BioEntrepreneurial Blog

Plastic Eating Bacteria

I originally got this idea from a talk I had with my mom, though now after reading a bit about other people's ideas, I've found that there are many ways to look at the idea of plastic, or other excess material eating bacteria. Personally, my idea was that if bacteriologists could genetically modify some bacteria, who already have corrosive properties towards plastic, and enhance those aspects. The bacteria would have to be safe to handle, meaning they must be harmless towards humans. People could use them to degrade non recyclable plastics that we use in our everyday lives, such as plastic cutlery, Styrofoam cups, take-out containers and the like. Polystyrene is in many of the above mentioned products, and it is a non recyclable plastic that causes a lot of waste build up. With the bacteria, consumers, such as ourselves, could simply make a compost pile, except for plastic, place a bag, which would degrade in a few days, containing the bacteria in the middle of the pile, and leave it alone. The bacteria would then "do it's thing" and degrade the plastic into some biodegradable substance that then could either be processed further into another usable material, or simply become part of the earth, like a normal compost heap. I think it would be very helpful and would reduce the amount of waste we add to landfills and the amount we generally pollute our environment for a lack of working on where to put our harmful wastes so other creatures won't suffer from our negligence.

these are the sites I used and where you can get more information on the particular subject:
http://www.mcmaster.ca/recycle/guidelines/NRlist.htm
http://www.canyon-news.com/artman2/publish/santamonica/SANTA_MONICA-_Styrofoam_and_Non-Recyclable_Plastics_Ban.php
http://www.vestaldesign.com/blog/2006/03/styrofoam-eating-bacteria.html
http://www.ontariogenomics.ca/education/episode8.asp
http://www.regenesistv.com/indexframeset.html
Here is a styrofoam degrading bacterium: Pseudomonas putida

many thanks for reading!

Scientific BreakThrough!

I've wondered if we humans are the only one who can look in a mirror and see ourselves, after all you don't see any other creature looking at reflective surfaces half as much as one teenage girl. So I checked it out and what I wonderfully surprising. For the most part, other people thought like myself, that animals will only see another animal in a mirror, like when cats, dogs and birds play and fight with their reflections, but in fact this isn't totally true. There are animals that possess the intelligence to realize that an image they see in a mirror could actually be themselves. In 1970 several tests were done on a group of chimps to see if they didn't really see themselves. The test was to put a mark on the chimps face while it was sleeping and then when it woke up, show it the mirror so they could see themselves. When the chimp saw the other chimp in the mirror with a mark on it's face, it lifted its own fingers to touch the mark on its face, recognizing itself in the mirror. So this was actually a minor breakthrough, because after all, primates are closely related to humans and only a handful, including the chimps, passed the "mirror test". However there were additions to this discovery in 2001. Bottlenose dolphins have been shown to recognize themselves when marked with dye, so has Happy, a 34 year old Asian elephant. "The mirror test asks something quite hard, the animal has to say, 'I'm here, that is a perfect replica of me, but it isn't me'." says says Patricia Churchland, a professor of philosophy at the University of California at San Diego. This is ability is quite amazing and show that we shouldn't assume things about animal intelligence that we have not tested! Testimonies to this fact include, Alex, an African grey parrot with a vocabulary of between 50 to 100 words, who can answer questions and perform specific tasks asked of him, and Betsy, a border collie who understands 340+ words, and though she can't speak she knows the sounds of the words and their physical counterpart in her world and can distinguish the words from a sentence asking her to fetch, find or move the certain object. Both of these fantastic animals were featured in the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC of March 2008.

here's the link
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/03/animal-minds/virginia-morell-text
http://www.qbtpl.com/story/2006/11/6/03945/0058

Science Entrepreneur Post

The Danish biotechnology firm, Aresa Biodetection has recently come up with a startling solution to an age old problem: how to remove the land mines, whose locations are not mapped, that have been left over from war time? Much fertile land that could be used as farmland is being left untouched for fear of the land mines that had been placed in that area, because after all, you can never know if they're still there, or where exactly they are. Until now, the only was to get rid of land mines left over from war time was to use groups of sniffer dogs and metal detectors, a dangerous, costly and time consuming way of going about things. Now Aresa might have the answer to this problem, a plant that detects land mines! It's a member of the watercress family and has specially been genetically engineered so that when it's roots come in contact with the nitrogen dioxide that land mines give off, the plant turns red. It also can only grow and reproduce when a certain fertilizer is sprayed on it, so that it won't over populate an area or mingle with the native species. I believe this creation with the use of genetic engineering will save many peoples, and dogs, lives and nations alot of money.
http://www.2facts.com/tsof/search/s1201087.asp

Sheep Eye Dissection Lab

On Thursday, the 17th, my biology class did an interesting lab: Sheep Eye Dissection! I'd heard stories from my mother and father (both biologists) about their cow/sheep eye dissections and so I thought I pretty much knew what to expect. Most of the things that I'd heard about did happen, the black liquid squishing forth once the cornea had been punctured, the little gooey jelly bag inside the eye, and the odd, unappetizing smell of the whole affair. But somethings you just have to do yourself to really believe them. For example, I'd heard that the sclera was really hard and that the cornea would be tough to cut through, but I only really understood how tough those two layers were once I was hacking at them with a scalpel myself. However, one thing that was really unexpected, and really quite lovely, was the clean, mother-of-pearl retina, with it's blue-green-purple Ty-dye swirl of colors. It was so thin and fragile, I did my best to not tear it too much, but even just touching it slightly with the tip of my scalpel marred the hidden mosaic.



I was quite glad that we had a guest optometrist come and talk to us first, before our lab, because I understood what I was looking at much more, and didn't constantly have to be checking which thing was what on the cross section on our worksheets. Dr. Fong did a very nice job of getting our sometimes-inattentive class to listen and understand something about what she did and how she did it. She talked to us about all the parts of the eye; cornea, iris, lens, optic nerve, pupil, retina, vitreous humor, aqueous fluid, and the sclera, what caused near/far sightedness and what an optometrist looks at to find that information. It was interesting to hear what exactly the optometrist is looking for in an eye exam, because I've had several, but the only information I'm ever looking for is if I need glasses. The photographs of the eyes that she showed us were somewhat familiar to me because I've seen pictures of my own eyes like that, but now I know a bit more about what my optometrist sees when he looks at them. After all they're just orangey blobs to me, but they give him a wealth of information I'd never guessed a simple picture could. Thanks Mr. Olson, and Dr. Fong, it was very enjoyable.

Here is an online tutorial to learn the anatomy of the eye, with descriptions of all it's parts : http://www.jburroughs.org/science/resources/skeleton/eye/diagramtutorial.html

And here is a youtube video of an actual sheep eye dissection, I recommend turning the volume off because none of the people say anything interesting, but is has good images.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WL9u0NIUspI&feature=related

Archaea Bacteria

Archaea bacteria were long thought extinct until their rediscovery in the late 1970's, hence their name, archaea, meaning ancient. They are single celled organisms that do not require oxygen or sunlight to live. They were unable to be placed in either Domains Prokaryote or Eukaryote because they had features similar to both, so they were sectioned off into their own domain, Archaea. These facinating organisms live in extremely hostile enviroments where few other's can survive.


Some archaea bacteria live in and around hydrothermal vents, rifts in the ocean floor that spew out noxious, toxic fumes. Others live around natural gysers. Both these enviroments are hostile because of their intense heat and high chemical content, which would make life unsustainable for other living creatures but sustains the archaea bacteria and the community of tube worms, mussels and other creatures that depend on the bacteria.


One particular archaea bacteria is Pyrococcus furiosus, shown here at the right, which caught my eye because of it's peculiar name.

Domain: Archaea
Kingdom: Archaea Bacteria
Phylum: Euryarchaeota
Class: Thermococci
Order: Thermococcales
Genus: Pyrococcus
Species: furiosus

Pyrococcus furiosus's best growth temperature is 100°C, the teperature at which water boils, but also grows between 70°C and 103°C. It is known as an Extremophile because of the high temperatures at which it sustains life. An interesting note about my before mentioned bacterium is that it utilizes enzymes that contain tungsten, an element rarely found in living organisms. It grows furiously with "a rapid doubling time of 37 minutes under optimal conditions". It was found in "geothermally heated marine sediments with temperatures between 90 ºC and 100 ºC collected at the beach of Porto Levante" at Vulcano Island, Italy.

http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761556709/Archaea.html


http://www.amnh.org/nationalcenter/expeditions/blacksmokers/life_forms.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrococcus_furiosus

The Guest Speaker

Yesterday, 1-24-08, a guest speaker came to talk to my biology class about evolution. Her name was Ms. Mead and she works for an institution that promotes the teaching of evolution in schools. There are several definitions for the term evolution, there is "the gradual change in a species over time due to habitat and natural selection", but evolution is based on the thought that we all have a common ancestor that every living creature, and that after hundreds of thousands of years, each descendant having modifications, this one creature evolved into the many species we have today. There in much evidence for evolution, personally i cannot see how some people still disbelieve Darwin and the Theory of Evolution, it's like pretending the Holocaust didn't happen. The main evidences are:

*Biogeography- the distrebutions of organisms across the globe, current and past

*Comparative Anatomy- comparing the anatomy (bone structure mostly, but also, movement and muscle structure) of different creatures to see the similarities

*Molecular Biology-a branch of biology dealing with the ultimate physicochemical organization of

living matter and especially with the molecular basis of inheritance and protein synthesis

*Fossil Record- well fossils obviously

*Developmental Biology- which I believe is the study of how organisms develope.

The above five are the main evidences for biology. I am personally most interested in comparative anatomy and the fossil record. Useing comparative anatomy one can see that birds and bats didn't evolve one from the other, they're from completely different branches, birds evolved from reptiles and bats evolved from mice/rodent creatures. Ms. Mead talked about the discovery of the Burgess Shale in the Canadian Rockies, and the finding of Pikaia, the first known creature with an organ resembling a spinal cord. (pictured at the right)

There were many other organisms found at the Bugress Shale site, however the discoveries were put together incorrectly at times, because the paleontologists were trying to create creatures that they could recognise instead of trying to understand the way the organisms really were. I really and truely enjoyed her talk, or rather the things she talked about. I later talked to my mother, a biologist, and she showed me the many books she has on evolution and it's surrounding subjects, including the Cambrian Explosian and the Burgess Shale, such as Wonderful Life, Eight Little Piggies, Hens Teeth and Horses Toes, The Mismeasure of Man, The Pandas Thumb and Ever Since Darwin. I think I might do a little more reading on the subject.