Survival of the Sickest final assignment PDF

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Survival of the Sickest final assignment...

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“Survival of the Sickest” Final Reading Assignment Summarize the author’s the connections (paired terms) and explain the statements. Be brief, concise and to the point but use complete sentences and good grammar. Be prepared to share out about these connections in class and turn in a typed Word document.

Ch. 1 1.

Iron/ Bubonic plague People with more iron concentration, such as male adults, were more predisposed to getting the plague as opposed to young children, women, and the elderly, who had relatively low iron concentration.

Ch. 2 2. Ice ages/diabetes Diabetes arose from the younger dryas; our diabetic ancestors lowered the freezing temperature of their blood by having more sugar in it rather than water, and this helped them survive the ice ages. 3. Wood frogs/diabetes When the frog detects near freezing temperatures, the frog’s liver releases massive amounts of glucose into its bloodstream, and releases other sugar alcohols, pushing its blood sugar levels up a hundredfold, and this diabetic adaption allows the frog to survive through below freezing temperatures. Ch. 3 4. tanning beds/ birth defects The ultraviolet light from tanning beds destroys folic acid in the body, which is an integral part of the cell growth system; too little folic acid in the mother’s system results in serious birth defects like spina bifida. Tanning beds can help get the patient’s vitamin D levels back up to healthy levels; this is beneficial for people with diseases like Crohn’s which causes an inflammation of the small intestine that impairs absorption of nutrients including vitamin D. 5. sunglasses/ sunburn

When wearing sunglasses, much less sunlight reaches the optic nerve, and this causes less signal sent to the pituitary gland, so less melanocyte-stimulating hormone is released; this results in more sunburns since melanocytes produce melanin to protect you.

6.

hypertension/ slave trade

Those who had a higher natural propensity to retain high levels of salt had a better chance at survival because this allowed them to maintain enough water to avoid fatal dehydration when being transported across the Atlantic amid bad conditions like not getting enough food or water.

7. Asian flush/drinking water

Most Asians have the genetic version of an enzyme that makes them produce a less powerful version of acetaldehyde dehy-drogenase, and this isn’t as effective at converting the first by-product of alcohol into acetate. The excess acetaldehyde is thirty times as toxic as alcohol and causes flushing. While Europeans used fermentation to have clean water, Asians purified water by boiling it and making tea, thus Asians had less of an ability to breakdown alcohol.

8. skull shape/ climate

In order to facilitate storage and the release of heat, skull shape may have evolved as a mechanism corresponding to a population’s climate.

9. body hair/ malaria

Having more dense body hair on the forearms and legs may have been a defense against the mosquitos that carries malaria, and thus, body hair is most dense in regions where malaria was the most common, such as the eastern Mediterranean basin, southern Italy, Greece, and Turkey.

Ch. 4

10. European clover/Australian sheep breeding crisis of the 1940s

The European clover produces a potent phytoestrogen called formononetin, and it serves as a defense against grazing predators. Due. To the drier climate in Australia, the clover had a bad year and thus increased its production of formononetin in order to prevent the birth of more of the sheep that would graze on the plant.

11. Capsaicin/ birds and mammals

Mammals are sensitive to the chemical called capsaicin, which is in hot peppers, but birds don’t destroy the seed when the eat the peppers, so they aren’t affected by the chemical. This is for evolutionary purposes as mammals will avoid the peppers since they are sensitive to it and it tickles the nerve fibers that sense pain and heat, but birds are not so they will take the seeds and spread them.

12. Malaria/ air conditioning

Air-conditioning allowed people who live in areas where malaria is common to stay indoors with the windows shut, and this protected them from the malaria infested mosquitos which were outside.

13. Favism/ fava beans

Favism, the most common enzyme deficiency in the world, develops in a way, along with fava beans, that malaria can no longer stay in red blood cells. G6PD throws out free radicals, but favism means there’s a deficiency of it. The fava beans release more free radicals and that causes a bad environment so malaria can’t survive.

Ch. 5

14. What is the advantage of our “survive and produce” race?

The preference for genes that give us a survival or reproductive advantage is called natural selection, and this evolution produces a better chance to live.

Ch. 6

15. Transposons/viruses/evolution

Transposons are jumping genes and they, along with viruses, sometimes copy and paste themselves in the genome. Due to evolutions, certain viruses are now part of the human genome, so jumping genes are positive in terms of evolution.

16. Sunspots/flu epidemics

Radiation from the sun can cause mutations, and when sunspots flare, there is more antigenic drift. This in turn leads to more flu outbreaks and epidemics.

Ch. 7

17. Vitamin supplement/agouti mice

The vitamin supplement reached into the embryos and turned the agouti gene off, so when the baby mice were born, their DNA contained the gene, but it wasn’t expressed.

18. Snakes/long-tailed lizards

If the mother smells a lizard-eating snake while she is pregnant, then her kids will be born with a long tail and big body. This allows her offspring to be better prepared for living in a world with snake predators. If she doesn’t smell the snakes, then the lizards will be born with a small tail and small body.

19. Smoking grandmothers/asthmatic children

When the mother was a fetus in the grandmother’s womb, she already had the complete set of eggs in her ovary, and therefore the grandmother smoking could potentially impact the mother’s child, and lead to asthmatic grandchildren.

20. Betel nut chewing/cancer

When a person chews betel nuts, it causes three cancer fighting genes to become hypermethylated. Since those three genes protect from cancer, chewing the nuts can potentially increase chances of developing oral cancer.

21. Epigenesis may be partially responsible for the childhood obesity epidemic. Explain.

If the mother doesn’t eat very well and eats a lot of junk food while pregnant, the embryo receives signals that it’s going to be born into an environment where critical types of food are scarce. Through epigenetic effects, certain genes are turned on/off, and the baby is born small, so it needs less nutrition to live. Later, after having proper nutrition, the baby becomes fatter and more likely to get obesity.

22. Explain: “Good times mean more boys. Tough times mean more girls.”

Males need more biologically from their mothers, and therefore they are less likely to survive in a malnourished condition. Additionally, more boys are miscarried, and therefore due to epigenetics and the stress the mother feels, the sec of her child is respectively impacted.

Ch. 8

23. Progeria/lamina A

Progeria causes children to age 10 times faster. Lamina A is the protein that provides structural support for the nuclear membrane and comes from the gene that is responsible for progeria. In people with progeria, the lamina A is defective, and their cells deteriorate much faster.

24. Hayflick limit/telomeres

The approximate limit on cellular reproduction is called the Hayflick limit; this is related to the loss of a genetic buffer at the end of chromosomes called telomeres.

When a cell reproduces it loses a little DNA at the ends, and the telomeres is extra information at the ends to prevent the loss of important information.

25. Childbirth/brain size/bipedalism

Bipedalism forces females to have a larger pelvis in order to ensure that the baby can make it out of the birth canal safely. Additionally, as bring size grew, skull size grew in order to protect the bigger brains, but this causes there to be a risk with child birth because the mother has to get the larger brain out of the birthing canal.

26. Explain the Ipods and aging analogy used by the author.

We wouldn’t buy a warranty for an iPod we were only keeping for a week, and similarly, there isn’t evolutionary pressure to evolve due to the low life expectancy that causes most individuals in the species to not live long enough to experience the DNA errors.

Conclusion: The author hopes that the reader will have a greater appreciation for the following things:

1.

Life is in a constant state of creation.

2. Nothing in our world exists in isolation.

3. Our relationship with disease is much more complex than we may have previously realized.

27. Write a few of the take-aways you had from reading this book.

I took away a lot about how our environment largely affects our bodies.

Additionally, I took away that I need to be more careful with my health such as being safer in the sun or having better eating habits.

I also took away that the human body is so complex, and this book made me more interested in anatomy and physiology....