Science - Corpus

The female “KISS” for desire

9 November 2020 1 Comment

Shalini Kumar Palathinkal

Did you know that among animals, especially rodents like mice and rats, the females decide when they are ready for some action? You know what I mean … wink, wink. That’s right, the female rodents decide when, and with which male, they want to mate to produce offspring. And this decision is made with the help of a particular type of neuron in the brain that is essential for maintaining fertility, called kisspeptin.

Thus, unlike in humans, the need for mating is prompted in most mammals only around the time of ovulation. This ensures the highest chance of fertilisation. Particularly in rodents, the female controls the initiation and timing of copulatory contacts with the male, triggering the mate preference and sexual motivation circuit in their brains. However, what controls the neural circuitry to drive the female rodents to be suddenly sexually receptive to the males, in comparison to when they are not, remains elusive. An international team of researchers led by Dr Julie Bakker from GIGA Neurosciences, University of Liege, Belgium in 2018 may have some answers to this intriguing question.

Bletchley Park 2020: Breaking the viral code

20 April 2020 1 Comment

Alex McLellan

What is the COVID-19 / SARS-CoV-2 virus? Compared to most threats we encounter, the virus is small and simple. It doesn’t have sex, possess limbs or gills, or fill its lungs with air on a hill top and shout “It’s great to be alive!”. So is the virus alive, or just an organic robot? We talk of ‘killing’ the virus by washing our hands or using disinfectants, which means most of us think of it as a living creature of some sort. Whether we classify it as the ‘living’ or the ‘undead’, it is still a parasite that steals into our cells and helps itself to our enzymes and cell materials to make thousands of near-perfect copies of itself that go on to infect other cells in our bodies.

For the last few months I have been obsessively reading each major scientific discovery about the new SARS-CoV-2 virus, and delving into its close relatives that caused earlier epidemics of ‘severe acute respiratory syndrome’ (SARS). During the COVID-19 pandemic it has been difficult to stay asleep, and I wake wondering how the virus does this and that … then grab my iPad to search for the answer. Surprisingly, this research provides me with a lot of comfort. The more I get to know the inner workings of this terrible machine, the better I’m able to break it down to its basic parts. The more I research, the more clearly I can see the virus in my mind’s eye, and the more clearly I can see possible targets for treatment interventions and routes to vaccines.

What’s cooking in kidney research?

13 August 2018 1 Comment

Lorissa McDougall

Imagine what would happen if our kidneys stopped working, if our bodies were no longer able to filter toxins. Unfortunately, this is reality for people living with polycystic kidney disease (PKD).

In PKD, cysts appear on the kidneys. The cysts interfere with normal kidney function, causing (among other symptoms) increased blood pressure and a build-up of toxins. The abnormal cyst formation is due to a mutation in the polycystin producing genes (PKD1 and PKD2). In some forms of the disease, the mutations are passed through each generation, making PKD the most prevalent hereditary disease in the world.

There is no long term cure for PKD. Current therapies can only ease the symptoms. Over the last year and a half, however, I have been trialing the use of new drugs which might delay cystic growth and be a potential treatment for PKD.

“Bad Blood”

6 August 2018 1 Comment

Cushla McKinney

In 2014-15, one of the most highly fêted names in biomedical circles was Elizabeth Holmes. 31 year-old Holmes had founded a company called Theranos, to manufacture a small, easy-to-use device – the Edison– that was capable of running multiple analyses on a single drop of blood. Although the Edison was not yet commercially available, the company was testing blood samples from Palo Alto patients on their in-house machines, and had signed agreements with the Cleveland Clinic, Capital BlueCross and AmeriHealth Caritas.

Holmes predicted that Thaneros technology would slash the cost of blood tests, spare patients the stress and pain of repeated blood draws and allow everyday people to monitor their own health on a daily basis, just as a diabetic checks their blood sugar levels. What investors and consumers did not know, however, was that beneath its elegant housing the Edison consisted of little more than a pipette robotic arm, only able to carry out one of the three types of tests Theranos offered, and that with very poor reproducibility. Other tests were carried out on standard equipment but on such dilute samples that their results were also unreliable, and doctors using the company’s services were frequently having to reorder tests from other providers.

[Read more…] about “Bad Blood”

Futuristic vision: robot surgeons

28 August 2017 3 Comments

Annabelle Payne

Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them.” – Steve Jobs

I am in my final year of high school and studying photography. This year, I am exploring the growing use of technology, especially in the ever-evolving world of surgery. I want to explore technological developments in the medical world, where robots have begun to take over the tasks of humans. Advanced surgical robots have already begun helping doctors, and there is a high chance that, at least for simple, repetitive procedures, robots will soon be able to perform the whole procedure.

In my work, I have used a hooded character to represent technology. The hooded, faceless ‘hacker’ plans to take over the surgical field with their new technology, and slowly make human surgeons obsolete. This character is found lurking in the back of the surgical theatre while a human surgeon is performing. The distance between them slowly decreases, until the ‘hacker’ and their technology has taken over the tasks of the surgeon.

Heat, Health and Climate Change

3 July 2017 Leave a Comment

Sarah Harrison

Otago University’s Department of Preventive and Social Medicine recently hosted a guest seminar by environmental and occupational health scientist Professor Tord Kjellstrom: “Climate change impacts on Health – the underestimated effects of increasing environmental heat in already hot places”. Professor Kjellstrom spoke about projected increases in global atmospheric temperatures in relation to various carbon emission scenarios, and how these changes are likely to impact on health.