Biology
Do humans have more than five senses?
A common misconception that’s being propagated even by most schools is that human beings only have a total of five senses. Actually, schools are mainly responsible for spreading this outdated information, but then again, they often tend to do that. I spent most of my life believing this until one faithful day a couple of years back when I decided to do what any responsible young adult does when he or she wants to learn something new or make sure that what they know is in fact correct. I Googled it. I can’t remember why I decided to question my knowledge of the human body that day, but I’m certainly glad I did. Sure enough, my good friend Google brought up a plethora of results and among them were various articles and videos talking about more than five sense. How could this be?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUn7zy8Ya20
Well, it turns out that I already knew some of the stuff I was reading and listening to, and you know it as well. For example, when you’re feeling cold or hot that’s another sense in and of itself called thermoreception. Aside from being able to sense temperature, your skin can also feel pain (also known as nociception), pressure, and I’m sure you’ve felt itching more than a couple of times. All of these might seem to be related to the sense of touch, but according to scientists each of them is a distinct sense, which actually makes sense (pun intended) when you think about it. So, right off the bat we can see that there are more than the five senses taught in school, namely smell, touch, hearing, taste, and sight. Speaking of the latter, researchers have found that there are three types of receptors in our eyes, two of which directly contribute to sight. Specifically, brightness is detected thanks to the rod photoreceptors while color comes courtesy of the cone photoreceptors. I’m mentioning this because it’s generally considered that each of them is technically a distinct sense.
The remaining “traditional” senses are pretty straight forward, although there are some disagreements in regards to taste. Similar to how eyes have different receptors for color and brightness, the tongue has different receptors for various flavors such as sweet, salty, sour, bitter, or umami. That said, these receptors – or taste buds – are different in the sense that they can each taste all the flavors, so they’re no specialized like the rods and cones. Granted, some taste buds are more sensitive to certain flavors than others depending on where they’re located on the tongue, but I’ll talk a more about that in a moment. Here I would just like to mention that it is generally accepted that the tongue is not responsible for four or five senses despite featuring all the different receptors. With that out of the way, let’s talk a bit about a taste-related fun fact.
According to the tongue map, you shouldn’t even be able to taste umami.
Since I’ve already mentioned something about false information being taught in schools, there is yet another misconception that I would like to address. Legend has it that certain parts of your tongue are solely responsible for allowing you to taste one of the aforementioned flavors. For example, the tip of the tongue is responsible for sweet while the back of the tongue is responsible for bitter. It goes without saying that this can’t be true as that would mean that you wouldn’t be able to taste something bitter if you were to put in on the tip of the tongue, which you most certainly can. In other words, the taste map is just as false as the idea that we only have five senses.
One of the main goals of this article thus far has been to share a bit of interesting info about the “traditional five senses” in order to prepare you for some of the more less known senses you may not know about, or may not have considered to be senses before. Oh yes, we’re getting to the good stuff now. One of these senses goes by the name of proprioception and it’s being described as being your ability to perceive your own body parts, specifically arms and legs. If you want to experiment with it, just close your eyes and wave your arms a little. Now see if you can figure out where your arms are while your eyes are still closed. Of course you can. Whether you look at them or not, you always know where your arms and legs are in relation to the rest of the body.
You’d better hope that your proprioception is up to par if you’re undergoing a field sobriety test.
Similar to all the other senses, there are instances when you can lose your proprioception, in which case you’ll have a very difficult time performing virtually any action. Completely losing this sense happens very rarely, but partial loss of proprioception happens on a daily basis for many people if they’re drunk or on drugs. If you’ve ever experienced one of those states you likely know that even walking straight can become problematic. In fact, that’s exactly what the cops are testing for when they tell you to walk in a straight line or touch your nose with your finger. Easy for a sober person, not so much for someone who partially lost their sense of proprioception due to alcohol or drugs. Proprioception aside, those substances, as well as various medical conditions can also affect you sense of equilibrioception, more commonly referred to as the sense of balance. Otherwise known as the vestibular sense, equilibrioception is tied to the inner ear but has little to do with hearing. Instead, it helps you sense direction, acceleration, movement, walk upright, and as its many names suggest, also helps you keep your balance while walking.
The next sense I want to talk about can be just as useful as all the others that were already mentioned, although it’s a bit more situational. Magnetoreception is being described as one’s ability to sense magnetic fields around them. A number of animals use magnetoreception for the purposes of navigation as it gives them a better sense of direction and altitude. Some examples include bats, homing pigeons, and various species of invertebrates. Generally speaking, this sense is most useful for flying animals, however, some land ones are known to use it as well. Humans also have this sense to a lesser extent, although only some can make good use of it. Just like some people are able to see or hear better than others. those with a strong sense of magnetoreception are better at knowing where North is without looking at a compass, which can come in handy if you’re lost in the woods and don’t have a map. As mentioned, it’s pretty situational.
Magnetoreception might come in handy if you can learn how to harness it.
Unlike magnetoreception, thirst and hunger are not a mystery to most human beings and they count as senses, too. Generally speaking, you can sense when your body needs food or water and you can also sense when you’ve had enough. There is some debate regarding this seeing as how you can often ignore this sense and go days without eating or eat even some more after your body tells you that you’re full. Although sometimes enjoyable, I don’t advise the last past as it lead to vomiting, which comes as a result of yet another sense called the chemoreceptor trigger zone. Sure enough, that was just as example as this sense can be triggered by various other factors as well. Aside from all of those, there are a few other non-traditional senses according to my other good friend Wikipedia, such as the sense that controls your breathing frequency, or the one that causes your cheeks to blush. I’ll skip a couple of them in order to touch upon something that’s a little bit more interesting.
An often debated topic when it comes to the senses is time, or rather, how we perceive it. Scientists have come to the conclusion that our ability to sense the passage of time is governed not by one, but multiple mechanisms that can be found throughout various parts of the brain. Though we’ve yet to fully understand these mechanisms, we do know that one of the components is responsible for our circadian rhythms, or 24-rhythms. Known as the suprachiasmatic nucleus, this component is located in the hypothalamus. Much like all of our other senses, the sense of time – or chronoception – can also be distorted by a variety of factors such as drugs or medical conditions like Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenia. Interestingly, our perception of time can also change based on our emotional states or when we’re in a fight-or-flight situation. Age also plays an important role when it comes to chronoception, with young people generally being better than older ones at estimating time intervals. The reason why many young adults often complain that some days seem to last “forever” is because they do in fact experience time at a slower rate. By comparison, older people are often heard saying things like “where have the years gone?”. In short, if you feel like time is running faster as you get older, it’s because it does. Tick tock.
The bottom line is that humans do have more than five senses even though some are less obvious while others are not yet fully understood. The traditional five senses model is believed to have been proposed by Greek scientist Aristotel or one of his contemporaries back in the day. Aristotel was undoubtedly a smart guy, but he also lived between the years 384–322 BC, so many of his theories have become a bit outdated by now. We’ve learned a lot about the human body in the meantime and we’ll continue to learn even more as time passes. Perhaps some day we’ll even come up with ways of adding even more senses, or enhancing the ones found in our already impressive repertoire. I don’t know about you, but I could really go for some better hearing or vision, especially in the dark. Echolocation would be nice to have, too.
Sorry Aristotle, but your five senses model is a bit outdated now.
Biology
Weight Loss Launchpad: Space Technology Enhances the Effectiveness of Obesity mRNA Treatment
Researchers at Penn Engineering have devised an innovative approach for the synthesis of a vital component of lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), drawing inspiration from space shuttle technology. LNPs play a crucial role in the administration of mRNA therapeutics, as exemplified by the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines. They enhance the ease of LNP manufacturing and enhance their efficacy in facilitating the transportation of mRNA into cells for medical interventions.
In an article published in Nature Communications, Michael J. Mitchell, an Associate Professor in the Department of Bioengineering, presents a novel approach for the synthesis of ionizable lipidoids. These lipidoids are crucial chemical constituents of lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) that play a crucial role in safeguarding and delivering therapeutic payloads. In this study, Mitchell et al. conducted an investigation of the efficacy of mRNA drug delivery for the treatment of obesity as well as the potential of gene-editing techniques for the management of hereditary disorders.
Optimizing the Production Process
Prior research has demonstrated that lipidoids possessing branching tails exhibit superior efficacy in delivering mRNA to cells. However, the processes involved in synthesizing these molecules are both time-consuming and expensive. According to Xuexiang Han, a postdoctoral student in the Mitchell Lab and co-first author of the research, we present an innovative approach for the effective and economical production of these lipidoids.
The procedure entails the amalgamation of three chemical compounds, namely an amine “head,” two alkyl epoxide “tails,” and two acyl chloride “branched tails.” The observed similarity between the fully developed lipidoid and a space shuttle affixed to two booster rockets is not a mere coincidence. Han, a college student, recounts that a documentary on the space shuttle left a lasting impression on him due to the remarkable design of the solid rocket boosters that facilitated the shuttle’s entry into orbit. According to Han, it was determined that the addition of two branch tails as “boosters” to the lipidoid might enhance the transportation of mRNA.
The addition of branching tails greatly improved the ability of LNPs containing the new lipidoid to deliver mRNA to specific cells, similar to how boosters help a rocket get into the atmosphere. “We saw a big increase in the production of a hormone that controls metabolism in certain cells after these lipidoids were used to deliver mRNA.” This development is highly promising, particularly in the context of obesity treatment,” states Mitchell.
The article titled “In situ combinatorial synthesis of degradable branched lipidoids for systemic delivery of mRNA therapeutics and gene editors,” authored by Xuexiang Han, Junchao Xu, Ying Xu, Mohamad-Gabriel Alameh, Lulu Xue, Ningqiang Gong, Rakan El-Mayta, Rohan Palanki, Claude C. Warzecha, Gan Zhao, Andrew E. Vaughan, James M. Wilson, Drew Weissman, and Michael J. Mitchell, was published in Nature Communications on February 26, 2024.
The provided DOI, 10.1038/s41467-024-45537-z,
The research was carried out at the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science and received funding from the National Institutes of Health (Award DP2 TR002776), the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface, the National Science Foundation CAREER Award (CBET-2145491), and the American Cancer Society (Grant RSG-22-122-01-ET).
Biology
Skin cell DNA could potentially be utilized to create eggs for in vitro fertilization in the future
Researchers are exploring a new process that has the potential to transform fertility treatment by transferring DNA from skin cells into a donor egg. In the future, this technology could allow women without viable eggs and men in same-sex relationships to have children who are genetically linked to them, although it is not yet ready for clinical usage.
Egg cells that are damaged or deteriorated due to disease, medical procedures, or aging frequently lead to infertility. This treatment involves exchanging the nucleus of a donor egg with the nucleus of a skin cell from the parent to address the issue. After the process, you get an operational egg that only contains genetic material from the intended parent and not from the donor.
The process is known as somatic cell nuclear transfer, and despite its name, it is complex and intricate.
There is a precedent from almost 20 years ago, when the first-ever cloning of an animal, Dolly the sheep, generated interest in adapting this method to people.
Dolly was produced using genetic material from a lone adult sheep. The experts from Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) explained the novel procedure, which enables the creation of embryos with DNA from both parents.
We are specifically excluding the topic of human cloning.
In January 2022, the researchers initially confirmed the feasibility of their experimental approach. The recent study has advanced this by showing how to attain an accurate chromosome count in the egg cell from the start.
Human sex cells, known as gametes, are haploid, containing half the number of chromosomes compared to other cells in the body. When a haploid egg cell and a haploid sperm cell fertilize one another, the resulting embryo becomes diploid and has a full complement of chromosomes.
OHSU’s team extracted egg cells from mice and removed their nuclei, then substituted them with nuclei from mouse skin cells. “But wait!” you exclaimed. Are skin cells diploid? They are indeed, but the team has a clever answer. They can prompt the implanted nucleus to release half of its chromosomes, creating a haploid cell that closely resembles a normal egg cell.
The eggs can undergo in vitro fertilization (IVF) with sperm, a common process utilized in fertility clinics worldwide. When successful, it leads to the creation of an embryo with chromosomes from both parents.
The approach has an advantage in the rapid production of eggs. Alternative approaches now being studied involve converting skin cells into induced pluripotent stem cells and then guiding these cells to develop into eggs or sperm.
Dr. Paula Amato, the study author, clarified that they are bypassing the process of cell reprogramming. Our technique’s advantage lies in its ability to circumvent the lengthy culture time required for cell reprogramming. Over the course of several months, numerous detrimental genetic and epigenetic alterations might occur.
The ultimate goal, as outlined by senior author Dr. Shoukhrat Mitalipov, is to create eggs for those who do not possess their own, but achieving this objective is still some years in the future. Aleksei Mikhalchenko, the primary author, emphasized the importance of doing a comprehensive assessment of safety, efficacy, and ethical considerations before considering the technique for clinical application.
The Supreme Court of Alabama’s declaration that embryos should be considered as children has brought IVF back into the public spotlight, with many predicting it would be a significant topic in the upcoming US presidential election. The implications of advancements in assisted reproduction will have a global impact, as approximately 1 in 6 people globally are impacted by infertility.
Using a donor egg without integrating DNA from the donor would be a significant and innovative development in reproductive treatment. This work has advanced science’s comprehension of how this concept could perhaps be realized in the future.
The research is featured in Science Advances.
Alzheimer’s disease is a significant health concern for humanity currently. In recent years, there has been significant progress in the creation of highly promising medicinal treatments, along with the testing of revolutionary medicines and diagnostic methods. Debates persist over the true etiology of the disease. A novel proposal proposes that a complex interaction between two proteins may reveal a “mechanical basis” for Alzheimer’s disease.
The paper has recently been published as a preprint and has not yet been subjected to external peer review. The authors from around the world explained the experiments that were used to come up with a six-part theory about how the protein talin interacts with the Alzheimer’s protein amyloid precursor protein (APP) and how it might play a part in the development of the disease. They also discussed the possibility of targeting this system with drugs.
We spoke to Dr. Ben Goult, a senior author and Professor of Mechanistic Cell Biology at the University of Liverpool, regarding the new research.
Goult has a longstanding relationship with the talin protein. In 2021, he proposed a new theory dubbed the MeshCODE theory to explain how memories could be preserved in the brain. The hypothesis proposes that memories could be physically encoded using a talin molecule’s capacity to transition between two stable configurations, similar to how a mechanical computer utilizes binary switches, with each talin shape representing either “0” or “1.”.
Goult and the team have conducted a number of experiments suggesting that talin may not only be responsible for encoding memories in the brain but also be involved in their deterioration in Alzheimer’s disease.
“The significant milestones included demonstrating experimentally the binding of talin to APP and creating a scaled model of APP,” Goult explained to IFLScience. “This video we created accurately depicts full-length proteins to scale, allowing viewers to easily understand the processes.”
Goult promptly reached out to Dr. Julien Chapuis at the Institut Pasteur de Lille, France, with the obtained results. Chapuis’ team had been methodically evaluating various proteins’ impacts on APP. Talin was omitted from their published findings since it did not meet their established criteria.
“Talin has a significant impact on APP processing compared to other proteins when analyzing the data.” Goult informed IFLScience.
Upon integrating our research on talin as a memory molecule with MeshCODE, I recognized a coherent connection, prompting me to commence writing this new study. As everything began to align, it was quite remarkable. Observing the genetic and molecular data coming together was exhilarating over the final months of writing this.
The scientists propose that APP proteins may form a mesh structure that physically links the two sides of a synapse, the space between two neurons where nerve signals travel. Accurate processing of amyloid precursor protein (APP) is crucial for preserving the synchronization of the synapse. However, errors in this process might result in the development of Alzheimer’s disease by disrupting the binary code, known as the MeshCODE, composed of talin “1s” and “0s,” as discussed above. Alzheimer’s disease progresses through the brain when this failure extends throughout brain networks.
This study offers a novel perspective on the potential role of APP in normal neuronal activity. Goult explained to IFLScience that errors in mechanical homeostasis can lead to issues.
The explanation fits with what we are learning about the pathology of Alzheimer’s, especially the presence of misfolded amyloid-β protein plaques in the brains of people with the disease, which are caused by improper processing of APP.
“It also suggests several potential new approaches to treating Alzheimer’s or detecting it sooner,” Goult remarked.
This is all still theoretical. Goult and colleagues propose that the next phase should involve thorough experimental confirmation and improvement of these theories, which they are now doing in the laboratory and plan to progress to animal research soon.
This aligns with the pivotal sixth aspect of the theory, suggesting the potential repurposing of current medications to mitigate the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.
Focal adhesions (FAs) are substantial protein structures that link cellular components to their external surroundings. Previous genetic studies indicate a connection between the stability of fatty acids (FAs) and the stability of amyloid precursor protein (APP) at the synapse. We already possess medicines that are recognized for their ability to stabilize FAs, commonly employed in cancer therapy. Could these possibly exert a similar impact on amyloid precursor protein (APP) in the brain by restoring the APP’s mechanical structure and inhibiting the degradation that results in Alzheimer’s disease?
Goult and colleagues are eager to further examine this intriguing idea.
Goult’s experience with talin has been full of shocks, and this bold new idea is the latest addition to that list.
Goult expressed enthusiasm for studying individual proteins and their functions, appearance, and interactions, which can generate innovative concepts that span from molecular complexes to synapses, neurons, and the entire brain.
Hopefully, these new data and the resulting theories can expedite the development of novel treatments for this condition.
The preprint is accessible on bioRxiv but has not been reviewed by external peers yet.
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