How to Grow a Planet

Plants have been one of the most powerful forces on Earth since the apparition of life. They have evolved from nothing to everything using their magnificent strategies to survive in our planet. From algae and early ferns to conifers and flowering plants, this kingdom has achieved the ultimate power to control, in some ways, life o Earth. In an approaching to this kingdom, BBC Two is now broadcasting a TV series called How to Grow a Planet, produced by Andrew Thompson and presented by Prof. Iain Stewart.

Two of three episodes were already broadcasted. In the second one, scientist Iain Steward leads us to the evolution of green plants throughout millennia until the apparition of the first flowering plant. Today, an impressive plant in New Guinea, Amborella trichopada, is the oldest survivor of the age of the first flowers. With white new petals it was able to attract insects to take its pollen from one flower to another. So powerful that strategy became that almost half of the planet is now covered by the descendants of those first plants with the smartest mutation ever. Indeed, the evolution of the animal kingdom would never have been as we know today if flowering plants had not ever appeared on Earth.

In an attempt of people being aware of their surrounding environment, this series is the best option to spread both, knowledge and consciousness, about the gorgeous history of our planet.

How to Grow a Planet, BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01c6c2b

The end of a year: 2010, the year of biodiversity.

Merry Christmas!

Here we are, six months after our beginnig in this task and 2010 is nearly finishing. In less than 24 hours, the year of biodiversity ends but not the spirit that works with us, giving information and researching new and amazing news.

A new year begins and Grubial wishes you a very happy new year. We hope that our trip is still at the begining. Many things are still unknown and the admiration is allways the source of our knowledge.

We wish you the best things in the world.

Grubial Team.

AIDS. A current disease.

Last 1^st of December we celebrated the World Day Against AIDS, a disease which kills more than 30 million people in the world.

The HIV virus, or human immunodeficiency virus, which belongs to retrovirus family, causes this disease. HIV virion (about 100 nm in diameter) has two copies of its own single-strain RNA protected by a protein layer, the nucleocapsid. It also has more layers, but the important one is its lipidic bilayer, which comes from the infected cell but including viral glycoproteins such as GP120 or GP41, the important ones to infect new T cells using their receptors for these glycoproteins. When T cells get infected, the virus destroys them, reducing our immune system capabilities.

Human immunodeficiency virus structure.

Internally, there are many enzymes which cause many awful effects to humans. First of all, proteases degrade all the layers covering the virus so the RNA can penetrate to the host cell. Another one is inverse transcriptase which synthesizes double strained DNA from single strained viral RNA. This fact is essential for the replication process. Finally, retroviral integrase integrates viral DNA into the cell's genome and then, all viral proteins can be synthesized to assemble the new copies of the virus so they can keep on infecting new cells.

Then, a virus sticks to a T cell by recognizing cell receptors (like a key opening its lock) in a process called fixation (1); that's the reason about losing immune system capabilities. After that, the two layers (T cell and virus ones) merge so the viral genome penetrates (2) into the cell. In the cytoplasm the protease can play its paper degrading the nucleocapsid. At this moment, inverse transcriptase joins to the free viral RNA and begins to transcribe RNA into DNA (3) which is integrated to the cell genome by the retroviral integrase after (4). Integrating the virus genome allows it to use available cell replication tools to replicate and transcribe viral DNA to synthesize the proteins (5) to build new viral particles which will infect another cells (6 & 7).

HIV life cycle.

When HIV gets to the blood it is recognized as an antigen so macrophages destroy them and they promote antibody synthesis. By this time, the person is already infected but it is not possible to detect these specific antibodies until 3 months later, a period known by as "window period". If the infected one is in this period of the disease, all tests will conclude wrongly that this person is not infected, although he or she is actually infected (false negative). The infected will go through three different phases of symptoms: during the 2-4 first weeks he/she will mainly have fever and rash in the arms and legs; in the second phase, the infected one will not suffer any important disease: it is the asymptomatic phase, which can last for months to years. During this second phase viral particles replicate themselves into the lymph nodes. Finally, infection will develop into AIDS after 10-12 years. AIDS is actually the name of the third phase in which VIH wins the battle against immune system so the body's defenses are reduced and the infected one suffers many serious illnesses. In this period of time CD4 T cells population falls below 400 cell /μl. Kaposi's sarcoma is a very important symptom in this period.

VIH Infection phases.

This disease has no cure despite all the investigation groups that study it in the world. There are antiretroviral drugs which can reduce viral population to insignificant rates but they don't cure it. They only make patients' life easier. The best therapy against HIV is to use condom during sex. It would prevent almost 90% transmission cases.

Nowadays, HIV is a pandemic, especially in underdeveloped countries (Africa leads the ranking with more than 16 million infected people) because of lack of information, mankind, and poor health service. In countries like Spain where we are overcrowded of information, there are still new infections every year. Without scientists and doctors efforts, which fight against the disease, we would be lost. People who know how to stop this pandemic have to do something, something like writing to inform about the danger. Just something…

The suicide of wood lemmings. The Myth.

Throughout history, many events have amazed mankind: huge disasters, amazing effects, unexpected species, unnusual behaviours and many things else. However, human beings provoke many of these events. We can build fantastic buildings and we can also destroy our rain forests to get economical benefits and many more. From the beginning, we love inventing stories and myths about our surrounding areas and cultures, many times because of we are afraid of things we don't know or because we don't trust other people and cultures. If we can't explain the process we are watching at, we'll invent something to explain it. It is very important to improve our knowledge because without it we are completely lost. Nowadays, we mustn't let people do whatever they want. There are forbidden things, such as throwing defenseless animals off a cliff.

Family: Cricetidae

Specie: Myopus schisticolor Lilljeborg (1844)

This rodent lives in the northern hemisphere high latitudes. There is a myth flying over them: their method to control population size. They were supposed to migrate to commit suicide later. Those animals have a thick fur and a compressed body. They dig their burrows to protect themselves against arctic prairies cold weather in North America and areas from Eurasia, such as Russia or Scandinavia. They eat grasses, roots or fruits which are hardly found in frozen taiga and tundra. In the 50s, Disney filmed a documentary called "White Wilderness" which was awarded with an Oscar in 1959. They won the statue because of their great job filming the migration of wood lemmings and their later suicide by jumping off a cliff. They called that behavior as an "honorable act of fellowship" to control population size.

Despite the film, scientists around the world didn't trust on it, so they tried to demostrate that fact. It was an unusual method of control unseen before. Normally, predators or food shortages control animal population size. After all, the lie was discovered. The false sequence of suicide was filmed by James R. Simon in Alberta (Canada), in an area where we can't find these animals. It is supposed that wood lemmings were bought in farms and pushed to jump off the cliff. This animal abuse case was reported by The Fifth Estate magazine of Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1982

New goals

Here we are, GRUBIAL typing a new blog in english to spread biological knowledge in a different lenguage. Slowly we will translate all published entries at GRUBIAL so more people will be able to read them.

A very big task which we accept willingly. We hope to see you soon.