Ashland University Blog of Science

          Whenever you make a trip to the doctor there is a good chance that you will come out of the office with a prescription. Most of the time these prescriptions are for antibiotics. Antibiotics normally make you feel better within a few days of taking them. This is because antibiotics are products that kill or inhibit the growth of the bacteria that caused the sickness within your body, which is a very good thing. But what if your antibiotics no longer helped? This is something that may occur in the future.           They always say that practice makes perfect. Have you ever played a video game and died on a level? Well after multiple times of playing the level you eventually live and move on in the game. You will look back and wonder how you even got stuck on that level in the first place. This is a sensually how bacteria become resistant to antibiotics. Antibiotics are the challenges in the levels and the bacteria are you. Aft...

What exactly is Huntington’s disease? To start off it is a genetic illness that often occurs in people during their thirties and forties. This stage is called the adult-onset Huntington disease stage that is the most common form of the disorder. In comparison to adult-onset we see the less common form known as the juvenile form. This starts to become present in the stage of childhood or adolescence. This condition is considered to be an autosomal dominant pattern. What this tells us that one copy of the gene that became altered has enough power to bring forward the disorder. Due to this being a genetic disorder, often the altered gene is passed along from a parent that was also affected. The gene that bring about this disorder can be identified as the HTT gene. Huntington’s disease comes about by the repetition of a nucleotide. The repeated trinucleotides are CAG, which are pictured below. They have done studies that show in adult-onset Huntington’s that this repeat is present 40-50 ...

My mother has a 50/50 chance of growing old. That means I also have a 50/50 chance of having the same outcome as her. Why? Huntington’s Disease, or HD. HD is also known as the family disease because just like having the same eye color as your dad, you can have the same disease as him. This disease runs in the family, meaning that it can be passed down from generation to generation. In a family, the disease will die off if it happens to never get passed down. For example, the father in the family has HD, he has one kid so that child has a 50% chance of developing the disease. If the child does develop the disease, then his children all have a 50% chance of also developing that disease. But if the father never passes down HD to his only child then the disease can never be passed down again, the disease can not skip generations. Everyone technically has the gene that causes HD but only the people who get passed down the expansion of the gene will eventually develop HD. More than 200,...

          It’s 2:00pm on a Wednesday afternoon and you are on your sixth trip to the bathroom since waking up at 8:00am. You have had enough, as this has been happening day and night the entire week, and decide to make a visit to your doctor’s office for a checkup. While there, you explain that you have had excessive diarrhea for the past four days. Your doctor takes a stool sample and tells you to avoid any trigger foods you may have for the time being. Later in the week you hear that your stool was found to contain a bacteria known as Clostridium difficile .           C. difficile , or C. diff , as it is commonly known, is a bacterial species that attacks the large intestine, causing inflammation known as colitis. It is most commonly acquired in a healthcare setting, where many patients have an already weakened immune system. This germ is highly infectious, with close to half a million infections in the United States in 2011. That y...

 Biologists have spent a large amount of time discovering these invasive species as well as analyzing them to gather as much information as possible on these species. So, first what is an invasive species let alone an invasive plant? An invasive species is defined as a non-native plant to the ecosystem, and the introduction of causes are to health of humans or the ecosystem or economic damage. Given that one of the defining features of an invasive species is does it cause harm, this a serious issue if certain species find there way into an ecosystem. There are several species of plants that are labeled as invasive in the united states. Some examples are, Purple Loosestrife, Japanese Honeysuckle, Norway Maple, and Reed Canarygrass. These species are very effective at invading and their spread and control of their ecosystems. So, how and why can these plants take control of ecosystem? Usually these invasive plants find their way into disturbed ecosystems such as ones that are distu...

The California condor is one of the most magnificent feats when it comes to the avian world in North America. This large bird has wingspan of about 9 feet and can weigh up to 20 – 25 pounds. This particular condor can be found throughout the western United States, but mainly in California, Arizona and in southern Utah. Their habitats include isolated rocky cliffs and crevices. The kicker with this species is that they have been protected by federal law as an endangered species since 1967. The species was almost lost as a whole, if it were not until the 1980s where conservation efforts lead to people finding the remaining twenty or so wild condors and bringing them back into captivity. As of 1987, there were no wild California condors in the wild. They were all brought into captivity and were initiated into breeding programs with the ultimate goal of reintroducing the species back into the wild. The California condor species inevitably got to this point because of human centered a...