a child’s skull before losing baby teeth.
Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva (FOP for short) is a very rare disease that causes parts of the body (muscles, tendons, and ligaments) to turn to bone when they are damaged. This can often cause damaged joints to fuse together, preventing movement. Unfortunately surgical removal of the bone growths is ineffective as the body “heals” itself by recreating the removed bone. To make matters worse, the disease is so rare that it is often misdiagnosed as cancer, leading doctors to perform biopsies which can spark off worse growth of these bone-like lumps. The most famous case is Harry Eastlack whose body was so ossified by his death that he could only move his lips. His skeleton is now on display at the Mütter Museum.
Glowing Animals: Beasts Shining for Science
Crystal JellyHow does it glow? Green fluorescent protein, naturally occurring.
What can we learn? In 1961 researcher Osamu Shimomura of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Massachusetts noticed a molecule in this jellyfish that glowed bright green under ultraviolet light (as pictured). After extracting the molecule from 10,000 specimens, Shimomura found the protein that creates the glow. At some point, a light bulb went off. Some of Shimomura’s colleagues realized that the protein could be attached to other proteins—enabling scientists to mark proteins of their choice with a green glow. Since then, Shimomura’s green fluorescent protein (GFP) has been used to decrypt previously invisible processes, like the spread of cancer or the development of nerve cells—earning Shimomura and colleagues a Nobel Prize in 2008.
—Chris Combs
Photo © Osamu Shimomura and Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole
(We’ve also made glowing cats with this protein)
Zollinger-Ellison syndrome (ZES) is a rare disorder that causes tumors in the pancreas and duodenum, and ulcers in the stomach and duodenum. The pancreas is a gland located behind the stomach. It produces enzymes that break down fat, protein, and carbohydrates from food, and hormones like insulin that break down sugar. The duodenum is the first part of the small intestine.
Insula: The lobe of the cerebral hemisphere which is located deep within the lateral cerebral fissure under the parietal, frontal, and temporal lobes; it is a location for visceral and autonomic function, including taste; its tissues consist of surface gray matter and some embedded nuclei of gray matter and various expanses of white matter.
