Sweet foods and memories!

Since Thanksgiving is just around the corner, I thought this article would be perfect to cover. According to the article, it is possible that the dorsal hippocampus neurons are linked to episodic memories. Episodic memories are also known as memories that can be linked to an event that has happened recently. A good example of how this works, is when someone eats a sweet snack in the middle of the day and later that day when they are presented with the option of consuming a dessert they may say no because of the memory of already eating something sweet earlier in the day. What these researchers think is that this link is particularly more evident when eating sweet foods over those that are not. Also this link shows that it helps in understanding how we are able to control our eating habits as well. They also found that when testing this out on mice, the inactivation of the dorsal hippocampal neurons after eating a sweet meal, the onset of wanting to eat again soon after was more prevalent than when the dorsal hippocampal neurons were active. It really seems that researchers might be closing in on an idea of why we are starting to eat more and more sweets or even the reason for the rise of obesity. Although the latter of the two, in my opinion, also has to do with the foods that we are surrounded with in society today.
It will be interesting to see more results from experimenting with the dorsal hippocampus neurons and their relationship with sweet foods.

Here is the article: Georgia State University. "Eating sweets forms memories that may control eating habits." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 13 November 2015. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/11/151113051128.htm.

Using archae as a means for medicine??

It is an interesting idea isn't it, using archae for help in transporting important medicine? The article that is included with this states that the scientists found a microbe called S. islandicus. This microbe is able to grow and survive in 70-80 degree Celsius temperatures, and also very low pH levels as well. The idea came about when comparing the environment that these microbes are found, to the stomach and intestinal tract of our own human bodies. The idea is that possibly extracting the lipids from the cell membrane of the microbes and using them to create liposomes. These liposomes are like a synthetic capsule that can help transport needed material within them to a specific site. The scientists conducting this experiment found out that just using the crude lipids from the microbes, they were able to construct liposomes that could survive a solution that mirrored that of our stomachs. Although only 10 percent only survived at the end, this still is an awesome step forward because that was just the lipids extracted from the microbes and no added or purified form of them. If these scientists can come up with a make-up that can use the lipids found in S. islandicus with some other molecules, it is possible to change the way certain medications can be introduced to our bodies in a more natural way like insulin. Hopefully one day we will improve this process and make medication introduction to our bodies more natural than having to use injections; just like people with diabetes have to do.

Here is the article: University of Southern Denmark. "Researchers want to turn acid-loving microbes into safe drug-carriers." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 4 November 2015. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/11/151104124657.htm.

The price for allergies

Allergies are a very common thing in today's society. Especially around the spring season when flowers, trees, and other plants start to bloom. An allergic reaction can also be produced when someone ingests a certain food that the body rejects and causes the immune system to be hyper responsive to. Scientists have found that there might be a link between allergies and parasites. The study in question that was done, was done on a single type of parasitic worm. In this worm's genome, the scientists found that there is a protein that is responsible to causing the same kind of immune response in humans that is generated from the protein found in pollen released from plants. It is crazy to find out that a parasite might be related to the evolution of our immune systems and why we have developed allergies of centuries of evolution. It seems that having an immune system that is more ready to fight off parasites might be worth the trade off of acquiring allergies.

This idea raises a big question for me though, and that is if it is possible to remove this specific protein from certain foods so that people with food allergies might be able to consume these types of foods. Then again, this study was done more on pollen rather than actual foods. There is definitely more research to be done here but it would be interesting to find out if there is more to allergies than just this protein relationship with parasites.

Here is the article: PLOS. "Allergy is the price we pay for our immunity to parasites." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 29 October 2015. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151029150304.htm.