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GingaNinga

@ Kyle_The_G @lemmy.world

Posts
11
Comments
223
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • What's an important (in your opinion) skill too many people seem to lack?

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  • I'm trying to work things out but I swear its a generational "kids these days" thing. Its a science field with lots of interpretation, judgement, problem solving and troubleshooting too so critical thinking is really important.

  • What's an important (in your opinion) skill too many people seem to lack?

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  • Swimming, it'll save your life

  • What's an important (in your opinion) skill too many people seem to lack?

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  • This grinds my gears super hard. I've had a few new hires come through and they can't do anything unless someone tells them to do something or if its written out step by step. Absolutely no critical thinking, curiosity or even basic understanding of why we're doing what we're doing, the job might as well be severance lol. I have no idea whats going on, they interviewed well, had relevant experience and can do the basics but as soon as we have to troubleshoot or use our brains they just go dear in the headlights. Its something thats difficult to train.

  • ‎ ‎ ‎ ඞ

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  • Just like that, everything used to just glow pink and green like a mini putt course.

  • My dearest Lemmy, what is the appliance you have the most beef with?

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  • mine has said that all the ink is critically low and I've just ignored it for the past few months and it just keeps going.

  • 'Unparalleled' snake antivenom made from man bitten 200 times

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  • I don't think you can do that with a single population of cells. Theres a group of cells that sample antigens and process them for presentation then a separate group of cells that the first group will present the antigen to. Once presented there are a set of standardized regions related to the class of antibody then a set of "hypervariable" regions. You would need an organoid/organ system to accomplish this in vitro or ex vivo. Most of the time it will be a macrophage or something that for example ingests a live bacteria (or venom), it will register this as foreign, process the particle and travel to a lymph node where all the immunology takes place (B cells). I don't think theres a simple way to recreate this in the lab its completely different from synthesizing chemicals since each antibody is fine-tuned to its antigen. You might even get different antibodies generated for the same compound depending on how everything went down and which region was presented (eg monoclonal vs poloclonal products).

  • 'Unparalleled' snake antivenom made from man bitten 200 times

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  • Thanks for the explainer! My lab specializes in IHC so I'm generally familiar with ag-ab interactions but not so much with antibody development. Its fascinating!

  • 'Unparalleled' snake antivenom made from man bitten 200 times

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  • To my knowledge its easy to do this with proteins that are directly coded for in our genes. For example there is a gene for insulin so we can clip it, transfect it into a cell culture and get those cells to crank out a bunch of insulin that we can extract, purify and make into a usable, stable product. The problem with antibodies is that we need to be exposed to an antigen capable of stimulating the development of the corresponding antibody. There is a very complicated set of receptors that capture the antigen, internalize and process it to present it to cells that will modify a whole bunch stuff (Thats the limit of my personal knowledge) to generate an antibody capable of neutralizing that substance. In short you still need a living being with some sort of immune system capable of processing that compound and generating an antibody to it, its unbelievably complicated. The good news is once that cell starts cranking out antibody it starts to clone itself so we can extract it, make a hybridoma (fuze the antibody-producing cell from a live animal with immortal cancer cells to create an immortal hybrid that cranks out the desired antibody) then we can continue with the process in cell culture as per usual. Its just cheaper and easier to use live animals with high titre to that antibody. Source: I've taken a couple immunology courses and my lab specializes in immunohistochemistry so I'm quite familiar with antigen/antibody interactions but not so much with antibody production.

  • 'Unparalleled' snake antivenom made from man bitten 200 times

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  • The immune system is super complicated but essentially when an animal or person are exposed to some sort of substance white blood cells sample that compound and create an antibody that is tailored to bind and neutralize it. Different substances range in their ability to induce this response and it often takes repeat exposures to get the titre to high enough levels. So one way or another some sort of animal needs to be exposed to the venom whether it be horse, goat or mouse and we would harvest the antibody for use in emergency situations where we need to immediately reverse the effects of a snake bite.

    Another way would be to do this in cell culture but I'm not quite sure how that works, I think thats easier to do when the proteins are directly coded for like insulin or something. You could probably harvest B cell clones that produce the antibody to the venom, make them immortal and harvest it that way but I'm less familiar with that sort of wok so I can't really comment further.

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  • In animal research we often refer to genotype and phenotype. Genotype refers to the set of genes the animals the animals carry (what they are capable of expressing) and phenotype refers to the physical/clinical expression/presentation/characteristics of the animal or disease state. My guys were all "wild type" meaning they're just "normal" standard mice and we induced the "obese phenotype" (obese disease state with the associated characteristics and physical presentation associated with the disease) with the two high fat diets. 60% had a greater impact on inducing these changes compared to the control group than the 40% group.

  • Karoline Leavitt boasts Trump wouldn’t hesitate to arrest SCOTUS justices

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  • Why stop at justices, how about the president?

  • Donald Trump sends election message to Canadians: "cherished 51st State"

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  • Oh I agree, I think he's an absolute tool and he's doing it for ego and legacy (we can clearly see this play out with all the tariff nonsense) but I bet he has smarter people advising on that plan. It drives me nuts that someone can so consistently fail upward their entire life its unbelievable.

  • Donald Trump sends election message to Canadians: "cherished 51st State"

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  • I think its trade and military strategy. Ice caps are melting, arctic will become a major global shipping lane, he wants military bases and ports through which major commerce will flow. Its just something else for the US to control and extort.

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  • no worries, I love talking about work! Nutrition is especially interesting given how relevant it is in our day to day lives and how complicated everything is between food itself, genetics and our gut microbiome. I could read about it all day, and not because I had to for two years!

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  • 60% produced a more dramatic phenotype and I remember it being the most popular diet in animal studies (I did all this 10 years ago so the details are a little fuzzy) so I'd probably go with that one.

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  • Compliance wasn't an issue since we we ran the study in mice and they all liked the food. they're all basically clones so so it helps eliminate a LOT of variables. As expected we found the 60% diet induced a much more dramatic phenotype than the 40% but both induced obesity in general, but even ONLY having 60 vs 40% fat the differences were significant enough to make me reluctant to compare the two HFDs especially when you dive into microbiota stuff. I wouldn't say its apples and oranges, more like apples and crab apples... or something.

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  • We used purified high fat diets, one at 40% and one at 60% and compared the two. We had a whole other project where each group were supplemented with lentils but we I focussed on just the difference between those two diets where the only variable between them were the carb/fat percentage, they were otherwise the same/pure.

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  • I did my masters thesis on high fat diets and while I was doing my lit review I realized there was no standard for what a "high fat diet" even is. There are SO many variables and its insane some of the logic leaps some studies come to to complete a narrative.

  • Anybody else annoyed by news headlines being predominantly clickbaity now?

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  • slam