Daily Archives: April 30, 2019

Inner vs outer lysosomal membranes

Legacy Perfluorocarbons, Perfluorodecyl iodide

This is a quick observation perhaps meaningful (well i think it is relevant to the interaction of perfluorodecyl iodide within the lysosome). It appears to me like the inner lysosomal membrane is quite a bit thinner (meaning probably 1) a difference in the lipid membrane constituents or 2) the loss of some of the intrinsic membrane proteins.  I measured just one area of such a lysosome, and the outer lysosomal membrane seems to be about twice as thick as that which abuts the perfluorodecyl iodide crystalline inclusion.

blue perfluorodecyl iodide “footprint’, ribosome=red dot, green bar is the thickness of the inner membrane of the lysosome, dark blue is the thickness of the outer lysosomal membrane. Insert area is shown by white box, and red ribosome is shown with in the inset and the original box. liver (hepatocyte), neg 9716, block 3775, IPFD 100cc/kg (mouse) 9 months recovery

Tired of figuring out faulty scientific illustrations ?

Rants, Science and art cover illustrations, Ultimate order, the cell

The LAMP family is characterized by a conserved domain of 150 to 200 amino acids with two disulfide bonds. While reading this I looked up one of the references to see what they had pointed out as the morphological differences between endosomal membranes and lysosomal membranes and found this diagram in the publication linked here. While is seems trivial in a sense, it is not really, since visual depiction of facts needs to be as accurate as verbal depiction of facts… otherwise it is “fake science news”.  The diagram below goes against everything I have learned about cell biology…. with the arrow on the bottom pointing FROM the lysosome, TO the early endosome….  what? The early endosome is the beginning, by their own words  statement the early endosome is created de novo at the cell membrane.  So then I ask, why is the arrow not pointing in the other direction? and here is a quote “Endocytosed material tends to flow vectorially through the system, proceeding through the early endosome, the endosome carrier vesicle, the late endosome and the lysosome.” speaking to this subject.

 

 

 

This is not progress

Rants

“ Only at UC can one walk the entire half a mile from the parking garage to an office in Environmental Health (even where one of the previous Directors studied hazardous chemicals in lawn care products) so overwhelmed with the odor of pesticides and herbicides that they make one sick to one’s stomach” This is not progress. Not everyone will agree, but everyone will be affected. Shame on the current Director of environmental health for not standing up for the health of all the Med Campus workers.

Students sit on the lawn during the spring and fall, the grass offgasses the chemicals into nearby buildings. The walk to a from the buildings is outright unpleasant and potentially dangerous.

To spray on a Tuesday morning when there are people coming and going to work and class (and there are hospitals nearby — including Children’s) was just thoughtless –who is on deck here…. who is on deck.  No one with any sense, that is for sure. And think of the health affects of the people doing the landscaping (lest UC hired offsite, which begs another discussion).

This Med Center landscaping is grass rich…. which means that while grass is a CO2 consuming plant, the resources required to maintain it (mowers, blowers, fertilizers, water) have been reported to make it NOT that great an investment in CO2 reduction anyway. Again, here we are in Environmental Health department and making absolutely NO impact on our local environment, let alone the global environment. Makes me embarrassed to have worked in this field, haha, this department, this university for 50 years.