Can a brain be transplanted?

"Is it possible" has a carefully conditional "yes". Do we have the expertise or technology to do it now? No. One of the biggest difficulties is that nerve tissues (the connections between brain and rest of body) will take time to heal... time during which the brain cannot sufficiently give commands to the rest of the body to keep autonomic functions running.

Head transplants, however, have been "successfully" completed using monkeys. The monkey lived for sometime after the transplant, but eventually died. China has also been known to do a similar procedure with dogs.

Caution, this may be too explicit for some; I'm not sure ethics boards would allow it nowadays:
Monkey Head Transplant

Alternatives to TBE buffer for denaturing polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis of DNA and RNA?

I just stumbled upon an article promoting 10 mM sodium borate as an alternative to the well-known TAE and TBE buffers for agarose gel electrophoresis of DNA (Brody & Kern, 2004). They claim that sodium borate outperforms TBE and TAE at high-voltage conditions due to the significantly lower heat development.

I'm currently using TBE buffer and gels with 7M urea for my denaturing PAA gels, and I'm wondering if there are similar alternative conditions for those denaturing PAA gels of nucleic acids?

I couldn't find anything on using sodium borate for denaturing PAA gels, so I'm wondering if it should work the same as for the agarose gels or if it just isn't a good buffer for that kind of gel.

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Brody, J. R. & Kern, S. E. Sodium boric acid: a Tris-free, cooler conductive medium for DNA electrophoresis. BioTechniques 36, 214–216 (2004).

What is the relationship between sexual and and natural selection?

To Darwin's point of view, sexual and natural selection are two different mechanisms. Then, we tended to consider that sexual selection is part of natural selection. The part of natural selection that is not attributed to sexual selection is sometimes called ecological selection. Today, our understanding of these mechanisms brought us to consider the meaning of these words slightly differently.

Natural selection is not anymore the result of a struggle for survival. It is any process yielding to a change in allele frequency through a long-enough term difference in fitness. Fitness is a index of how much an individual, a gene or whatever, leave copies of itself after a long and short enough amount of time (one might not agree with this definition I guess). Take two strains of bacteria in two petri dish, consider they are one population and let the bacteria grow. One strain will grow faster and the allele frequency will vary over time. It is the result of natural selection although there were no competition, no struggle at all given that they were not in contact.

Sexual selection is a type of natural selection that involves sexual competition. There are two types of sexual competition, the so-called inter- and intra-sexual competition. Inter-sexual competition means that one sex chose the other one, while for intra-sexual there is no choice from the other sex. For example, if you see two animals fighting, they either fight to have the physical acces to the other sex (intra-) or they fight and then, let the female decide which one is the best to mate with (inter-). These two concept of intra- and inter-sexual competition might somehow overlap in some specific case. I would argue that the concept of sexual competition and therefore of sexual selection have never been accurately defined. Therefore, I would not complain if one prefers to give up the concept of sexual selection to use only the concept of natural selection.

Many articles state that sexual and natural selection act on a trait with the same or opposite directions. Given the above argumentations, you could as well say that there are two different forces of natural selection. if the trait is at state 'A', then the individual is very attractive to the other sex but is likely to not be able to escape a predator. This is the case of most of the trait we think of when talking about trait evolving through sexual selection. See Zahavi's handicap principle for more information.

physiology - Would my hands sweat this much if I wasn't wearing gloves?

Hand sweating has been fairly well-studied, both because sweating from the hands is one of the main mechanisms of heat dissipation at higher temperatures and because there is a significant effect on palmar sweating by the autonomic nervous system (the main cause of hyperhydrosis of the palms).

Disregarding autonomic effects (stress response), the single most important determinant of hand and foot blood flow is the thermal status of the body core. Heat dissipation is more marked in the hands than feet, and remains so as temperature increases.

Studies have been done of palmar sweating in extremes of temperatures, palmar sweating changes with aging (decreases), palmar sweating in disease, etc. But what has not been studied is the effect of localized heat on sweating of the palms, which would be of interest to you if sweating was a result of the insulating capacity of the gloves.

What is known about palmar sweating is that it is an ongoing and important process in both genders, at all temperatures, and at all ages. The most reasonable assumption then, given the limits of the literature, is that your hands sweat continuously and steadily at a given temperature, and it is highly likely that you are noticing it when wearing gloves only because the vapor barrier caused by the gloves prohibits evaporation.

_{The roles of hands and feet in temperature regulation in hot and cold environments
OBSERVATIONS ON THE ACTIVITY OF SWEAT GLANDS WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE INFLUENCE OF AGEING
Why do I get sweaty palms?}

biochemistry - Do humans have chemosensors for nutrients or chemicals?

I'm reading about chemoreceptors on Wikipedia, and see that the typical ones are mentioned: taste, smell, CO₂. I would like to learn more about the other kinds of chemoreceptors that humans may possess. I'm particularly interested if these can detect chemical compounds, or lack of thereof in food.

Here's an example:
Do omnivore mammals vary food preferences based on dietary needs?

There's "rapid recognition of Indispensible Amino Acid(IAA) depletion in the rat brain's IAA chemosensor, the anterior piriform cortex (APC)"

Reading the article above, it appears that at least rats and birds can develop aversion to food that does not contain indispensable amino acids. This is done through chemosensors in the brain. Do humans possess any similar chemosensors?

Thank you for your input!

lab techniques - What are good practices with reusing desalting columns

Regardless of what protocol you use, and what the advertised efficacy of that protocol might be, in any situation like this I think the important thing to consider is: what would happen if the material taken from a re-used column was contaminated by a previous application? Can you live with the consequences of such contamination?

If you are preparing DNA for further use (PCR and/or cloning and/or transformation) then you run the risk of propagating a contaminant through subsequent steps and getting into a real mess. I worked in a lab once where one postgrad ended up spending several weeks working with a cloned fragment that was actually derived from someone else's work in the same lab (although not due to re-use of a column as far as I remember).

If you are preparing protein samples then the risks are possibly reduced, but if the protein sample is going to be subjected to sensitive methods (blotting, MS) then again, could get messy.

genetics - How to compare SNP from genotyping results for multiple people with a known phenotype?

Each rsid identifies a unique SNP in the genome. Thus there should not be any entry in the files that have the same rsid but different chromosomes and/or positions. If you do find this, it is likely that you have data from different versions of the assembled genomes.

To find genetic variants associated, i.e. correlated, with your trait, you need to focus on the genotype at each of the SNPs. For example, SNP rs3094315 is an A/G polymorphism, i.e. an individual can either have the genotype AA, AG, or GG. To find if it is associated with tongue rolling, you would count the number of AA, AG, and GG individuals (alternatively you could sum the number of A and G alleles) in the group that can roll their tongue and compare those numbers to the group that cannot. You would then repeat this for each SNP that you want to test. For most SNPs, there will be no difference in proportion.

That being said, this is not a modest undertaking as this a cornerstone of human and statistical genetics. There are many issues that could strongly bias your results (e.g. population stratification, genotyping error, linkage disequilibrium, multiple testing). To learn more, you can read about the Cochrane-Armitage Trend Test and the PLINK software. If you are really serious I recommend Applied Statistical Genetics with R by Andrea S. Foulkes.

genetics - Do spouses begin to share genes over time?

Microchimerism (Mc) is an interesting concept, and

refers to the harboring of a small number of cells (or DNA) that originated in a different individual. Naturally acquired Mc derives primarily from maternal cells in her progeny, or cells of fetal origin in women.

In women, it has nothing to do with transfer during/after sex but rather is due to the presence of the developing fetus. There is definite long-term persistence of microchimerism, although not much is yet known about its effects. Here is a nice and free review from 2010 dealing with the subject. Most if not all of the effects have to do with immune function, in particular autoimmunity. It is definitely not a mechanism by which couples begin to look similar. That is social, in particular a result of living in the same environment with similar activities and tastes. Male contribution to cellular content in the embryo is almost nil, as sperm die and the transcript count in the successful sperm is puny compared to the egg. Most RNA content in the embryo is maternal until it switches to embryo.

genetics - How are there multiple varieties of the potato?

Well, uvesten is correct in saying that potatoes are flowering plants and as such they can reproduce sexually. However, as everyone mentions potatoes can, like many plants, reproduce asexually by putting out clones.

Since clones are (by definition) genetically identical to the parent plant, this would seem to rule out the possibility of producing different varieties (or even species) from clonal propagation.

But! this very interesting study by Jiang et al. looked at Arabidopsis lineages (Brassica family). They found:

"in vitro regeneration of Arabidopsis plants results in a high frequency of heritable phenotypic variation "

That is, regenerant Arabidopsis plant lineages displayed extensive phenotypic somaclonal variation - the cloned "offspring" were not genetically identical. They attributed most of this genetic variation to an increased base substitution frequency in the regenerant offspring but there may also be unknown epigentic factors as well.

Jiang et al. summarise:

...

... somatic mutation rates are characteristically higher than germline rates in multicellular organisms [26] and has important particular potential consequences for the evolution of plants, given that they frequently adopt life cycle strategies that involve regeneration from somatic tissues.

So, perhaps some of the variation we see in plant species which commonly propagate asexually actually arose during this process and not via sexual reproduction ... ? This would be good news for houseplants which are nearly always propagated asexually.

However, I am not sure whether this extends to potatoes.

Jiang et al. 2011, Current Biology, 21, 1385, Regenerant Arabidopsis Lineages Display a Distinct Genome-Wide Spectrum of Mutations Conferring Variant Phenotypes

pigmentation - How do animals perform detailed active camouflage?

We often see videos of octopuses and chameleons changing their color to suit their surroundings. If it was a simple color change from white to red, it'd be understandable, but some of these animals can change colors while incorporating a lot of detail.

How do they process so much information and mimic it. Is this a subconscious action, or do they actually draw a picture in their head and then 'print' it on their bodies? Does this ability come from birth or does it get better over time?

biochemistry - How do cells slowly degrade 5,5'-dibromo-4,4'-dichloro-indigo?

5,5'-dibromo-4,4'-dichloro-indigo is the product of X-gal cleavage, often used as a reporter with B-galactosidase. I've made the (unreferenced) observation that it seems as though the blue product slowly degrades over periods of time within the cell, allowing for cells to lose their blue coloration.

What mechanisms can explain the degradation of 5,5'-dibromo-4,4'-dichloro-indigo within cells?

genomes - Examples of intracellular parasites of medical or economic importance?

As Armatus pointed out above, all viruses are obligately intracellular, and their medical and economic importance cannot be overstated.

Many bacterial species live intracellularly. The arthropod specific Wolbachia has a wide variety of consequences for its host, including alteration of reproduction and sex ratios, induction of reproductive isolation possibly driving speciation, and conferring protection from some viral infections.

Eukaryotes can be intracellular parasites as well: Malaria is a well-known example. Toxoplasma gondii is another intracellular parasite that uses cats as a primary host, but can use other warm-blooded animals (such as humans, rats, and birds) as intermediate hosts. T. gondii infection has been shown to induce behavioral changes in rats, causing an attraction to cats (thereby increasing the chance that the parasite will infect the cat and sexually reproduce). There is also some evidence that T. gondii infection in humans causes behavioral and psychological changes such as decreased reaction times, and links to depression and suicide.

genetics - Possible Genotypes of 4 Alleles of Adh

Those Hardy-Weinberg equations are the general case, used for only two alleles. This question is basically answered here, for three alleles; you've got a situation of four alleles. That means you need to have:

$(p+q+r+s)^2=1$

Where $p$, $q$, $r$, and $s$ are the frequencies of your respective alleles. This expands out to the rather unwieldy:

$p^2+2pq+2pr+2ps+q^2+2qr+2qs+r^2+2rs+s^2=1$

Now it becomes a plug 'n chug assignment; simply assign the frequencies and calculate.

Assuming $p$ is Adh-1, $q$ is Adh-2, etc., $p^2=0.0121$, $2pq=0.1848$, and so on.

dna - Are all body atoms really recycled several times during a life?

Rudolf Shoenheimer and David Rittenberg were key figures in introducing the isotopic tracer technique to biology.

This technique, which may be dated to the discovery of deuterium by Urey in 1933, produced a revolution in biological thought.

Much of the early work was done at the Department of Biological Chemistry at Columbia University under the chairmanship of H. T. Clark.

Up to this time it was thought that the components of tissues were relatively stable, and that ingested food was metabolized immediately to provide a source of energy.

The first experiments showed that when deuterated fatty acids were fed to mice, most of the label was initially deposited in adipose tissue.

It was concluded that adipose tissue acts a 'fuel depot' that is in a state of metabolic flux and is the direct source of fatty acids burned as a fuel (see here for refs). Fats present in food are not primarily used an an immediate energy source.

When a stable isotope of nitrogen became available (N¹⁵), it was found that proteins were also 'in a state of dynamic flux' and were being continuously regenerated and broken down.

The first experiments were done with N¹⁵-labeled tyrosine and it it worth quoting from the paper (Studies in Protein Metabolism. VII The metabolism of tyrosine by D Rittenberg Rudolf Schoenheimer & S. Ratner)

The results indicate that in our rat the nitrogen of at least one
amino acid, tyrosine, was only partly excreted in the urine, while
almost half of it was retained in the body proteins.

Of this deposited nitrogen only a fraction was found attached to the original
carbon chain, namely to tyrosine, while the bulk was distributed over other
nitrogenous groups of the proteins

Shortly after giving a series of lectures at Harvard University in 1941, Shoenheimer took his own life. The lectures were published posthumously as a classic book called The Dynamic State of Body Constituents.

Further information about the early work on isotopes, their role in changing completely the way we think about metabolism, and the role of Columbia University in shepherding in this great era, may be found in the following open-access article by Eugene. P. Kennedy:

Hitler’s Gift and the Era of Biosynthesis

Another good reference on the work of Schoenheimer may be found here

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So are all proteins broken down and regenerated? I know of any one exception and that is the lens crystallins where there is virtually no turnover
throughout the life of an individual.

The crystallins in our lens are synthesized at birth and remain with us virtually unchanged for life.

There is a very nice open-access paper on this published in PLOS One:

Radiocarbon Dating of the Human Eye Lens Crystallines Reveal Proteins without Carbon Turnover throughout Life

(Lynnerup et al. 2007)

human biology - What happens when we know that there is something that we forgot but we can't remember what it was?

It is a phenomenon known as room amnesia, some research has shown that your brain may use physical barriers like the room and doorways as a way to compartmentalize thoughts.
One article summarizes it here:

The researchers say that when you pass through a doorway, your mind
compartmentalizes your actions into separate episodes. Having moved
into a new episode, the brain archives the previous one, making it
less available for access. It’s as if you slam a mental door between
what you knew and…what was I saying?

This is the research.

sleep - How are people able to wake themselves up after a pre-specified amount of time?

There is quite a lot of research on self-awakening (see this search on Google Scholar for self awakening). Hopefully someone else more familiar with this literature can add a more authoritative answer about the mechanisms of self-awakening. In the interem I briefly extract some relevant points from Ikeda and Hashi (2012). The study does not directly address biological mechanisms. However, understanding the reliability of self-awakening and the correlates of the ability to self-awaken is presumably relevant to forming such an understanding.

First they summarise some existing research:

Both the accuracy and success rate of self-awakening have been
experimentally examined. More than half of the people who have the
ability to self-awaken suc- cessfully awakened within 30 minutes of
the predetermined time. For example, seven participants succeeded on
nine of 14 days (64%) in a sleep laboratory, and 15 participants
succeeded on 35 of 44 nights (80%) at their homes. Survey studies
indicate that many people habitually self-awaken in daily life; for
example, 52% of 269 adults (aged 21−84 years) and 10.3% of 643
university students6 reported habitu- ally self-awakening. People who
have a habit of self-awakening in the morning have regular sleep/wake
schedules, tended to have a morningness chronotypology, awakened
comfortably in the morning, and had less daytime dozing.

In their own study they found:

The present study investigated self-awakening, both habitual and
inconsistent, compared to awakening by external means in relation to
sleep/wake schedules for five consecutive years in 362 students
(starting at mean age 15.1 ± 0.3 years). Students who self-awakened
consistently for five consecutive years (5% of all students) went to
bed earlier than those who inconsistently self-awakened (mixed group,
40%) or consistently used forced awakening by external means (56%).
Awakening during sleep was more frequent and sleep was lighter in the
consistently self-awakened group than in the mixed and consistently
forced-awakened groups. However, daytime dozing was less frequent and
comfort immediately after awakening was greater for the consistently
self-awakened group than for the mixed and consistently
forced-awakened groups.

Reference

• Ikeda, H., & Hayashi, M. (2012). Longitudinal study of self-awakening and sleep/wake habits in adolescents. Nature, 4, 103-109. PDF


• Bell CR. Awakening from sleep at a pre-set time. Percept Mot Skills. 1980;50(2):503–508.


• Lavie P, Oksenberg A, Zomer J. “It’s time, you must wake up now.” Percept Mot Skills. 1979;49(2):447–450.


• MoorcroftWH,KayserKH,GriggsAJ.Subjectiveandobjectiveconfir- mation of the ability to self-awaken at a self-predetermined time without using external means. Sleep. 1997;20(1):40–45.


• ZepelinH.REMsleepandthetimingofself-awakenings.BullPsychon Soc. 1986;24(4):254–256.


• Zung WW, Wilson WP. Time estimation during sleep. Biol Psychiatry. 1971;3(2):159–164.


• Matsuura N, Hayashi M, Hori T. Comparison of sleep/wake habits of university students with or without a habit of self-awakening. Psychiatry Clin Neurosci. 2002;56(3):223–224.

human biology - Why can't you taste food when you have a cold?

There are many factors that contribute to the flavor of food - the five "traditional" tastes (sweet, sour, bitter, salty, umami), smell, texture, spiciness, "coolness" (like peppermint), temperature, etc. Smell and taste are detected in similar ways, by chemoreceptors expressed in taste pores by specialized cells of the lingual epithelium (tongue), and in the nose by the olfactory epithelium. Both are affected by upper respiratory tract infections like colds and the flu, leading to diminished senses of taste and smell, and a corresponding reduction in the overall flavor of food.

reproduction - Parthenogenesis in Bees

Parthenogenesis is defined as:

"A type of asexual reproduction in which egg develops without fertilization to form a new individual."

If parthenogenesis takes place in bees, a drone or male bee is produced.

My question is that parthenogenesis is the development of EGG into new individual so, how can egg be developed into male because egg won't have that "Y" chromosome required for male offspring?

astrobiology - In our solar system which other planet could have been in the "habitable zone" in the past?

This answer is also speculative, but according to the planetary habitable zone models proposed by "Habitable zone for Earth-like planets in the solar system" (Franck et al. 2000), a key finding was that:

an Earth-like planet at Martian distance
would have been habitable up to about 500 Ma ago while the position of Venus was always outside the habitable zone.

So, Mars could have been habitable, but as it is much smaller than Earth, it has a smaller gravitational field presumably a major factor in how it lost much of its atmosphere.

molecular biology - Termination of translation

Shigeta's got a point: the ribosome is latched onto the mRNA so those two are intrinsically linked. You're really asking whether the ribosome comes off first or whether the tRNA does, but it's actually the new polypeptide, which makes sense:

The stop codon is recognized by a protein, the polypeptide chain release factor (RF), which triggers the hydrolytic release of the nascent polypeptide chain from the P-site-bound peptidyl-tRNA.

This minireview puts forth a model (see below) where, in E. coli at least, the 50S ribosome subunit is then dissociated from the mRNA/30S subunit/tRNA complex, following which the final tRNA is removed. An in-depth review from a few years later gives more context.

Effect of extracellular molecules on membrane potential

The absolute answer would depend on a lot of factors, but the basics of it would be that - Yes, the volume does change and Yes, it would have an affect on the membrane potential.

By adding mass to any liquid solution, you are changing the volume. Plain and simple. Liquids are not compressible, and the only way to maintain volume while adding mass would be to increase the density of the liquid. [Edit] I'm wondering if you don't mean increase the volume of the cell - in which case, in extreme conditions where the cell cannot maintain water and salt concentrations, the cell would lose volume as water and salts move out. In a hypotonic solution (much more water than solutes), the cell would lyse as osmotic pressure favors water moving into the cell

The membrane potential would change, but how much depends on a lot of factors. It would most likely change due to the movement of ionic solvents down their concentration gradients. Osmosis would move water out of the cell and into the extracellular environment, and ultimately reduce the membrane potential as more water outside the cell would essentially decrease the molarity of the solution. The cell would have to pump more ions out in order to regain the membrane potential.

The exception might be if you added so many hydrophobic molecules outside the cell that you basically saturate the environment, which could prevent exchange of all charged or partially charged atoms and molecules.

biochemistry - Why is absorbance at 280 nm for protein solution going up when I measure repeatedly?

It looks like your protein concentrations are right on the limit of detection of the spectrophotometer, and changing the diluent buffer changed their concentrations. The samples may not have been thoroughly mixed after dilution and before measurement, so the varying measurements may simply be the solution coming to equilibrium. Temperature can also affect absorbance, so you should verify that your samples have equilibrated before drawing any conclusions. If the absorbance of your phosphate buffer is 0.03, I'd try to keep the sample absorbances above 0.075 or higher to avoid getting too close to the limit of detection. Also, make sure your buffer isn't too old or contaminated with something which could be affecting its absorbance characteristics.

I would suggest taking one or two protein samples and doing a dilution series (1:1, 1:5, 1:10, 1:20) in a large-ish volume (say 400 ul each, if you can spare it), vortex briefly to mix well, then measure triplicates of each dilution on your reader, along with appropriate blanks (buffer only). You will see differences between each measurement, but it should be quite small, depending on the accuracy and precision of your instrument.

Measured values will not be exactly the same from measurement to measurement, and it would take a lot more than three repetitions to determine if there was an actual drift trend occurring. Measure your sample plate every 5 minutes for an hour and plot the values (don't just eyeball them) to see if the machine may need to be serviced.

genetics - How do circulating androgens contribute to higher rates of hirsuteness in some women?

I was reading up on ethnic groups in which the women are naturally more hirsute (such as South Asian women) in the context of evolving standards of beauty. I came across this statement on a forum:

Hirsutism is much more common in South Asian women (particularly North Indians such as Punjabi Sikhs) asymptomatically because they tend to have higher levels of circulating androgens than your typical [North or Western European ethnic group]. This is also true of Eastern European women to an extent.

Per Wikipedia, I learned:

Circulating levels of androgens can influence human behavior because some neurons are sensitive to steroid hormones. Androgen levels have been implicated in the regulation of human aggression and libido. Indeed, androgens are capable of altering the structure of the brain in several species, including mice, rats, and primates, producing sex differences.

So: do circulating androgens trigger higher testosterone production in some women? Is this what yields higher instances of "hirsutism" among certain populations? How are some women more prone to this than others? (That is, per the forum post, why are South Asian women more likely to have this than Western European women?)