Scientists in Philadelphia who have been performing genetic tests on mice have recently made a discovery that could help people fight obesity. Yuxiang Sun of Baylor College of Medicine released a report on Decembere 13th that described his discovery concerning the hormone ghrelin. He performed tests in which mice were genetically modified so that they lacked the ghrelin receptor. These mice burned more energy and stayed thinner than mice that lacked only ghrelin or had both the hormone and the receptor. The reason that they gave for this discovery has that when there was an absence of the receptor, the brown fat cells in the mice made more of a protein called UCP1. This protein is responsible making the power plants of a cell less efficient. Therefore, since UCP1 is causing the brown fat cells to be less efficient, the fat cells end up burning themselves for energy and even end up using fat from white fat cells.
This discovery is crucial to the fight against obesity, because humans also have brown fat cells. If scientists where to create a drug that removed ghrelin receptors from thee brown fat cells in humans, it is possible that humans could automatically burn the amount of calories equivalent to that burned on a 2.5 mile walk. This drug could change the lives of so many people, as there would be a way for people to reach healthy weight and fight obesity without changing their diet and exercise routine.
At this time, Yuxiang Sun is working to determine whether the burned brown fat is directly related to the absence of the receptor or if the mutation caused a change to the nervous system of the mice. In order to find the answer to this question, Sun is simply removing the ghrelin receptor from only the brown fat cells. The sooner Sun is able to determine the cause of the increased fat burning, the sooner other scientists will be able to construct a drug that pinpoints this fat burning area.
If I were to change something about the article, I would rearrange the information that the author presented the reader with. The information in the article jumped back and forth between the hormone, the brown fat and humans, making it difficult to understand her train of thought.
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/67610/title/Mice_missing_protein_burn_more_fat
Heather demonstrated incredible knowledge of the article which showed that she definitely read through it thoroughly enough. The manner in which the review is written is exceptionally informative as it gives backround information about the article all while demonstrating the significance of each piece of information. The third thing I thought she did very well was explain how the story really isn't over. This leaves room so that the reader will want to further look into the story to find more information that goes beyond the review.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things that could be improved on would be to not jam all the most important information in the first couple of sentences. I was able to understand where the entire review was going and what was going to be written after reading only the first paragraph. Another thing woul be to not excessively bombard the reader with enough information to substitute the article itself. In that sense, it wouldn't be a review, it would be another article in itself.
The most interesting part of the article was the fact that a protein is effectively the one thing that is responsible for the speed of an animals metabolism.
Heather wrote a very clear review of her article. She explained the article and the experiment very well. I also think that it was smart to explain the importance of the article in relation of obesity in the world. This article is very interesting and obesity is an important subject that affects many in the world today.
ReplyDeleteI don’t think it was a good idea that Heather criticized the article however I think she is right, they way it was written was confusing. Although she explained the article very well I think she could have given the reader a little more background information as well as explaining the hormones and the proteins.
I was really wowed by the experiment, this is a huge step in the direction of a healthier world.
Heather did a great job conveying the message of her article to the reader. She thoroughly described the results of the tests that were performed on mice without the ghrelin receptor, and explained the significance of brown fat, white fat, ghrelin, and the protein UCP1 in organisms. Heather also was successful at simplifying the article for the reader, by using good sentence structure and paragraph form to make it easily understandable. The actual article is quite convoluted, and, as Heather stated, makes it hard for the reader to grasp the author’s “train of thought,” so to be able to break it down for those reading the review is an incredible skill. In addition, I appreciated the fact that Heather incorporated her personal opinion on the article at the end of her review. Many people neglect to do this, but I think it is a crucial aspect of the review because it shows some sort of the thinking by the reviewer, instead of simply a regurgitation of facts, and provides the reader with ideas on improving articles in general.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I believe Heather could have done better is sticking to more of a brief outline of the article points, instead of a deep synopsis that makes it seem like every tiny detail of the article Is included. The point of a review is to ummarize, and while this article was tricky to work with, there was room for Heather to remove some information. Heather could have also been more careful in terms of her wording and spelling. She may have just made careless small errors in an effort to complete the assignment quickly, but these mistakes contribute to an overall sense of non-investment in her writing.
Overall however, I found the subject of the article and the review very fascinating. The idea that something other than exercise and dieting could help with weight loss is astounding. This finding when doing experiments with mice has a lot of relevance to people and everyday life, which the review makes perfectly clear.