ryan-sometimes

[ryan-sometimes]

you said that the sunflower compound thingy is not naturally occurring. is there any reason why? for it and any other compound

There are many reasons why a compound wouldn’t be naturally occurring but could be made in a lab. Here’s a few:

It is made from other non naturally occurring compounds.

The reaction to make it is highly unfavorable, and so there are thermodynamic limits to its natural synthesis which can be bypassed in a lab. In lab we can create conditions which are not natural, and so we can force certain reactions to occur that are impossible in nature.

The chemicals that can combine to make the compound do not exist in natural proximity to one another. Say one is only present in in the sky and one at the bottom of the ocean (metaphor), these chemicals would never come into contact unless we artificially brought them together in a lab.

The chemical is unstable, and so even if it is formed in nature, it quickly decomposes into more stable derivatives. We can create conditions in lab to stabilize it for long enough to be observed. An example of this is the alkali metals, such as sodium and potassium! Sodium is found abundantly in nature in compounds such as salt, but pure sodium metal is highly reactive with air and water, and so we don’t observe it in its pure form in nature. We can extract it into pure metal in the lab and store it in liquids it does not react with, such as toluene.

The compound is simply not necessary in nature. There are many biomolecules which are unstable and formed through thermodynamically unfavorable processes in the human body, but because they are biologically necessary, there are biochemical pathways to “force” it to exist. But if the compound isn’t necessary, there isn’t any reason for any organism to make it.

It is made of elements that are extremely rare on earth. An example is iridium. Iridium is extremely rare on earth, but relatively common in meteorites, to the extent that iridium deposits are used as geological evidence for meteorite crashes that happened millions of years ago! If an element isn’t commonly found on earth, then its compounds are unlikely to be found on earth too.

I’m sure there are plenty of other reasons, but these are the main ones I can come up with off the top of my head.

[ryan-sometimes]

What chemical compound do you find the prettiest? (Like the diagram thing. Idk I’ve never don’t chemistry)

Sulflower! Its name is a portmanteau of sulfur and sunflower. This compound is not naturally occurring, but it’s stable, and it forms crystal structures that look just like a field of sunflowers!

It’s just cute!

[ryan-sometimes]

will you please tell us about the chemical that seems the tastiest but also you cant eat it :/

A chemical I used often and that I really wanted to drink was ethyl acetate. I used it very often in organic chemistry lab, as it’s a common mobile phase reagent for thin layer chromatography and also for liquid-liquid extractions. Ethyl acetate smells so good. It’s this sweet, fruity smell that kinda reminds you of pineapple juice. When we used it for extractions of organic compounds we’d have to evaporate it using the rotovap and it’d make the entire lab smell like pineapple. I just wanted a tiny sip. Unfortunately eating it is a big no-no especially in the concentrations we used in lab.

[ryan-sometimes]

What is your favourite science experiment, if you don't mind me asking?

(Either one you've done yourself or read about, I just like hearing the often whacky things scientists can get up to!)

My favorite experiment isn’t one I did, but one I came up with during an exam. As a 3rd year undergrad, I accidentally signed up for a graduate level chemical biology class. I didn’t know until I showed up on the first day of class and saw that pretty much everyone there was a PhD student. I got really scared but decided to stick with it because the class seemed very interesting.

During the first few weeks of class, we talked about something that I found really interesting. And that was the question of screening vs selection. Say that you’re randomly generating mutations in a bacteria and you want to find out if one gave them antibiotic resistance. All the bacteria are mixed together and you don’t know which is which. A screening would be if you sequenced every single bacteria. Screening is just brute forcing it. You could do that, or you could do a selection, such as growing all the bacteria on a plate containing the antibiotic, so only the resistant bacteria would survive and grow colonies. You could then sample these cultures and have pure samples of only the resistant bacteria.

A selection isn’t always possible though. Sometimes a screening is your only option. However, it’s always quite satisfying when you can come up with a clever selection.

When the first midterm of the class came around, there was a screening vs selection question. The premise was that you had generated a library of mutations in E. coli, and you were looking to get only bacteria without a specific mutation. This mutation did not serve any biochemical purpose but its sequence was known. It did not grant the bacteria any specific immunity, produce any protein, etc. But the professor wanted us to come up with a way to kill ONLY those bacteria.

I left that question for last because I couldn’t figure it out for the life of me. The previous selections I’d seen always involved taking advantage of some kind of resistance or enzyme. I’d never seen a selection like this. I thought and I thought and I thought about it. Eventually I remembered CRISPR. The CRISPR-Cas9 system is a mechanism for gene editing. It can recognize specific sequences in DNA, cut it, and make any edits you want into that location. You can alter the recognition sequence of CRISPR by editing the single guide RNA.

And so, the selection I came up with was to make the mutated sequence the guide RNA, so that CRISPR-Cas9 could find it in the bacterial genome. Cas9 (an enzyme that cuts DNA) would then cut the DNA only at our mutated sequence. It could then insert a lethal gene into that spot, which would kill only the bacteria with the mutation we wanted to discard. I used my last few minutes in the exam to write my answer for that question as fast as I could. There were many possible correct answers to that question. My professor said before the exam that if we were asked to come up with a selection, as long as the one we wrote made sense and could fill the purpose, it’d be correct.

I got it right 😌

It’s my favorite experiment because I came up with it on the fly, and it was my first time coming up with a selection on my own. It made me feel like I’d become a better scientist because of it. I got a B+ in that class, but I worked harder for that B+ than any A in my life, and what I learned in that class was extremely valuable for my scientific career. I have no regrets.

[ryan-sometimes]

My dad’s justification for refusing to enlist was that he was going to med school to save lives, not end them. His college friends stopped hanging out with him because they were afraid to be seen with him when the police snatched him and took him to the army. My dad told them to smoke a blunt and calm down. Because the army didn’t have a photo of him, they didn’t know what he looked like. My dad said he just wanted to become a doctor and that the army wasn’t going to help him do that. It must’ve not been very important, because it’s been 40 years and my dad is still ghosting the military.

I was today years old when I found out my dad ghosted the Brazilian military

[ryan-sometimes]

For those of you who don’t know, Brazil has conscription for men once they turn 18. You have to enlist, although it’s relatively easy to get out of it. My dad was in med school when he turned 18, and he simply did not enlist. The army started sending a fuckton of letters to my grandparents’ house, and my dad simply ripped them all up and threw them in the trash. They asked him to send them a photograph so they could have him on record, and he ghosted them. When he turned 19, they started sending him even more letters. Again he ripped them all up. My grandparents were stressed and kept telling him he’d go to jail. My dad said he’d rather go to jail than the military. This was in 1986 and to this day the Brazilian military has no record of my dad at all. Eventually they just gave up and stopped contacting him.

I was today years old when I found out my dad ghosted the Brazilian military

[ryan-sometimes]

I was today years old when I found out my dad ghosted the Brazilian military

[ryan-sometimes]

Guys answering science questions is really fun pls send more <3

[ryan-sometimes]

Plans now that you’ve graduated?

Get my master’s degree and then my doctorate in chemistry! I want to be a chemistry professor, so whatever I have to do to get there, I’ll do it. I might have had to leave the United States, but that’s not the only country with universities! I’m applying to master’s programs in Europe rn. I’m going to be a professor even if I have to do it with the force of hatred and spite

[ryan-sometimes]

I’d say it’s because kids just… like candy. Children generally love sweet things, so they see it as a reward, and who doesn’t like getting a reward? They might also associate sweet treats with positive things, which can cause them to be “hyperactive”. The cause of it, in my opinion, has to be psychological, as it simply can’t be physiological.

I just remembered you asking for science-y questions to be sent your way some time ago and I got one: is sugar high a real thing in either children or adults?

No, sugar high is not a real thing in either children or adults. Eating sugar temporarily elevates your blood sugar, which can in fact lead to a bit of an energy boost if your blood sugar was previously low, however, not to the extent of causing hyperactivity or any other symptom of a “high”.

[ryan-sometimes]

If you want a more complex biochemical explanation:

Your body has plenty of mechanisms in place in order to regulate your blood sugar. These mechanisms (in a healthy person) are actually very sensitive, and your body has multiple different kinds of glucose transporters that operate under different conditions. When your blood sugar spikes, it generally doesn’t stay in your bloodstream for very long, as it triggers the release of insulin, which causes glucose to be absorbed into different tissues, leaving your bloodstream.

This is especially important for your brain, as under normal conditions (aka not starvation), your brain uses glucose almost exclusively as an energy source. Many of your tissues can use glycolysis metabolites such as pyruvate, but the brain just uses straight up glucose unless it is absent, in which case it can use ketone bodies as a temporary solution. On the bad side, prolonged ketogenesis can lead to acidosis (acidic blood) as it produces acidic compounds, which is another problem entirely.

HOWEVER, even if these mechanisms are out of whack, like in conditions such as diabetes, elevated blood sugar doesn’t actually cause a high either. Hyperglycemia (high blood sugar) actually causes headaches, frequent urination, blurred vision, increased thirst, but most importantly FATIGUE, which is the opposite of hyperactivity. High blood sugar isn’t good for your energy levels either.

So in summary: your body has many mechanisms in order to regulate blood sugar, and even if those mechanisms are faulty, elevated blood sugar still won’t give you a “high”, but instead will make you feel like complete shit. These mechanisms work in both children and adults, unless they suffer from a condition such as diabetes, and even then, it still won’t give them a “high”.

I just remembered you asking for science-y questions to be sent your way some time ago and I got one: is sugar high a real thing in either children or adults?

No, sugar high is not a real thing in either children or adults. Eating sugar temporarily elevates your blood sugar, which can in fact lead to a bit of an energy boost if your blood sugar was previously low, however, not to the extent of causing hyperactivity or any other symptom of a “high”.

[ryan-sometimes]

I just remembered you asking for science-y questions to be sent your way some time ago and I got one: is sugar high a real thing in either children or adults?

No, sugar high is not a real thing in either children or adults. Eating sugar temporarily elevates your blood sugar, which can in fact lead to a bit of an energy boost if your blood sugar was previously low, however, not to the extent of causing hyperactivity or any other symptom of a “high”.

[ryan-sometimes]

I can’t criticize them though, because I do the same damn thing. I was chilling with my gay friend on a Friday night out on the street. A group of girls who were clearly out clubbing walked past us and they all looked so fucking good. I checked out of the conversation for a solid 30 seconds just watching them until they disappeared from my view entirely. When I checked back into the conversation, I saw my gay friend was staring at me in complete silence as if judging me beyond belief. Bro was definitely calling me a homophobic slur in his head and he was right.

As a lesbian with gay friends it is so funny when one of us gets distracted from a conversation because we’re checking someone out. Sometimes when I’m talking to a gay male friend he’ll stop listening to me entirely because a hot guy just walked past, and suddenly I’m staring at his back because this mf did a full 180 turn to keep looking at this man. It’s even funnier catching a friend checking someone out when it’s a person you have 0 capacity of attraction to

[ryan-sometimes]

As a lesbian with gay friends it is so funny when one of us gets distracted from a conversation because we’re checking someone out. Sometimes when I’m talking to a gay male friend he’ll stop listening to me entirely because a hot guy just walked past, and suddenly I’m staring at his back because this mf did a full 180 turn to keep looking at this man. It’s even funnier catching a friend checking someone out when it’s a person you have 0 capacity of attraction to

[ryan-sometimes]

I know I’ve already posted about my graduation but my friend just took some absolutely BANGER pictures today and she deserves the shoutout for it bc LOOK AT THESE!

[ryan-sometimes]

Fav organic compound? I was always a benzene fan

I like cyclic dienes, just because they make such cool compounds in Diels-Alder reactions! Look at these extremely fuckass molecules

[ryan-sometimes]

Since you asked for science questions: why are there no animals with green fur?

I actually didn’t know the answer to this, but I looked it up and apparently mammal fur lacks any pigments that could be green!