No door? No problem. T. cruzi uses the window to cause Chagas Disease

For invasive pathogens the only way to survive, and consequently make you sick, is to get inside your cells. This is a rough exercise as you have an immune system working everywhere in the body to prevent this and the cell to be invaded is none too happy with the idea either so invasive pathogens must use tricks.

After evading or surviving the immune system, another post for another day, some exploit a mechanism called receptor mediated endocytosis (RME), in which the pathogen binds to a receptor on the cell triggering the cell to alter its shape to internalise the pathogen. RME is used by cells to recycle extracellular components but it a pathogen can make itself fit the receptor instead it can trick the cell into giving it free access to its insides.

Another mechanism, commonly employed by membrane bound viruses, is membrane fusion. Given that membrane bound viruses contain a secondary structure called the nucleocapsid, which houses the genome, they can fuse their own membranes with the host cell which results in the nucleocapsid's release into the cytoplasm.

(a) HIV entry by fusion and (b) receptor mediated endocytosis of light blue dots ((a) modified from credit and (b) modified from credit

Zombies Pt 2 (or how I distracted my students)

Last week I mentioned how my students sidetracked me in a tute regarding introductions to the origins of life and in particular the acronym HOMR standing for Homeostasis, Organisation, Metabolism and Replication by initiating a discussion of whether or not zombies technically were alive. Well, the following week they had a test that occupied half the allocated tutorial time so instead of letting them out early I extended the discussion to real world zombies.

Zombies Pt. 1 (or how my students distracted me)

As I mentioned a little while ago I have been made an associate lecturer for first year biology at the University I have been doing my PhD at. Most of my job is taking tutorial classes and the other week during one of these classes I got totally distracted by a very interesting discussion.

Yes We C(r)an(berry)!

That title is awful I know but I'm tired. Cut me some slack :)

 

I ran into a something that I have heard about before but assumed was rubbish and never really looked into it properly. A friend of mine insisted it was the case so I looked it up and I have to say, I was a little surprised.

So this is what cranberries look like. I never knew.

What a week!!!

I have grown accustomed to the largely monotonous and repetitive life of a PhD student recently. Wake up, go to Uni, set up experiment, experiment fail, go home, sleep, rinse and repeat ad infinitum. But this week has been different.

There is significantly less Kung Fu in science than I was led to believe. Turns out its mostly repetitive bench work.

Flooding and disease

I’m not sure what the coverage has been like overseas but most of the east coast of Australia has been hit pretty hard. First there were biggest floods Australia has seen for a VERY long time that started in Queensland and continue to affect the east cost of Australia. Then, instead of letting Queensland off the hook for a few weeks nature hit the coast with a cyclone THE SIZE OF THE U.S.A. that might move so far inland that it could dump rain into my state, which is a desert, halfway across our island continent.

The Australia Antigen

I feel a little left out some times on the internet as many (but certainly not all) of my bloggy friends are English or American. So, just to fill you in, the 26^th of January is Australia Day and it commemorates the landing of our first fleet in 1788 and the planting of the British flag in what was then known as New Holland and is now known as Sydney Cove, New South Wales, Australia. Most people celebrate the day with a public holiday, a beer or two, a barbi and the TripleJ Hottest 100.