somerandombiochempsychstudent

[somerandombiochempsychstudent]

Daily fish fact #864

Hagfish!

With their cartilaginous skull, hagfish are the only vertebrates to have a skull but lack a spine — ancient hagfish ancestors had one, but down the line they lost the trait and modern hagfish only retain some vertebral elements! They also very much have a notochord, which all chordates have at some point in their lives but tends to get replaced with a spine in most vertebrates.

[somerandombiochempsychstudent]

endospores

hello! this is a mini post - the idea for these is for them to cover smaller concepts that i cut from main study posts for length/clarity/relevance. this one is going to cover endospores, and is in relation to my post on prokaryotes. please feel free to offer any corrections or answers!

so... what's an endospore?

development of an endospore is a survival technique done by some bacteria. it is a tough group of cells formed around a copy of the bacterium's chromosome, preserving its dna.

how and why do they form?

endospores are formed when bacteria are in less than ideal environments, i.e. when they lack nutrients or water. the bacterium creates a copy of its chromosome, then surrounds it with cells. it then stops its metabolism and ensures there is no water in the endospore. finally, the cell lyses, which means it disintegrates. this releases the endospore out into the world.

the idea is for the endospore to float around until more ideal conditions are met. they are, subsequently, very difficult to kill. they can also remain viable for centuries! it reminds me a bit of the thought that there could be ancient diseases and organisms lying dormant inside of glaciers, waiting to be thawed out.

[somerandombiochempsychstudent]

[somerandombiochempsychstudent]

Medieval people had all the ingredients to make thermite ( specifically zinc and manganese dioxide) but instead chose to die of plague and hate women

[somerandombiochempsychstudent]

kids these days are so addicted to dihydrogen monoxide! it's disgusting

[somerandombiochempsychstudent]

Why on earth is biology trending

[somerandombiochempsychstudent]

sometimes i think a simple life is okay. like fish in the ocean know only swim and eat plant and they're happy. or i guess i don't know if they're happy maybe they're just pissed the fuck off all the time. maybe fish want a complex life. do you think a fish would like iphone

[somerandombiochempsychstudent]

any recommendations on books about bacteriophages?? im interested in the subject but im struggling to find entry level information in book format (and a lot of the books are £200)

[somerandombiochempsychstudent]

A chain moray hunts sally lightfoot crabs. Filmed in coastal Brazil. From Blue Planet II (2017).

[somerandombiochempsychstudent]

too few people appreciate how many of the earth’s animal species are essentially translucent microscopic blobs

[somerandombiochempsychstudent]

Todays shark is...

The Zebra Shark!

Fun Fact: Zebra Sharks are sluggish during the day possibly because they are nocturnal animals!

[somerandombiochempsychstudent]

rant abt computer modelling in cognitive neuroscience?? (kinda just test driving a thought here)

the idea that a computer can model the function of the brain/mind (the two are kinda conflated in this sense) with our current understanding of the brain is. well. kind of plausible? in the sense that, theoretically, if you replace one neuron in the brain with a computer that has the same input -> process -> output -> function. however, im not sure if it's right to assume that the brain works in this way. part of my point here is that cognitive neuroscientists/psychologists make the mistake (??) of comparing the brain to the predominant technology (with a lot of public/scientific interest) of the time, e.g. victorians comparing the brain to a plumbing system. obviously the brain is not like a plumbing system, so why would we be any more correct in saying it's like a computer?

[somerandombiochempsychstudent]

yknow i initially put "no homestuck" in the rules as a joke but the more i BLAST the more i realize that posts that mention homestuck just get no results.

the BLAST database straight up does not like homestuck

[somerandombiochempsychstudent]

AlphaFold Nobel Prize!

Hey everyone :) this isn't a structure, but there is some protein news that is pretty relevant to this blog that I felt I had to share. This article gives a nice overview of AI-predicted protein structures and what sorts of things they can do for research. It's not too long, and I recommend taking a look

If you've been seeing my posts for any amount of time, I've absolutely given you a flawed view of how useful AF can be. Experimentally determining protein structures is a demanding and difficult process (I've never done it, but I've learned the overview of how x ray crystallography works, and I can only imagine how much work it would take). AI-generated structures are not going to make structural biology obsolete, but they are massively helpful in making predictions that go on to guide further research.

While in many fields (especially creative areas like art and writing) AI has significant ethical concerns, I feel like this sort of use of AI in science is an overwhelmingly positive thing. The data used to train it is publicly available, and science works by building on the work done by those before us. Furthermore, while AI may not be great at generating new ideas or copying humans, it is very good at sorting large amounts of data and using it to make predictions. It's more akin to very complicated statistics than an attempt at the Turing test, and in this case it is a valuable tool to expand the ways we can do science!

[somerandombiochempsychstudent]

Rhizophysa filiformis // No common name

Rhizophysidae is a family of siphonophores in the suborder Cystonectae. Look at them go 💚🩵💜

[somerandombiochempsychstudent]

“oh yes, i am very reasonable and normal about this subject!!”

*proceeds to mass reblog any related content*