March, 2011Volume 1: Issue 2

table of contents

Damaging the en-vironment might be human nature 3

Our space edition discusses new planets and the search for life 4/5

Why you shouldn’t believe everything the news tells you 6

Researchers may have found a true cure for addiction 9

Crossword 10

Drink smart, Drink safe 11

AND MORE!

Five Reasons to Vote in the SSA Executive ElectionsBy: Matthew AlteenSSA President, 5th Year BPS

March is a busy month for everyone. Term papers are due, midterms and finals to study for, summer jobs to apply for; the list goes on. But March is also election season, something that should be on your to-do list as well. Voting for the Science Students’ Association elec-tions is taking place March 28-30. Whether you’re an informed political junkie or someone who’s never voted before, here are just a few reasons why you should cast a ballot:

1) It’s your money. This year, you paid approximately $201 in student fees, about $33 of which goes to the SSA. Multiply that by 3000 students in the Faculty of Science, and you’ll quickly realize that the SSA has an operating revenue approaching $100,000. No matter how you slice it, that’s a lot of money that has the potential to be spent on a lot of different things. If you don’t vote, you have no say in where it goes.

2) You have no reason not to vote. Seriously. It’s not difficult to get informed and it’s not time consuming to cast a ballot.

3) Your vote makes a difference. At least 3 positions over the past 4 years have been won or lost by a single vote. Going out and voting for your friend who is a candidate might actually be enough to get him or her into office. What’s more, those representatives you elect hold nearly one third of the seats on the governing council for the Faculty of Science. That’s a lot of influence over everything that happens here – from academic requirements to funding new buildings.

4) Your student association does a lot of good work. Whether you realize it or not, well-functioning student associations have remarkable influence and can do lots to make student life more enjoyable. For example, the Marion common room used to be a lot darker and drearier than it is now. The Faculty had plans to renovate the space for several years, but could never get a funding commitment from the university. It wasn’t until the SSA spoke up about the desperate need for renovations – and offered to contribute to the funding that the university agreed to renovate in 2008. Believe it or not, students tend to have quite a bit of sway with university administration when they make their concerns heard.

5) When no one votes, things start to go wrong. Student associations aren’t truly represen-tative with only 5 or 10 percent voter turnout. Drawing from such a small sample size leads to the same groups of people elected every year, and increases the chances that the views of the student association do not match that of the electorate. People often say they don’t vote because they see student associations as dysfunctional or illegitimate. But, by the same token, student associations won’t become truly legitimate until more people vote for them. It’s a catch 22 that only students themselves can fix.

Help make a difference this year, for yourself and for your fellow students. Check out the candidates’ platforms, find out what’s going on in the faculty right now, and most impor-tantly, get out and vote!

For all information pertaining to the SSA elections, check out the elections webpage at www.ssa-aes.com/elections2011

Humans have been Wrecking Havoc on the Earth for as Long as We’ve ExistedBy: Jayme LewthwaiteEnvironmental Editor, 3rd Year EVS

Turns out we didn’t need the invention of the Hummer to start affecting our climate, Jed Kaplan, a researcher at the Swiss University (EPFL) has proposed. Through the cre-ation of a model, Kaplan has shown that humans have had a significant impact on the environment for at least 8000 years, based on a well-known link between population growth and inevitable deforestation, and comparing present carbon emissions to emissions prior to the Industrial Revo-lution. Ever since the first farmer cleared the first land (and did a poor job at it), large tracts of land have been cleared of trees for the sake of human agriculture.

This research was complimented by the work of Julia Pon-gratz, (of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology), who was recently published in journal The Ho-locene, for her study of the impact of historical events on the global climate. She says, “humans started to influence the environment thousands of years ago by changing the vegetation cover of the Earth’s landscapes when we cleared forests for agriculture.” Clearing forests to make room for agricultural pursuits releases carbon dioxide into the atmo-sphere, and ice cores have shown that atmospheric emis-sions did historically increase during times of deforestation pre-Industrial Revolution.

Agriculture has always been a huge drain on the planet, but the relationship has not always been linearly correlated with population growth, as evidenced by the ‘Green Revolution’. Suddenly, farming techniques drastically improved, and ar-able land was milked more efficiently. Agriculture; however, was only the beginning.

The first major increase in carbon emissions actually hap-pened 2000 years before our era, corresponding to the expansion of civilizations in China and around the Medi-terranean. Other historical events effecting emissions that one would not normally consider are the fall of the Ro-man Empire, as well as the Black Death. These catastrophic events, whether they caused a regrowth of the forests or the death of millions of people, resulted in a decrease in carbon emissions.

Pongratz also found that during short events, like the Black Death, the re-expansion of the forests wasn’t enough to cancel out the emissions from soil processes. Dead organ-isms, like trees require the consumption of oxygen, and subsequent release of carbon dioxide to decompose. How-ever, during longer events, like the conquest of the Ameri-cas, there was enough time for forests to mature and absorb larger amounts of carbon dioxide.

Hold on folks; that doesn’t mean we’re off the hook, and we can go drive around the block a few times in our Hum-mers to celebrate. What these works were aiming to show was that our influence on climate began a lot earlier than we previously thought it did -- even if the emissions pro-duced 6000 years ago were insignificant in comparison with today’s belch of greenhouse gases.

It does NOT contradict previous models with respect to the huge spike in carbon dioxide at the beginning of the Indus-trial Revolution, and the associated use of fossil fuels. So keep riding those bikes, people. In fact, Pongratz comment-ed that: “Today about a quarter of the net primary produc-tion on the Earth’s land surface is used by humans in some way, mostly through agriculture, so there is a large potential for our land-use choices to alter the global carbon cycle. In the past we have had a substantial impact on global climate and the carbon cycle, but it was all unintentional. Based on the knowledge we have gained from the past, we are now in a position to make land-use decisions that will diminish our impact on climate and the carbon cycle. We cannot ignore the knowledge we have gained.”

O. Kaplan, K. M. Krumhardt, E. C. Ellis, W. F. Ruddiman, C. Lemmen, K. Klein Goldewijk. Holocene carbon emissions as a result of anthropo-genic land cover change. The Holocene, 2010

Julia Pongratz, Ken Caldeira, Christian H. Reick and Martin Claussen. Coupled climate–carbon simulations indicate minor global effects of wars and epidemics on atmospheric CO2 between AD 800 and 1850. The Holocene, 2011.

Astronomers Claim to have Found a New Ninth PlanetBy: Jacob SommersEditor-in-Chief, 3rd Year BPS

American astronomers John Matese and Daniel Whitmire garnered international attention recently for their claims in the journal Icarus that a large gas giant exists within our solar system that we haven’t seen before.

This planet, which the pair named Tyche, the Greek goddess of fortune and prosperity, is proposed to be up to four times the mass of Jupiter, making it easily the largest object in the solar system other than our sun.

So how does such a large object go undetected for the last 1000 years? Matese and Whitmire hypothesize that Tyche lives in the outer Oort cloud, 15,000 as-tronomical units (AU) from the Sun. For comparison’s sakes, an astronomical unit is the mean distance from the Earth to the Sun – tiny Pluto is approxi-mately 40 AU from the Sun. An object as far away as Tyche would be unable to reflect light from the sun back to earth.

Matese and Whitmire pro-posed the existence of Tyche to explain an apparent origin point for comets which reside in the Oort cloud. Under Matese and Whitmire’s hypothesis, these long-period comets, which can take thousands – or even millions – of years to orbit the Sun, would be flung into our region of the solar system by Tyche, or perhaps its Nemesis.

Nemesis is another hypothetical large, trans-Neptunian ob-ject in our far distant solar system. Nemesis, however, is no planet, rather a red or brown dwarf star proposed by teams led by Whitmire and Richard Muller in 1984. A red dwarf is less than half the mass of our Sun, while brown dwarfs are less than a tenth the mass of our sun.

Nemesis was hypothesized to explain an apparent pattern of mass extinctions proposed by a pair of palaeontologists in 1984. The existence of the dwarf star, Muller suggests, would sling asteroids towards the Earth every 27 million years. The theory that extinction events follow a periodic cycle has been widely contested and largely disproven, but this hasn’t eliminated the potential for Nemesis’ existence.

Sedna, a planetoid discovered by Mike Brown in 2001 fol-lows an incredibly elongated orbital period. When closest to the Sun, Sedna is twice as far as Pluto, while at its furthest, the dwarf planet orbits nearly 1000 AU away. The highly ec-centric orbit brings to question the formation and retention of Sedna in the solar system.

Sedna is too distant to be flung into its orbit by Neptune, and could not have formed in its current location, as it would then have a mostly circular orbit. According to Brown, Sedna must have been tugged into its current orbit by a larger object, citing a large planet in the Kuiper belt (like Tyche), a smaller star (like the dwarf Nemesis) or from another star in the Sun’s nursery nebula.

Many astronomers remain sceptical of both Tyche and Nemesis hypotheses. They point to a lack of visual evidence, instead relying on indirect calculations of the orbits from long-period comets to put together an approximation of size, loca-tion and ultimate existence of these Oort cloud objects.

John Matese and Daniel Whitmore expect to be validated in the upcoming months as the results from

NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) may contain proof of Tyche’s existence. Until the exorbitant amount of IR data is fully analyzed, the solar system will remain to contain eight planets (sorry, Pluto) orbiting an independent star.

Davis, M.; Hut, P., Muller, R.A. Extinction of species by periodic comet showers”. Nature. 1984. 308 (5961): 715–717.

John Matese and Daniel Whitmore. Persistant evidence of a jovian mass solar companion in the Oort cloud. Icarus. February 2011. 211 (2); 926-938.

Mike Brown, David Rabinowitz, Chad Trujillo. “Discovery of a Candi-date Inner Oort Cloud Planetoid”. Astrophysical Journal. 2004. 617 (1): 645–649.

On the Atmospheric Composition of an Exo-planetBy: Jessica SquiresProduction Manager, 3rd Year BIO/BCH

Ten years ago we discovered the first of the super-Earths orbiting nearby stars. These planets are characterised by their size, which range from two to ten times the mass of our home planet. Now, we are on the brink of a milestone discovery involving these planets.

The super-Earth GJ 1214b is about 6.5 times the mass of Earth and orbits a red dwarf star about 40-light years from our solar system. This planet is of particular interest to astronomers, especially astrobiologists, because it is sur-rounded by a thick atmosphere making it the first super-Earth discovered to possess an atmosphere. Researchers are now focusing efforts on determining the make-up of the planet’s gaseous surroundings.

Three primary options have been proposed. The first is a layer of steam, vaporized by the planet’s local sun, creating a ‘waterworld’ without it being an ocean planet. The second is a gaseous hydrogen-helium atmosphere surrounding an icy planet, similar to our Neptune. The third possibility is a gas-eous mixture caused by volcanic eruptions on the surface of the planet, much like what caused the early atmosphere of our own planet.

The race was on to deter-mine the chemical make-up of the atmosphere. As plan-ets transit their star, some of the light energy is absorbed by atmospheric gasses. The light that does pass through the atmosphere can be analyzed to determine the ratio of gases present.

Although this planet has been quite shy in allowing us to determine its characteristics, researchers Miller-Ricci and Fortney compared expected transmission data in each of the three circumstances to the current data and concluded that GJ 1214b likely has a hydrogen-helium atmospheric composition.

Just over ten years ago scientists determined the atmospher-ic make-up of the gas giants in our own solar system. This discovery was a large leap forward, and gives us hope that we will soon be able to determine the atmospheric con-tent of Earth-sized planets. Perhaps it will be the final step needed to find life on another planet.

Miller-Ricci, E., and Fortney, J.J. 2010. The Nature Of The Atmosphere Of The Transiting Super-Earth GJ 1214b. Astrophysical Journal Letters#, Published online June 10, 2010

Life May Exist on a Distant, Tiny MoonBy: Anthony McNicholsContributor, 2nd Year BIM

Less than ten years ago, Enceladus was just another moon of Jupiter. It was discovered by William Herschel in the 18th century and is less than half the mass of Pluto. When the Cassini spacecraft was launched in 1997, Enceladus was a minor mission; a planned flyby or two while studying Jupi-ter’s atmosphere, its rings, and its numerous other moons. Something peculiar happened during these flybys, however.

The Cassini team detected irregularities in Enceladus‘ local magnetic fields. It turns out these abnormalities have been caused by ice venting from the south pole of the little moon, a sight more spectacular than Old Faithful. The materi-als escaping from this icy world are now believed to have formed the diffuse E ring of Saturn’s iconic visage.

Shaping the face of Saturn is hardly the most amazing fact coming out of Enceladus. Astrobiologists are fascinated by the moon, which has become the most likely extraterrestrial site in the solar system to contain water in its liquid state. The magnificent plumes of ice are expelled from the south-ern pole of Enceladus as a result of a significant amount of geothermal activity beneath a sea of salt, ammonia, carbon dioxide and organic molecules.

The probability of liquid water, combined with organic molecules and salt make Enceladus the hottest location in the universe in the search for extraterrestrial life. However, astrobiologists are expressing cautious optimism. As excit-ing as liquid water is, life is an incredibly complex machine.

Sometime in the near future, a space agency will launch a probe which will dig into the ocean of Enceladus. When that day comes, we will likely know for certain whether there is life on the distant world, and find out just how rare life is in the universe.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/5625932/Salt-water-caverns-may-be-beneath-surface-of-Saturn-moon.html

Diet Sodas Can Lead to Stroke? By: Michael Hott,Contributor, 2nd Year BCH

Fear not, my friends. Odd words to say in our modern society, where every day we are bombarded with reports which suggest our contemporary lifestyle is going to kill us. Sometimes the media will focus on legitimate concerns, like leaded paint in children’s toys and hormone analogues in our drinking water. Too often; however, journalists will pre-maturely incite fear and provoke chaos over water fluorida-tion and vaccine safety.

Recently, you may have noticed the popular press has taken a great deal of interest in a study which suggests that diet soft drinks increase the risk of stroke. A large scale, multi-cultural study in New York showed a 61% increase of risk for those who drink diet soda, as opposed to those who drink no soda at all.

Really diet cola? You just hate us don’t you? First you tried to kill us with cyclamates, then saccharin. Then we found out that aspartame is going to give us cancer. Now you are going to give us a stroke? Seriously, I wouldn’t be surprised if you caused cirrhosis of the liver and OCD. You killed the dinosaurs, didn’t you?

Ok, let’s be serious now. There is no reason for you to throw away all of your Coke Zero and Pepsi Max, (except for the

terrible taste). Countless studies have expunged saccharin, cyclamates and yes, even aspartame. Don’t just take my word for it, but do take Health Canada’s assessment1, and this article in the British Medical Journal2.

So what’s my point? Simply because a single study suggests a link between diet cola and an increased risk of cardiovas-cular events does not mean your sugar free Sprite is going to kill you when you get older. Dr. Hannah Gardener, the lead author of the report carefully chose her words when telling reporters, “if our results are confirmed with future studies, then it would suggest that diet soda may not be the optimal substitute for sugar-sweetened beverages for protection against vascular outcomes.”

I don’t mean to belittle the potential impact from this study, and I do not mean to defame Dr. Gardener in any way.

What I do mean to say is that we as a society tend to overre-act to the latest news, to define our opinions before we learn half of the facts, and to reject reason and logic in order to support our most basic of beliefs.

So next week, when the internet is ablaze with reports that blueberries are the cause of ADD, remember these words: fear not, my friends.

1) http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/securit/addit/sweeten-edulcor/aspar-tame_statement-eng.php2) http://www.bmj.com/content/329/7469/755.full

Dinosaur Bones Found After Famous Meteor ImpactBy: Ben StenzlerContributor, 1st Year BCH

Research led by the University of Alberta by Larry Heaman, is further proving a paradigm shift in the way people view the extinction of the dinosaurs. At first, it was believed that a massive meteor had crashed into the Yucatan Peninsula; the force of the collision was strong enough to envelop the atmosphere in enough debris that would kill most vegeta-tion due to extreme conditions.

Heaman and his team recently just discovered a fossilized femur of a hadrosaur as being only 64.8 million years old. This is a 700,000 year gap between great mass extinction event scientists believe killed the dinosaurs of the late Cre-taceous period (KT extinction event) 65.5-66 million years ago. He believes that the meteor impact wasn’t as deadly as previously predicted while following a new theory that pockets of vegetation had survived in order to feed popula-tions of remaining dinosaurs.

In order to calculate in accuracy the time discrepancies, Heaman and his research team used a more precise method of dating the bone called uranium-lead dating. This is a process where a laser beam unseats minute particles of the fossil, which then undergo isotopic analysis. Using this technique, palaeontologists are capable of determining the age of the bone directly instead of dating the sediments around it.

The old method of measuring sediments left a lot of er-ror due to depositional ages of layers above and below the fossil-bearing horizon. Living bone contains relatively low levels of uranium, but during fossilization (typically less than 1000 years after death) the bone is enriched in ele-ments like uranium. Uranium itself is unstable and will spontaneously decay into Lead over time and once fossiliza-tion has finished the, the uranium decay can be measured. The isotopic composition of Lead in the hardasaur’s femur can therefore determine its absolute age.

Cancer Breakthrough: Using High Definition Imaging to Identify Cancerous CellsBy: Brad McArthurContributor, 3rd Year BIM

As described in the ScienceDaily journal on February 20th, 2011 a medical breakthrough in identifying cancerous cells using imaging technology (which) seems to be a promising therapeutic technology of the future. University of Roch-ester’s Dr. Jannick Rolland has developed a new technology that provides high resolution images of under the skin to examine and detect skin lesions with the aim of determin-ing if they are cancerous or benign. A one foot long cylin-drical probe is placed directly on the tissue of interest (such as a tumor) and a high resolution image of what is under-neath emerges.

The beauty of this technology is that it would reduce the in-convenience and the expense of the diagnosis and removal of tissue samples (such as removal of a mole and the follow-ing tests required to test for cancer). The amount of time of diagnosis would also be reduced, as this procedure could be completed right in the doctor’s office the same day.

The device uses a liquid lens setup developed by Rolland and her colleagues in a process called Optical Coherence Microscopy. In this process, a droplet of water takes the place of a standard glass lens. As the electrical field sur-rounding the droplet of water changes, the water droplet changes shape, which changes the focus of the lens. In this way, the device can take many pictures at different depths under the skin. Once all of the pictures have been taken, they can then be combined to give a full image of every-thing in the tissue up to 1mm deep. Another important fea-ture of this technology is the fact that it uses infrared light, allowing for a higher resolution than other techniques using ultrasound (or any other method).

This technique has been tested successfully in human in-vivo conditions and several reviews have been published already. The next step in development is to see how well this technology can be used to identify different types of lesions. Nonetheless, this technology seems to be quite promising and may be a powerful cancer therapy used in the future.

University of Rochester (2011, February 20). New high-resolution method for imaging below the skin using a liquid lens. ScienceDaily. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110219160003.htm

A Vaccine for Addiction?By: Aleksandra ShalakhovaConributor, 1st Year BIM

In an article published in Molecular Therapy, researchers have produced a lasting immunity to cocaine in mice by injecting them with a safe vaccine that combines bits of the common cold virus with a cocaine analog. The vaccine was highly effective in mice, prompting excitement at the poten-tial for a cure for cocaine addiction, and perhaps addiciton in general.

After alcohol and marijuana, cocaine is presently one of the most abused stimulants in the western world. Cocaine does not cause physical addiction, but it is extremely addictive psychologically. It is a central nervous system stimulant that is closely associated with dopamine, a neurotransmitter that is involved in the control of movements, motivation and pleasure. Cocaine inhibits the re-uptake of dopamine by blocking the dopamine transport sites at the brain reward system which results in an ever increasing amount of the neurotransmitter in the synaptic gap. This prolonged pres-ence of dopamine is believed to be responsible for the rein-forcing behavior that results as feelings of excitement and euphoria people get when they use the stimulant. As co-caine abuse continues, tolerance often develops, increasing the amount of cocaine needed to produce similar effects.

In the new research, investigators gave mice a safe vac-cine, a chemical structurally very similar to cocaine that is covalently linked around the cholera protein derived from adenovirus (Ad), a common cold virus. The vaccine is immunogenic, meaning that it has the ability to trigger an immune response in the process of the body recogniz-ing the foreign cholera protein. The cocaine analog is a bit more stable than cocaine, eliciting better immunity. Once the vaccine was injected into laboratory mice, it triggered an immune response to produce antibodies against cocaine without a causing illness.

The antibodies were produced as a response to the altered virus, latched onto cocaine molecules in the bloodstream, forming large antibody complexes that prevented cocaine from entering a ventral tegmental area (VTA), a site of pro-duction of dopamine located in the midbrain that is most affected by the drug. With antibodies holding onto most of the cocaine molecules, cocaine should not produce the eu-phoria or other psychoactive sensations that reinforce drug taking. To test that, the researchers gave both immunized mice and control group high doses of the drug, equal in value of human dose (100-200 mg). As they predicted, the immunized mice demonstrated much less hyperactivity and other signs of intoxication. Best of all, the effects of the vac-

cine lasted over a longer period of time than the researchers expected to achieve.

Similar approaches have used to treat alcoholism and heroin addicts. In alcohol, disulfiram is a medicine that is given to people to overcome alcoholic addiction. Its method is to cause a negative reaction if the person drinks while they are taking antabuse leading to people developing a “habit” of not drinking. The strategy for the Ad-based cocaine vac-cine is used to allow the human immune system to learn to recognize and identify cocaine as an intruder later on its own. Once the structure of the new intruder is recognized by natural immunity any time there is intravenous admin-istration of cocaine, antibodies to the substance are quickly produced and they completely reverse the effects of the drug, such as hyperlocomotor activity. Even if the body sys-tem does not learn to recognize the drug as an intruder, the vaccine use is still a good alternative as it does not require multiple, expensive infusions and has a prolonged effect.

Since the product elicits immune response, there is no risk for acquiring an addiction to another substance, as with methadone addiction after the treatment of heroin addic-tion. This strategy of the Ad-based cocaine vaccine might offer cocaine addicts a way to overcome their habit, and it might be used to develop new ways of treating other drug addictions - such as nicotine, methadone, morphine, and other opiates. However the vaccine is not a cure-all. To get “high” from cocaine, treated addicts could increase the drug intake to overcome the immunological blockade, leading to lethal overdoses. As cocaine addiction is a more psycholog-ical rather than physical dependency group therapies and similar treatments are required along with the vaccine for a successful recovery.

http://healthland.time.com/2011/01/05/new-hope-for-an-anti-cocaine-vaccine/#ixzz1AI60qhrQ

Hicks, M.J., De, B.P., Rosenberg, J.B., et al. Cocaine Analog Coupled to Distrupted Adenovirus: A Vaccine Strategy to Evoke High-titer Immu-nity Against Addictive Drugs. Molecular Therapy (2011). 19(3); 612-619

GOT YOUR ATTENTION!

Advertise with The Catalyst and get the attention of our readers.

For all of your advertising inqui-ries, please email uocatalyst@gmail.com, subject: Advertising.

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFJacob Sommers

PRODUCTION MANAGERJessica Squires

COPY EDITORRachel Rumstein

ENVIRONMENTAL EDITORJayme Lewthwaite

COLUMNIST Benjamin Pryce

CONTRIBUTORSMatt AlteenMichael HottBrad McArthurAnthony McNicholsAleksandra ShalakhovaBen Stenzler

SPECIAL THANKSScience Students Associa-tion

Across4) Fruiting body of fungus6) Home of LHC, abbr.8) Basic unit of light9) Origin of the universe11) Hot gas result of volcanic explosion14) Table salt15) “Uncertain” physicist16) High energy electromagnetic wave18) Silicate mineral19) Heavy hydrogen21) “Relative” genius22) Partially unsaturated hydrocarbon26) Protein building block31) Squid, e.g.32) Botanic vascular tissue33) Chemical bond parallel to cyclic hydrocarbon

35) Metabolic pathway requiring energy36) Geologic period “K”39) 7th planet40) Structure which receives and responds to stimuli

Down1) Carbon mineral2) Self-regulating solution3) First wide-range antibiotic5) Attractive or repulsive property of matter7) High frequency electromagnetic wave10) Study of chemical processes in living organisms12) Gravitationally curved path around an object13) Flowering plant17) Largest sink for carbon dioxide19) Seperation of ionic compounds20) Procedure to separate a chemical mixture23) Earth’s natural satellite24) Astronomer known for heliocentric model25) Intersection of geometric shapes27) Cambrian anthropod28) Orbiting body29) Electrostatic bond30) Landform at the mouth of a river34) Emits light through optical amplification37) Common laboratory bacteria38) Paleocene or eocene, e.g.

Magical Amino AcidsBy: Benjamin PryceColumnist, 3rd Year BIM

In my previous lecture I discussed the possibility of prevent-ing brain cell death due to alcohol consumption. However, the brain is not the only part of the body that is affected by alcohol. The next organ of interest would be the liver. Due to its functions in metabolism, it is the first organ to process alcohol.

Long term alcohol abuse can lead to hardening of the liver in a condition called cirrhosis. Research that began in the mid-1990s has found that the amino acid taurine can have a role in preventing this from occurring. To understand the how taurine can be used to prevent this, it is necessary to understand the development of cirrhosis.

When we drink, alcohol is broken down in the liver by an enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH). This break-down requires the cofactor NAD+. In this process, NAD+ is converted to NADH. Both NAD+ and NADH are both required in the metabolism of fats. Excess NADH will drive the formation of fats in the liver, while decreased levels of NAD+ will conversely prevent the breakdown of any fat. This will eventually lead to an accumulation of fats in the liver. This then causes the reduced blood flow to the liver cells, which causes them to die.

Chemicals released from the death of these cells signal the formation of a specialized cell, called stellate cells. These

stellate cells grow on the outside of the liver and promote the formation of collagen. This collagen leads to the harden-ing of the liver, and eventually to loss of function.

Studies have shown that taurine can reduce this harden-ing of the liver caused by alcohol. The mice in these studies were subjected to 28 days of alcohol injections. Half of the group was then treated with doses of taurine while the other half was not. The results showed that the mice treated with taurine had lower levels of stellate cells formed in the liver than the ones that did not receive the treatment.

The exact mechanism of the protective effects of taurine was not stated in these studies. However, other research has shown that taurine is used in energy metabolism. Taurine up regulates the transcription of genes which code for en-zymes involved in the breakdown of fats for energy. Up reg-ulation of these enzymes can lead to more fats being broken down. This would decrease the amount of fat in the liver which would decrease the formation of stellate cells and the cascade of effects leading to hardening of the liver. It is also theorized that taurine can increase the programmed cell death mechanism in stellate cells, although the mechanism for this is currently unknown.

Taurine can be produced naturally by the body and is pres-ent in bile salts in the digestive tract. It can also be found in high amounts in seafood. The toxicity of taurine is not fully understood, so it is not recommended to be taken in excess. It should also be noted that this is not a treatment for early stage cirrhosis, and should not be used as such. As with all the side effects of alcohol the best way to avoid liver damage is to not drink at all....but how much fun would that be?

Deng X., et. al. Natural taurine promotes apoptosis of human hepatic stellate cells in proteomics analysis. World Journal of Gastroenterology, 2010 April 21; 16(15): 1916-1923

N. Tsuboyama-Kasaoka, C.Shozawa, et. al. Taurine (2-Aminoethane-sulfonic Acid) Deficiency Creates a Vicious Circle Promoting Obesity. Endocrinology 2006; 147:3276-3284

Mita D. J. Kerai, et. al. Reversal of Ethanol-induced Hepatic Steatosis and Lipid Peroxidation by Taurine: A Study in Rats. Alcohol and Alco-holism: Vol 34 Issue 4, 1999 January 21; 529-541

GOT YOUR ATTENTION!

Advertise with The Catalyst and get the attention of our readers.

For all of your advertising inqui-ries, please email uocatalyst@gmail.com, subject: Advertising.