen in mice is totally unique. 

Now, one of the biggest questions is obvious, why? Why would a parasite want to make its host less scared of cats? This actually happens so that the parasite can compete its life cycle. The only place that Toxoplasma can sexually reproduce is inside the cats intestines, and the only way it can get there is for the mouse that it's living in to be eaten. 

This could help put the cartoon Tom and Jerry into a brand new perspective. Whilst we all thought we were watching a cat and a mouse running around in a bitter rivalry, what we were actually witnessing was just one stage in a parasites life cycle who had evolved over millions of years to fill in that one particular niche. Who'd have thought it ay? 

It's all good and well having this very interesting piece of information, but in what ways, if any, can it relate to us as humans to help us understand ourselves?

Well, it turns out that this parasite is also prevalent in a large number of patients with schizophrenia, one of the symptoms of which is an increase in the levels of neurotransmitter dopamine. It is thought that the parasite can induce this increase by forming microscopic cysts that grow inside a number of brain cells, which increases their production of dopamine. In actual fact, the treatment against schizophrenia usually involves treatment against this infection. 

However, because this loss of fear in mice is persistant and retained long after the infection has cleared, the changed induced by Toxoplasma must occur before cysts are formed, and must adapt the brain at a very basic level. This calls into question the theory of cysts increasing dopamine release being the cause of this behavioural change, potentially nullifying treatment against schizophernia that target cysts. 

As with most research, this has raised more questions that it has answered. However, it has given us more crucial information on schizophrenia, and allows us to take one more step toward the effective treatment of this disease. 

What do you think about this piece of research? Write below with your comments and questions and don't forget to +1 and share if you enjoyed this article. 

If you're particularly interested in this research then you can find the original paper here.

Mystery solved as to why flies are so hard to catch.

Research produced by both Trinity College Dublin and the University of Edingburgh has shown that the way animals perceive the passage of time around them is linked to how active that animal is within its environment.  

In the past research has shown that the characteristics of an organism is limited by the size of its body and its metabolic rate. However, this more recent piece of research has also shown that an organisms ability to perceive its environment is equally important in limiting how well it can exploit its environment. 

For example, a species which is capable of quickly identifying a threat will be able to survive for much longer than one which is much slower at processing that sensory information. 

To explain this, researchers conducted experiments which found that the rate at which time is perceived varies dramatically between animals. Those who are much smaller and have much faster metabolic rates (e.g birds or flies) perceive much more information per unit of time, and therefore see time passing much more slowly than larger animals with slower metabolic rates (e.g the turtle). 

This information was gained through the use of a phenomenon called the critical flicker fusion frequency. This phenomenon determines how many flashes of light an organisms can perceive per second before the light source is perceived as constant. This is actually the principle behind things like television screens which produce a constant image through a series of flashing lights, but so quickly that we cannot perceive them individually, and instead see them as a constant image. 

This phenomenon is also used to explain how animals have varying perceptions of time, and shows that animals that we would expect to be agile and fast moving are able to see time at a much quicker rate. This also explains why flies are so hard to catch, as they can see your hand moving towards them in slow motion, making it easy for them move out of its way with ease. This could also shed some light on how Neo managed to dodge all those bullets in The Matrix. 

On the flip side of this, there are also some species of tiger beetle who's body moves much faster than its eyes can process and has to stop every now and then to take in the new surroundings that its charged itself into. 

This information isn't only important for the information that we can gain from the complexities of the animals around us, but could have have some implications in human biology in the future. 

At the moment, the limit of a humans sensory perception is being pushed by people like Lewis Hamilton. When driving an F1 car, Lewis is moving at pretty much the limit of his biological abilities. If he were to move any faster his eyes wouldn't be able to take in his environment in enough time for him to react, which probably wouldn't result in a very pretty scenario. 

The only way for us to push ourselves past these limits would be either through drugs, which don't exist yet,  or the adaptation of our eyes at a cellular level. This might seem pretty unlikely but who knows, one day we could all be dodging bullets and trying to prevent the destruction of Zion. 

What do you think about this research? Comment below with your thoughts and questions and don't forget to +1 this article if you enjoyed it. 

If you're particularly interested in this research you can find the original research article here.

Are you taking the piss?

7 years, 20 researchers and a whole lot of pee has allowed for a much more accurate chemical composition of urine to be determined. This has a number of knock on effects throughout scientific research, especially in the identification and treatment of medical disorders. 

Urine is a beautiful thing; available in every shade of yellow, sterile, chemically complex and one of the most ready available biofluids in the world. However, because of urine's vast complexity, it has been difficult to fully understand each of its components, and what those components can tell us about the person who supplied it. 

Urine usually contains metabolic breakdown products from the food that we eat and drink, contaminants we absorb from the environment as well as the by-products of certain bacteria.  The issue is the amount of information that we have about each of these components, which leaves us with a gap in our scientific knowledge on this substance. 

To try and remedy this gap in our knowledge, researchers at the University of Alberta set out to improve their knowledge by conducting an extensive and intense period of research which would provide a quantitative characterization of urine. Doing this involved employing NMR spectoscopy, gas chromotography, mess spectrometry and high performance liquid chromotography. 

Through the use of these technologies over 3000 previously unknown urine metabolites were identified. It is important for us to understand these metabolites, as they are often the products of a large number of different processes in the body, and can therefore give us an incredibly clear understanding of an organisms phenotype, from a source which is incredibly easy to obtain (pee). 

Now it might sound like that's an awful lot of effort to go through just to further understand our pee. However, this research will have massive implications on healthcare in the future. A persons urine can not only tell us a huge amount of information about someones health, but also their diet, what they drink, drugs they are taking and potential pollutants that they may have been exposed to. This can allow a physician to quickly identify a number of things about a patient through analysis of their urine, giving us the potential to save numerous lives through the identification of things like disease metabolites, allowing for quick treatment saving precious time.

What do you think about this research? Will it make you look at your pee in a different way from now on? Comment below with your thoughts. 

If you want to know any more about the experiments the team undertook then you can find the original research paper here.