The Fungi that turns flies into zombies

 According to me , this year has a separate fan base.. can you imagine a fungi that turns flies into zombies??? Yes I was shocked too when I read about it last night.

   Yes , there is a fungi named

 "Entomophthora muscae" (which means fly destroyer) from the family "Entomophthoraceae" is a species of pathogenic fungus in the order "Entomophthorales". It lives off houseflies, fruit flies, among others. It causes a fatal disease in flies. It can cause epizootic outbreaks of disease in houseflies and has been investigated as a potential biological control agent.

An effected fly

    "It's a crazy system" said Carolyn Elya, a researcher at Harvard. While getting her P.h.D at UC Berkeley, she described what a fungus infection looks like in fruit flies and she continues to study about their interaction. " The fungus only kills at dusk",she said.

For the first few days after picking up a fungal spore, an infected fruit fly seems normal. But inside its body, the fungus is growing, taking over the fly’s brain and central nervous system and feeding on its fat body, the tissue where insects store nutrients and energy.

      At dusk on the fourth or fifth day, the fruit fly stops flying and starts behaving erratically.

Suddenly the fly then extends its mouthpart down, and some liquid drips out and glues the fly to the surface it’s standing on. Researchers believe the droplets are made up of fungus, though Elya said it’s not clear whether the fungus is inherently adhesive or makes itself sticky so that the fly gets stuck.

An effected fly get stucked to the substratum

Over the next 10 or so minutes, the fly’s wings ascend in small bursts until they’re pointing straight up. Sometimes this happens more quickly. And then it dies frozen in this lifelike pose.

        Soon after, white spongy fungus oozes out of its abdomen. When the fungus has all come out, the fly looks as if a cotton ball had grown over its lower body. This white goo is made up of hundreds of tiny lollipop-shaped protrusions called conidiophores.

   These spores are the next generation of fungus. They need to get into another fly to grow. 

But why would a healthy fly hang out around a dead one? 

So a researcher named Mullens found that in dairy and poultry farms, infected houseflies died at dusk on the cool end of the barn — the fungus prefers lower temperatures.

In the morning, living flies would warm themselves in the first rays of sun, which fall right where the flies died the night before. The fungus had spent all night shooting out spores. Come morning, those spores started shooting out secondary spores that infected the living flies that had come to warm up.

Scientists believe that getting the fly to point its wings up helps the fungus spread its spores. If the fly climbed high enough, the spores might be dispersed by the wind. And there’s an added bonus for the fungus in keeping the fly’s wings up. In houseflies, scientists have observed males mating with infected female cadavers.

“I think the fat females are especially attractive for the males,” said Mullens. Those males carry off some spores and spread them around.

In nature, Entomophthora muscae can be lethal to large groups of flies in the fall, when the cooler temperatures that the fungus prefers have started.

But don’t worry — the fungus doesn’t hurt humans.

“It’s very unlikely that a similar fungus could zombify people,” said Elya. “Not only do we run much warmer than an average fly, we can control our bodily temperature to kill invaders. We also have an adaptive immune system, which is good at amplifying responses to specific invaders.”

Mullens and other researchers tried to figure out how the fungus might be put to use as a biological control for flies in homes and farms. But the spores are short-lived, fragile and difficult to grow in the lab, which has made it impossible to bottle them up and use them as an insecticide. And a housefly lives about as long as it takes the fungus to incubate anyway.

  There's a lot more efficient ways to kill flies, and faster but still researchers are imagining ways to put this fly-killer to work for humans.

Conjugation process of paramecium

 First of all we need to know some terms related to conjugation.

Conjugation: conjugation is the process by which one bacterium transfers genetic material to another through direct contact. During conjugation, one bacterium serves as the donor of the genetic material, and the other serves as the recipient. The donor bacterium carries a DNA sequence called the fertility factor, or F-factor.

Conjugants: Conjugant is a member of a mating pair of organisms or gametes undergoing conjugation.

Micronuclei: Micronuclei are extra-nuclear bodies that contain damaged chromosome fragments and/or whole chromosomes that were not incorporated into the nucleus after cell division.

Macronuclei: A macronucleus is the larger type of nucleus in ciliates. It controls the non-productive cell functions, such as metabolism.

Process of conjugation of paramecium is simply discussed below:

• Firstly two pre-conjugants of opposite matting types come together adhere.
• They stop feeding, and their oral groove apartures disappear.
• Then a protoplasmic bridge formed between them and these individuals are now called conjugants.
• The macronucleus begins to disintegrated and finally disappeared.
• The micro-nucleus of  each individuals divides two times. One of them has a reductional division. So, a haploid micro-nucleus are produced in each conjugant.
• 3 of these 4 micro-nucleus disappeared in each. only one remain, and this nucleus divides mitotically and forms two unequal pro-nucleus .
• One of them pro-nucleus of each conjugants crosses over the protoplasmic bridge and fuse with the other pro-nucleus of conjugant forming a synkaryon.
• After about 12-48 hours conjugants are separate now and called ex-conjugants.
• The synkaryon of each ex-conjugants divides 3 times to form 8 nuclei. 4 becomes macronucleus, 3 disappeared, and one remains micro nucleus.
• The remaining one divides and at the same time ex-conjugants divides by binary fission into two cells.
• Each have two macro and one micro nucleus.
• The cell and their micro-nuclei divides second time to form a paramecia, so that each has one macro and one micro-nucleus.

Locomotion System in Amoeba

Systematic position:-

  Phylum : Protozoa

  Class.   : Rhyzopodea

  Order.   :  Amoebida

  Genus.  : Amoeba

  Species:  Proteous

Locomotion:-

   Amoeba shows many characteristic amoeboid movement by the formation of finger like a temporary process called pseudopodia. These are broads and with rounded tips are called lobopodia, which formed as a result of flowing forward of cytoplasm. When moving, amoeba may put out several pseudopodium.

           Number of theories have been advocated to explain the mechanism involves in the formation of a pseudopodium.Some of them are described below-

Surface tension theory:-

  Berthowled explained that the amoeboid movement is due to a difference in the surface tension between the physical characteristics of body surface and substratum. According to this theory the amoeboid movement is comparable with the movement of a fluid globule like a mercury droplet. A pseudopodium is formed by an outflow of cytoplasm from the weak point where surface tension becomes reduced by external or internal factors.

Sol-Gel theory:-

  This theory first put forward by 'Hyman' and later supported by 'Pantin' and 'Mast' is the most widely acceptable view nowadays.

A single pseudopodia is formed, the ectoplasmic tube forces endoplasm forward

       

   According to this theory the cytoplasm of amoeba is differentiated into an clear outer ectoplasm and a granular inner endoplasm. Later it is further distinguished into an outer stiffer or gelly like region, the plasma gel and a inner fluid region, the plasma sol.

    According to this theory the amoeboid movement involves four processes.

           (a) Attachment of amoeba to the substratum

           (b) Gelation of plasma sol at the anterior advancing pseudopodia.

           (c) Solation of plasma gel at the posterior end and receding pseudopodia.

           (d) Contraction of plasma gel at the posterior end to drive the plasma sol forward.

What "Emotions" & "Thoughts" do to our body?

  Our emotions have a direct connection to our body.That lets them have a big impact not only on our mental but also on our bodily state. With the right knowledge, it’s possible to see how powerful our emotions are and how they can help you to manage your state of mind and keep your body healthy.

            Have you ever wondered what you can do to your life with the help of the emotions? If we consider our feelings when they bother us, we can't  only help ourselves but also bring harmony to our mental and physical state.

Lets talk with some examples:

     LOVE: 

When in love, you may notice a racing heartbeat and your hands getting sweatier. It is caused by the stimulation of adrenaline and nor-epinephrine, explained  a clinical sexologist and licensed marriage and family therapist. At the same time, oxytocin, the “love hormone,” makes you feel happy, confident, and fades your pain as the “painkiller” areas of the brain are being activated, and your heart becomes healthier.It is said that married people live longer than singles.

DEPRESSION:

   Depression is a brain disorder that can lead to emotional  part. This state increases your risk of a number of illnesses and makes your Immune system weak. It also causes "Insomnia" because of an inability to get comfortable or lots of troubled thoughts. Depression and exposure to stress lead to a risk of a heart attack. 

          A depressed person can also have trouble with their memory or making decisions.

EFFECTS OF EMOTIONS:

    Negative attitudes and feelings of helplessness and hopelessness can create chronic stress, which upsets the body's hormone balance, depletes the brain chemicals required for happiness, and damages the immune system. chronic stress can actually decrease our lifespan. 

      Science has now identified that stress shortens our telomeres, the “end caps” of our DNA strands, which causes us to age more quickly.

         Poorly managed or bad anger is also related to a slew of health conditions, such as hypertension (high blood pressure), Cardiovascular disease, digestive disorder and infection.

   It's important to recognize our thoughts and emotions and be aware of the effect they have—not only on each other, but also on our bodies, behavior, and relationship.

so, be happy in any situation & don't try to hide your emotions and try to control it in worst situation.

     

How many trees are there for per person in India? We are in danger zone

   Trees for per person:

The researchers say, that there are 422 trees for every person on Earth.

What about our India?

There are only 35 billion trees in India to shade a population of 1.3 billion.

Among highly populous countries, India (population, 1.267 billion) has a tree population of only 35 billion, leading to just 28 trees per person.

Compared to Brazil which has 301 billion trees (1,494 per person), Canada 318 billion (8,953 per person), and China 139 billion (102 trees per person). The U.S. has 319 million people in 2014, but 228 billion trees. That’s 716 trees per person.

The nation with the single largest number of trees was Russia, with 641 billion, and 4,461 trees per person based on 2014 population estimates — statistics underscoring the the vastness of Siberia’s boreal forests.

There are two scenarios: don't stop burning fossil fuels and leave CO2 levels alone,

 or 

stop burning fossil fuels and return to pre-Industrial Revolution levels.

Within a few years we are going to face a lot of great dangers

Waggle dance of honey bee

What is waggle dance?

 The waggle dance is special movement ("figure-of-eight") that is done by the honey bee near of its hive. By this process, a worker bee tells the others where it has found nectar (sugar- rich liquid produced by plants).This was shown by the Australian Ethologist  Karl von Frisch .

Why they do the waggle dance?

When a worker discovers a good source of nectar or pollen , she will return to near his hive to perform a waggle dance to let her nest( house of birds) mates know where it lies . A bee performs the waggle dance when she wants to inform other bees of a nectar or water source she found.

 It is used to be thought that bees have two distinct requirement dances. There were the "Round dances" and "waggle dances".Round dances were thought to be  used for things that were close by and Waggle dances for things farther away . It is now known that a round dance is only a waggle dance with a very short "Waggle run" (when the bee run through a small wave like pattern , it is  called Waggle run or Waggle phase).

Things you need to know about Waggle dance!

 A waggle dance is made up of  1 to 100 or more circuits ( here circuit means rotation). Each circuit has two phases. These phases are the waggle phase and the return phase. When a bee returns to the hive after finding a good food source , it performs the dance & running method of the bee is called waggle run.

  After this it will turn to the right and circle back to the starting point (the return phase) .It will then do another waggle run and then turn to the left and circle back to the starting point.

Relation between direction , duration of waggle run with the angle of sun 

 The direction and duration of waggle runs show the direction and distance to flowers. Flowers that are located directly in line with the sun are shown by waggle runs in an upward direction of vertical combs.  If the flowers are at an angle to the right or left of the sun , the waggle run is done at the same angle to the upward direction.


      The distance between hive and flowers is shown in the duration of the waggle runs . The farther the flowers are from the hive , the longer the waggle phase .



The more I understood , the more I tried to convince you.

   Thank you

The Real Monster Of The World

Hey guys ,

      How much low/high temperature you can tolerate????

Can you live in space without oxygen???

Can you tolerate the water pressure of deepest ocean?

Can you live without any kind of food or water for 30 years?

Your answer is "NO"

But trust me, this animal can do all of the above!!!

Tardigrade (Toughest animal in the world)

Tardigrade: toughest animal in the world,

Everything We Know About Tardigrades, the Only Animal That Can Survive in Space.The tardigrades were in "tun" form, a dormant state where they shrivel up into a ball, expel most of the water in their bodies, and lower their metabolism via cryptobiosis until they enter an environment better suited to sustain life.

How much low/high temperature they can tolerate????

Basically, 

tardigrades can survive: A few minutes at 151 °C (304 °F) 30 years at −20 °C (−4 °F) A few days at −200 °C (−328 °F; 73 K).

Someyears ego , scientists boiled it at 151°C for long 15  minutes, they noticed that nothing is happened to this animal.

Survive in space:

In 2007, A European team of researchers sent a group of living tardigrades to orbit the earth on the outside of a FOTON-M3 rocket for 10 days. When the water bears returned to Earth, the scientists discovered that 68 percent lived through the ordeal.

Although (as far as we know) tardigrades are unique in their ability to survive in space.

How they can do that kind of things is still unknown. Scientists are still observing it.

If you think, they live in a particular place, then you are absolutely wrong.They are everywhere in the world,,they may be a few meters away from you or may be not.

One thing you need to know that it is impossible to kill an tardigrade , you can boil them but can't kill them.

Golden Blood

What is Golden Blood? Does it really exist?

Hey my viewers, 

You may be wondering, what the golden blood is again ! So , before we discuss about the Golden Blood , you must need to know about Rh Blood Group System & Rh-null Blood. So let's start ❤️

Rh Blood Group System:- 

The Rh blood group system is one of 36 known human blood group systems. It is the second most important blood group system, after the ABO blood group system. The Rh blood group system consists of 49 defined blood group antigens, among which the five antigens D, C, c, E, and e are the most important.

Rh-null Blood:-

If blood  lacks all of the 61 possible antigens in the Rh system then it's called Rh-null Blood.This not only makes it rare, but this also means it can be accepted by anyone with a rare blood type within the Rh system. This is why it is considered "golden blood.

What is Golden Blood?

One of the rarest blood types in the world is Rh-null , sometimes referred to as Golden Blood.

You may already know your blood type: whether it’s A, B, AB or O, and whether it’s positive or negative. But those are just the most common categories—what about the rest? What about people with ‘rare’ blood?

There are hundreds of different antigens across more than 36 blood group systems that may be present on our red blood cells. For example, you may have AB blood in the ABO blood group system, be Rh positive in the Rh system, as well as being K positive in the Kell system, and so on.

You have a ‘rare’ blood type if your blood is missing an antigen which is common to most people, or if it has an antigen which most people don’t have. Say your blood lacks an antigen which is present on the red cells of the majority of the population. If you receive a transfusion of ‘ordinary’ blood which has that common antigen, it will be recognised as foreign, triggering an immune response with potentially catastrophic results (harmful or disastrous)

When we cut onions, we often say that "Hey Mom , my eyes are burning 😭😭huaaaa"

So , have you ever thought about the reason? 

Why does chopping an onion make you cry?

Onions produce the chemical irritant known as syn-propanethial-S-oxide. It stimulates the eyes’ lachrymal glands so they release tears. Scientists used to blame the enzyme allinase for the instability of substances in a cut onion.

          Recent studies from Japan, however, proved that lachrymatory-factor synthase, (a previously undiscovered enzyme) is the culprit.

The process goes as follows:

1. Lachrymatory-factor synthase is released into the air when we cut an onion.

  2. The synthase enzyme converts the amino acids sulfoxides of the onion into sulfenic acid.

  3. The unstable sulfenic acid rearranges itself into syn-propanethial-S-oxide.

  4. Syn-propanethial-S-oxide gets into the air and comes in contact with our eyes. The lachrymal glands become irritated and produces the tears!

Anti-Onion Gas mask (1917-1919)

Ultrastructure of Mitochondria

Ultrastructure of Mitochondria:

In 1953, Palade and Sjostrand independently described the ultrastructure of mitochondria. Mitochondria are bounded by an envelope consisting of two concentric membranes, the outer and inner membranes. The space between the two membranes is called inter-membrane space.

A number of invaginations occur in the inner membrane; they are called cristae . The space on the interior of the inner membrane is called matrix.

Outer Membrane:

The outer mitochondrial membrane has high permeability to molecules such as sugars, salts, coenzymes and nucleotides etc. It has many similarities with the ER but differs from it in some respects, e.g., mono-amine-oxidase is present in the mitochondrial outer membrane but not in ER.

 The mitochondrial outer membrane contains a number of enzymes and proteins.

Inter-Membrane Space:

The inter-membrane space is divided into two regions:

(1) Peripheral space and

(2) Intracristal space.

Large flattened cristae are connected to the inner membrane by small tubes called peduculi cristae. The inter-membrane space has several enzymes of which “adenylate kinase” is the chief one. This enzyme transfers one phosphate group from ATP to AMP to produce two molecules of ADP.

Inner Membrane:

The inner mitochondrial membrane invaginates inside the matrix; the invaginations are called cristae. This membrane has a high ratio of protein to lipid. The inner membrane contains large number of proteins which are involved in electron transfer (respiratory chain) and oxidative phosphorylation. The respiratory chain is located within the inner membrane, and consists of pyridine nucleotides, within the inner membrane, and consists of pyridine nucleotides, flavoproteins, cytochromes, iron-sulphur proteins and quinones.

Matrix:

The interior of mitochondrion is called matrix. It has granular appearance in electron micrographs. Some large granules ranging from 30 nm to several hundred nanometers in diameter are also present in the matrix. The matrix contains enzymes and factors for Krebs cycle, pyruvate dehydrogenase and the enzymes involved in β-oxidation of fatty acids.

Which came first, Chicken or Egg???

Hey guys,
we have been very close with a question since childhood ,
      and we were all anxious to find out the answer of the question "Which came first , Chicken or Egg? 

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? The chicken, no, the egg, no, the chicken, no, the egg. It's enough to make your head spin right off your neck.

     Basically, many, many moons ago there was a chicken-like bird. It was genetically close to a chicken but wasn't a full-blown chicken yet. we can call it proto-hen.
      So proto-hen laid an egg, and proto-rooster fertilized it. But when the genes from ma and pa almost-chicken fused, they combined in a new way, creating a mutation that accidentally made the baby different from its parents. Although it would take millennia for the difference to be noticed, that egg was different enough to become the official progenitor of a new species, now known as the chicken! So in a nutshell or an eggshell, two birds that weren't really chickens created a chicken egg.

If we need a simple description then here it is-:

Because Ovocleidin-17 protein  is expressed by the hen and not the egg , the bird in which the protein first arose, though having hatched from a non-reinforced egg, would then have laid the first egg having such a reinforced shell: the chicken would have preceded this first 'modern' chicken egg.

          and hence, we have an answer: The egg came first, and then it hatched a chicken.
      

The life expectancy of the father increases with the birth of the daughter

Hey dear friends,

       A huge number of scientists show for the first time that number of daughters was positively related to a longer life span of their fathers, increasing their longevity on average by 74 weeks per daughter born, while number of sons did not have a significant effect on paternal longevity.

                 The sleepless nights and stress that often accompany parenthood may not sound like the ingredients for a longer life, but according to a new study, having daughter could add years to a parent's lifespan.
    
      energetic and nutritional demands of pregnancy and breastfeeding render reproductive costs much higher in women than in men, women with a large number of children should show signs of deterioration in condition, while men with large families should not. However, whether reproductive costs reduce longevity in women is still questionable, and in men this issue has not been adequately addressed. In addition, since sons are energetically more expensive to produce than daughters, having sons should have a more pronounced negative impact on maternal longevity than having daughters. 

     In contrast, in women, the number of daughters and number of sons reduced maternal longevity and did so to the same extent, on average by 95 weeks per son or daughter, indicating that for women, the costs of having sons and daughters are similar.

A cockroach can live for a week without its head.

Can you live without your head?

   
      You can't but a cockroach can live without his head for a week.

A cockroach can live for a week without its head. Due to their open circulatory system, and the fact that they breathe through little holes in each of their body segments, they are not dependent on the mouth or head to breathe. The roach only dies because without a mouth, it can't drink water and dies of thirst.

 How?

After you cut their heads off, very often their necks would seal off just by clotting.
             
            The hardy vermin breathe through spiracles, or little holes in each body segment. Plus, the roach brain does not control this breathing and blood does not carry oxygen throughout the body. Rather, the spiracles pipe air directly to tissues through a set of tubes called tracheae.