Kelly Baclija
Mr. Ippolito
AP Biology
October 30, 2020
Mcneil, Donald G. “A Malaria Mystery, Partly Solved: What Happens When the Rains End?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 26 Oct. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/10/26/health/malaria-parasites-genetics.html.
Malaria is an infectious disease known for killing around 400,000 people, mainly African children and pregnant women, every year; it is a mosquito-borne illness caused by a parasite and results in symptoms in humans such as fever and chills and sometimes leads to death. Mosquitoes are naturally the most active during the rainy months of the year, and thus this is also when most infections occur. However, this begs the question as to how malaria continues to persist during the dry months when there is a lack of mosquitoes carrying the parasite from human hosts and almost no cases of the disease. A new study in Nature Medicine by researchers from Germany and Mali may have revealed part of the explanation of this: the parasite conducts a genetic change so that it can hide in an infected person’s bloodstream, remaining undetected for months. The study was initially begun by drawing blood regularly from about 600 children and young adults in a rural town in Mali, called Kalifabougou, that has distinct wet and dry seasons; the blood tests concluded that about 20% of participants still had very low levels of parasites that were hidden in some red blood cells, even when the samples’ parasites were not visible under a microscope. The malaria parasite takes over the protein-making machinery of some infected red blood cells, which results in them producing sticky proteins that appear on the cell surface. These cells then cling to walls of the veins and arteries and do not get swept downstream into the spleen where it is usually destroyed--the new study discovered that this process coincides with the seasonal changes. Stiff older cells, as well as those containing multiplying parasites, are caught in the spleen then digested by macrophages (large white blood cells) while only young, flexible red blood cells can pass through. Researchers found that the parasites in red blood cells stopped the production of sticky proteins during the dry season, swept down into the spleen to their destruction, although few cling on and slow down their metabolism, almost as a type of hibernation. This results in those parasites being too “quiet” to cause an immune counterattack that could destroy them, and the human hosts ultimately survived from the low count of cells. The study was praised by numerous scientists, such as Dr. Miriam K. Laufer, a malaria specialist at the University of Maryland’s medical school, saying it “delivered concrete data about things we thought were the case, such as that the dry season infections do not elicit a big immune response.”
I chose to read this article because I thought it was an interesting topic to learn more about since I didn’t know much about malaria or think about how cases are much more likely during the wet season than the dry season (although it is logical). This article is significant because it discusses the new findings of a study as to how malaria parasites are still present in a human host although they may display no symptoms. As a result, scientists can make further advancements in medicine and technology in order to be able to locate the inactive parasites present in red blood cells and also destroy them. This would rid the host of the disease and could possibly prevent hundreds of thousands of people, especially young adults, from dying of malaria. Therefore, not only would society be benefited greatly from the lives saved from this discovery, but science, in general, could become far more advanced and unlock even more discoveries.
I think that the article was relatively well written. It featured much information about the biology behind the idea of red blood cells being invaded by the parasites and the sticky proteins they produced in order to not be swept into the spleen. The author also added many quotes from expert scientists on the topic, which adds much credibility to his article. However, there were also a few weaknesses that I found to be prevalent throughout the reading. For instance, it would have been beneficial if he added more information as to how Africa, or Mali specifically, had been affected by the spread of malaria. Furthermore, he could have also discussed how these new findings could benefit science as well as society in terms of fewer people dying if they understand that parasites can live in human hosts without showing symptoms--this would help the audience understand what this new information means in general and the world for the better.
Julia Reich
ReplyDeleteMr. Ippolito
AP Biology C Even
10/30/20
Mcneil, Donald G. “A Malaria Mystery, Partly Solved: What Happens When the Rains
End?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 26 Oct. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/10/26/health/malaria-parasites-genetics.html.
Hyperlink to Kelly’s Review:
https://bronxvilleapbiology.blogspot.com
Kelly’s review of “A Malaria Mystery, Partly Solved: What Happens When the Rains End?” by Donald Mcneil was extremely well written and captivating. One aspect she did very well was using relatively simple language for the ordinary person with no expert science knowledge. For example, she asks simple questions allowing the reader to have no trouble following her explanation. Secondly, she used paraphrased quotes from experts on the subject, such as researchers in Germany and Mali in an accredited journal, Nature Medicine. Along with her first aspect well done, the paraphrasing helps to simplify the complex science terms. The third aspect Kelly did well was including real life applications from the information found in the studies she summarized. She includes that scientists can make further discoveries in medicine as well as technology to help prevent thousands of people from dying of malaria.
Though Kelly’s review had almost no imperfections, there were two aspects she could have improved on. The first defining crucial words found within her article. As she should assume her audience will have no context or background on the subject, she should define words such as human hosts, parasite, and stick proteins. This could easily be fixed by including a short definition in parenthesis or in a subscript with a corresponding definition below the paper. Secondly, Kelly could have improved her review by conducting further research regarding the impact of these new findings on the people in dense wet climates. This could have made her review much stronger and more interesting. Overall, her review was essentially flawless and her strengths outweighed her weaknesses.
I chose Kelly’s article because the title of her article caught my attention -- the subject seemed very interesting (and it was). Though most people do not have to worry about malaria in the United States, it is still something to be wary of when traveling. Her review opened my eyes to the possibility of housing the disease, even if I don’t show symptoms. This also connects with Covid-19, as many people have the virus in their bodies but do not show symptoms. I am impressed with Kelly’s knowledge on the subject and I would do more research to further understand the science and how it will impact the lives of millions of people.
ReplyDeleteVictoria Ruffo
Mr. Ipp
AP Bio
10/28/20
Citation:
Mcneil, Donald G. “A Malaria Mystery, Partly Solved: What Happens When the Rains End?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 26 Oct. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/10/26/health/malaria-parasites-genetics.html.
Link to Article:
www.nytimes.com/2020/10/26/health/malaria-parasites-genetics.html.
Blog:
https://bronxvilleapbiology.blogspot.com/
For this week’s current event, I commented on Kelly’s review. Overall, Kelly’s review is very strong. She clearly exhibits three main strengths. First, I really enjoyed Kelly’s introduction. Right off the bat, she explains her topic and provides a definition of malaria. For instance, she writes, “Malaria is an infectious disease known for killing around 400,000 people, mainly African children and pregnant women, every year; it is a mosquito-borne illness caused by a parasite and results in symptoms in humans such as fever and chills and sometimes leads to death,” (review). Although most people already know what malaria is, this description allows all readers to fully understand the material. This brief summary of the illness makes Kelly’s article accessible to every audience. Kelly’s second strength is towards the end of her first paragraph where she explains the experiment procedure in great detail. She describes, “The study was initially begun by drawing blood regularly from about 600 children and young adults in a rural town in Mali, called Kalifabougou, that has distinct wet and dry seasons; the blood tests concluded that about 20% of participants still had very low levels of parasites that were hidden in some red blood cells, even when the samples’ parasites were not visible under a microscope,” (review). This part allows the reader to visualize how this experiment would be set up. This study also reveals important information about the malaria illness so it was important to include in the review. Lastly, I liked how Kelly named a specific strength in her third paragraph. Instead of just saying “the article was well written”, Kelly elaborated and supported her claim. She reveals, “It featured much information about the biology behind the idea of red blood cells being invaded by the parasites and the sticky proteins they produced in order to not be swept into the spleen,” (review). After reading the article myself, I agree that this is a very notable strength. Therefore I think that it was a smart choice to include this in the review.
Although this review is well written and detailed, there are still a couple areas where Kelly could improve. In her relevance paragraph, I wish Kelly would have discussed how these new findings could specifically impact the people in Africa. She simply states, “This would rid the host of the disease and could possibly prevent hundreds of thousands of people, especially young adults, from dying of malaria,” (review). I think this review would have been more informative if Kelly had elaborated more on Africa and the impact these findings would have on the African population. To improve, Kelly should offer more specific information about Africa in regards to malaria. Secondly, I wish Kelly included more quotes to support her reasoning in her strengths and weaknesses section of the review. For example, she says,”The author also added many quotes from expert scientists on the topic, which adds much credibility to his article,” (review). Here, Kelly could pull a piece of data from the article to show how this information helped her better understand the topic.
One part of the review that I found particularly interesting was that malaria parasites can be present in the bloodstream but the individual may show no symptoms. I connected this to the coronavirus. Many people who test positive for the coronavirus do not display any of the symptoms. I thought this was a really interesting point to investigate as many illnesses tend to share the same patterns. Knowing this information and what happens within the body when trying to fight an illness can help researchers, scientists and doctors discover cures and ways to help prevent illnesses whether that is malaria or the coronavirus. In the case of malaria, being able to locate these inactive parasites could help save the lives of thousands of people who suffer and die from malaria.
ReplyDeleteLink to Original Article:
ReplyDeleteMcneil, Donald G. “A Malaria Mystery, Partly Solved: What Happens When the Rains End?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 26 Oct. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/10/26/health/malaria-parasites-genetics.html.
Link to Review:
Baclija, Kelly. A Malaria Mystery, Partly Solved: What Happens When the Rains End?, 1 Jan. 1970, bronxvilleapbiology.blogspot.com/2020/10/a-malaria-mystery-partly-solved-what.html.
In her review of Donald G McNeil’s article “A Malaria Mystery, Partly Solved: What Happens When the Rains End?” Kelly Baclja did a great job of summarizing and critiquing the New York Times publication. One aspect of Kelly’s review in particular that I really enjoyed was her introduction to the article and the subject in general. In the past, I have worked in communities in other countries where malaria is especially prevalent, so I have a good understanding of the illness and the ways in which it can impact a community. I thought Kelly had a really good approach to opening her review, because not all people are familiar with malaria and so her introduction set a really strong background for the rest of the information presented in her review. I also thought that Kelly did a good job of summarizing the study from the article. After reading the article, I found myself going back several times to reread sections because I found it to be very dense, especially when describing the goal of the study and the way in which it was conducted. I thought that Kelly did an excellent job of pulling the most important facts and figures from the article while still maintaining a clear and coherent style of writing. For example, I thought she did a really good job when she was summarizing some of the data from the study. I found it easy to digest and not too dense or boring. I also thought that Kelly’s critique of the article was really well-written. I am fairly familiar with the work of Donald G McNeil because I had to follow his publications in the New York Times for a couple months last year as part of an AP Lang assignment, and I agreed with many aspects of her critique. I definitely agree with her statement that the information presented in his article is very credible because he uses a number of reputable sources. I also agreed that he should have added more information as to how malaria has impacted specific communities. Although I have a decent amount of background knowledge on the topic because of my past experiences, some of my peers might not and I agree with Kelly and her statement that this would have been beneficial to McNeil’s audience.
Though there are not many areas in which I can critique Kelly’s review, there are some slight suggestions that I can offer. For one thing, I think it would have been very effective if Kelly had perhaps gone more in depth about the ways in which scientists can make advancements in order to locate the inactive parasites present in red blood cells. I don’t think that she should have added too much or it would have taken away from her review as a whole, but maybe one or two sentences would be beneficial. Also, I think it could have been beneficial if Kelly had done a brief description or analysis of the quote that ends her first paragraph. Although the introduction to the quote does provide the reader with some idea as to what the speaker is trying to get across, I think one or two more sentences about the quote or possibly other scientists that agree with her could have been beneficial as well.
I learned several things from both the original article and Kelly’s review, but if I had to choose the one that stood out to me the most I would say it was the fact that the parasite is able to conduct a genetic change so that it can hide in an infected person’s bloodstream and can remain undetected for months. The constant changing state of nature and biology never ceases to amaze me, and so to learn that this parasite can go undetected for so long really surprised me. It also made me wonder what else we don’t know about other parasites and other species in nature.
Hugh Duffy
ReplyDeleteMr. Ippolito
AP Biology C Even
10/30/20
Mcneil, Donald G. “A Malaria Mystery, Partly Solved: What Happens When the Rains
End?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 26 Oct. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/10/26/health/malaria-parasites-genetics.html.
Kelly’s Blog Post:
https://bronxvilleapbiology.blogspot.com
I found Kelly’s Review of “A Malaria Mystery, Partly Solved: What Happens When the Rains End?” by Donald Mcneil to be very interesting and engaging as a reader. I think the greatest asset of this review is Kelly’s explanation on how the Malaria virus remains within the host for an extended period of time. Many people (including myself before reading this review), were likely under the impression that Malaria is a short-term illness that one either survives or dies from, but this study suggests something quite different. Kelly’s use of information was essential to my understanding of the topic; enhancing my overall comprehension. The third positive aspect of Kelly’s review was her connection between this study and furthering the medical field technologically. She states that a similar approach could be used against other parasites, and this isn’t farfetched.
I think Kelly’s review was fantastic, but one thing I think she could improve on is her word choice. While I had no problem with understanding her work, she used sophisticated language that someone else may have to Google in order to continue reading with confidence. Even this however, was very minimal, and Kelly did define terms like macrophages for those who were unaware of their function. Additionally, I would have liked to see Kelly connect this study to other specific disease-causing parasites, rather than just state that this method could be used on them.
Kelly’s review was brilliantly written, hooking me within the first two sentences. I chose to read this review specifically because of this hook. Malaria is such a huge virus in foreign nations, and I think this article was very relevant, and a great choice on Kelly’s part, especially in the era of COVID-19. I’ve always been interested in biotechnology, and the overall advancements of medicine, and Kelly’s review exposed me to an area of which I hadn’t known before.
McNeil, Donald G. “A Malaria Mystery, Partly Solved: What Happens When the Rains End?” The
ReplyDeleteNew York Times, The New York Times, 26 Oct. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/10/26/health/malaria-parasites-genetics.html.
Baclija, Kelly. A Malaria Mystery, Partly Solved: What Happens When the Rains End?, 27 Oct.
2020, bronxvilleapbiology.blogspot.com/2020/10/a-malaria-mystery-partly-solved-what.html.
Kelly Baclija wrote a detailed and well-rounded review of the article, “A Malaria Mystery, Partly Solved: What Happens When the Rains End?” by Donald G. McNeil Jr. Baclija did a great job at providing background information on her topic, the disease Malaria, and not just jumping straight into the findings of her article. The influence and severity of the Malaria disease were delivered concisely but in a very adequate way as to leave the readers satisfied with the knowledge being provided. This leads to her next strongpoint of this review: Kelly used fairly simple language that conveyed her own ideas as well as those stated in the article in a very accessible manner. Though her review still sounded professional and well thought out, Baclija did not feel the need to fill her writing with scientific jargon that would need to be analyzed and deciphered. This is very helpful to the flow of the review because Baclija not only provided information on the disease, its symptoms, and the outcomes of the study, but she also went in-depth on the biological processes that were impacted. Even then, Baclija did a good job of explaining this complex material in a more simplified language. An additional strong asset of this review was the connection between this specific study and how advancements can be made in scientific and medical fields by using the knowledge that the parasite can remain dormant in the body for far longer than previously thought. Not only can this information save lives currently, but it can change the way diseases such as Malaria are studied to find cures.
Despite all the positive aspects of this review, I would have liked to see more research done on the different regions that contain high infection rates of Malaria. The article only referred to climates that have both a wet and dry season, and this is not the case in many of the areas that Malaria is a prevalent issue. I would like to have heard ideas on how to control the spread of Malaria during times when there is no shortage of the moisture that keeps the mosquito population dense. Also, though the simple language was very well utilized for explanations in her review, Baclija could have incorporated more high-level vocabulary and defined the words to give a greater complexity to her review.
Reading Kelly Baclija’s review on the article, “A Malaria Mystery…” was not only interesting but eye opening for me. It can be easy to forget about the strong presence of diseases like Malaria and their devastating side effects when such does not directly impact the area in which we live. As someone living in the United States, I only need to worry about the implications of these diseases when traveling somewhere exotic, but for many people, it is a part of their daily lives. This review served as a reminder for my own privilege and was also made especially relevant during a period of dealing with a global pandemic, COVID-19, since precautionary measures of preventing the spread have become a daily ritual for us now.
Nate Kim
ReplyDeleteAP Bio
10/29/20
Mcneil, Donald G. “A Malaria Mystery, Partly Solved: What Happens When the Rains End?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 26 Oct. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/10/26/health/malaria-parasites-genetics.html.
Baclija, Kelly. “A Malaria Mystery, Partly Solved: What Happens When the Rains End?.” Blogspot.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Oct. 2020.
Kelly's deep dive into "A Malaria Mystery, Partly Solved: What Happens When the Rains End?" is a brilliant display of analytical genius that is able to properly inform her audience on the topic of malaria and parasites in the human body. Kelly does a great job of weaving in her own personal commentary in the intro paragraph where she gives a summary of the article. As a result, there is great flow between ideas and the summary becomes more cohesive as a result. I loved the way Kelly gave clear reasons as to why she chose this article. It really gives us great insight into her thoughts and creates a connection with the audience that makes her seem more trustworthy and reliable. Lastly, I liked the way she connection and extrapolation of ideas. Kelly does not just regurgitate the ideas from the article. She adds to them with original and unique thoughts of her own.
Although I think Kelly's review was top-notch, I believe there are some areas for improvement. Kelly uses sophisticated vocabulary that could make her writing a little hard to understand for readers that are not well-versed in the field of biology or science in general. This is easily remedied by just defining more terms or using simpler language. Kelly should also work on not using personal pronouns. In an analytical piece, she shouldn't talk about what she thinks. Although I liked her addition of her own thoughts, an analytical piece for the most part should be her analyzing what is given and adding addition information where needed.
Kelly's writing style and interesting article made her analysis very fun and interesting to read. I learned about red blood cells and their role in hiding dormant malaria parasites unknowingly. I learned about Malaria and the human body in general as well! In a time where a deadly virus is at the top of everyone's mind, choosing an article about malaria was very current of Kelly. Kudos to her! This analysis definitely changed my perception of safety and my body.