Freethought & Rationalism Archive

scigirl · 05-08-2002, 09:00 AM

Hello everyone!

Yeah it feels good to be done with my masters! Woo hoo! Now you all have to call me "Master Scigirl."

I will be attending a seminar today titled, "A tale of 2 mice: Evolution of the Vertebrate Immune System." Stay tuned for a synopsis-it should be interesting.

scigirl

nogods4me · 05-08-2002, 09:04 AM

How about "Mistress Scigirl" instead?

Boro Nut · 05-09-2002, 03:18 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by scigirl:
<strong>Yeah it feels good to be done with my masters! Woo hoo!</strong>

Are you looking for some new masters or are you thinking more or a dominatrix role from now on?

Jesus Tap-Dancin' Christ · 05-09-2002, 08:35 AM

What is thy bidding, my master?

scigirl · 05-09-2002, 09:17 AM

Well the seminar was interesting. The speaker was Adam Richman (a professor here at MSU). <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=119038 90&dopt=Abstract" target="_blank">Here</a> is an abstract of one of his papers.

He studies the evolution of this molecule called MHC, for Major Histocompatibility Complex. These are the proteins responsible for tissue graft rejections, but in the immune system, they play a role in T cell activation. What they do is present a piece of a foreign body (such as a peptide from a bacteria) to a T cell. The "jaws" of the MHC have to be able to bind this peptide.
They have evolved significant diversity due to the fact that bacteria try to evolve resistance for binding in the "jaws."

Here's a picture of an MHC and a T cell receptor from <a href="http://depts.washington.edu/rhwlab/dq/3structure.html" target="_blank">this site</a>:

It was interesting to hear the various methods for hypothesis testing for evolution (yes it is possible to make predictions and test them, for you YEC lurkers out there!) For instance, if you hypothesize that convergent evolution occured, you look for similarities in the "silent" mutations.

Adam concluded that one of the populations of mice (the cactus mouse) had a significant bottleneck in history, and therefore has different variation in its MHC alleles than its cousin the deer mouse. He also found that recombination is a very important mechanism for maintaining diversity of MHC. It of course cannot generate diverisity by itself (random mutations have to do that), but its role in stabilizing heterozygosity and multiple alleles is important, perhaps 10-fold more important than mutation itself.

Anyway it was interesting.

scigirl

Peez · 05-09-2002, 01:10 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by scigirl:
<strong>Hello everyone!

Yeah it feels good to be done with my masters! Woo hoo! Now you all have to call me "Master Scigirl."

I will be attending a seminar today titled, "A tale of 2 mice: Evolution of the Vertebrate Immune System." Stay tuned for a synopsis-it should be interesting.

scigirl</strong>

Congratulations!

Peez

05-08-2002, 09:00 AM	#1
scigirl Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: Seattle Posts: 4,261	Evolution of the Vertebrate Immune System Hello everyone! Yeah it feels good to be done with my masters! Woo hoo! Now you all have to call me "Master Scigirl." I will be attending a seminar today titled, "A tale of 2 mice: Evolution of the Vertebrate Immune System." Stay tuned for a synopsis-it should be interesting. scigirl

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05-08-2002, 09:04 AM	#2
nogods4me Contributor Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Baltimore, MD USA Posts: 17,432	How about "Mistress Scigirl" instead?

05-09-2002, 08:35 AM	#4
Jesus Tap-Dancin' Christ Veteran Member Join Date: Apr 2001 Location: Heaven Posts: 6,980	What is thy bidding, my master?

05-09-2002, 09:17 AM	#5
scigirl Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: Seattle Posts: 4,261	Well the seminar was interesting. The speaker was Adam Richman (a professor here at MSU). <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=119038 90&dopt=Abstract" target="_blank">Here</a> is an abstract of one of his papers. He studies the evolution of this molecule called MHC, for Major Histocompatibility Complex. These are the proteins responsible for tissue graft rejections, but in the immune system, they play a role in T cell activation. What they do is present a piece of a foreign body (such as a peptide from a bacteria) to a T cell. The "jaws" of the MHC have to be able to bind this peptide. They have evolved significant diversity due to the fact that bacteria try to evolve resistance for binding in the "jaws." Here's a picture of an MHC and a T cell receptor from <a href="http://depts.washington.edu/rhwlab/dq/3structure.html" target="_blank">this site</a>: It was interesting to hear the various methods for hypothesis testing for evolution (yes it is possible to make predictions and test them, for you YEC lurkers out there!) For instance, if you hypothesize that convergent evolution occured, you look for similarities in the "silent" mutations. Adam concluded that one of the populations of mice (the cactus mouse) had a significant bottleneck in history, and therefore has different variation in its MHC alleles than its cousin the deer mouse. He also found that recombination is a very important mechanism for maintaining diversity of MHC. It of course cannot generate diverisity by itself (random mutations have to do that), but its role in stabilizing heterozygosity and multiple alleles is important, perhaps 10-fold more important than mutation itself. Anyway it was interesting. scigirl

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