'Disgusted' Rats Teaching Scientists About Nausea, Work May Lead to New Cancer Treatments
In the article I’ve read about
rats, I’ve found something particularly interesting about them. Not because
they come in just two colors but they give us information about how nausea is
caused. Generally speaking, all this time numerous people throughout the world
don’t exactly know why nausea is caused. Apparently rats have a similar sign of
nausea but it’s not clearly seeing the rat in a nausea state. When they’re in a
nausea state they tend to make a disgusted reaction called “gaping” when
re-exposed to a taste that made them nauseous, as Guelph PhD student Katharine
Tuerke stated. The article also states that rats and humans have similar models
to understand the brain mechanism that produces nausea. Using this model,
Guelph scientist, have discovered that serotonin, the central nervous system,
released in the visceral insular cortex may be the cause of nausea. What the
insular cortex is is a site of taste and illness input in the brain. Knowing
this, scientist examined the effects of delivering drugs that either activates
serotonin-3 receptor or block serotonin-2 receptors to specific regions of the
insular cortex. The serotonin-3 receptor are a class of medications that act
receptor antagonist, a drug that doesn’t provoke a biological response itself
upon binding the receptor which are large protein molecules that can be
activated by the binding of a ligand
(hormone). They discovered that the insular cortex activates the serotonin that
causes nausea and blocking the serotonin that reduces serotonin. Given this
information, both PhD students may be able to use this valuable process to,
maybe, lead a better understanding of basic neural processes that may help control
nausea or vomiting caused by cancer chemotherapy.
I,
honesty, believe that this article is important. This is because cancer
chemotherapy is extremely toxic can kills many people throughout the world. I
mean, come on, the word cancer explains it all. Any type of cancer is really
toxic to the body. If we can at least try to cure on, then maybe we can have a
better understanding how other parts of cancer really works. I’ve learn a lot
of interesting details in this article overall and I think the author did a
fantastic job introducing and ending the article itself. Nothing should be
changed because even a student like me could understand it. Not to mention, all
the facts are concrete materials and no assumptions added. Articles like this
can inspire many people throughout the world to help solve cancer. Future
research depends on these kinds of articles.
Kenny Xue
4 comments:
After reading this article summary I think Kenny did an excellent job. For one he went into so much detail about the topic. His summary of the article got to all the main points and was very interesting. I also thought he did a great job at showing the real life purpose of the discovery, because I too believe cancer is a very important disease that we must make advancements on. Lastly, I liked how his last sentence of the review shows the importance of the article. It isn’t a hard thing to add, but it makes the reader feel good.
One thing Kenny needs to work on is giving the who, what, where, when. At the beginning of the article he didn’t say where this was taken place, when, and didn’t really say who either, he just gave a name without saying her profession. Kenny also could have gone into more detail on what a serotonin-3 receptor is. That kind of confused me.
One thing I learned from this article that surprised me is that rats have a similar sign as humans when they get nausea and have similar brain mechanism. That is just something I wouldn’t expect.
I thought this was an interesting article. The author did a good job explaining why it is relevant to know how living organisms become nauseous. I also liked that he explained what the insular cortex was, because it makes the rest of the experiment clearer. It was also good that he explained why rats were used in the experiment verses another organism. This makes the research more valid. One thing the author could have done was not use the first person "I" so much at the beginning of his write up. However using it at the end when reflecting is fine. Also I think the writer could have explained the procedure of the experiment earlier on in the write up that way the reader could stay on track. One thing I learned was this discovery can help chemotherapy patients with this extreme form of therapy. I agree with Kenny that it is a very important and life changing discovery especially since cancer rates have been rising.
After reading this article I found it to be very interesting and thought Kenny did an excellent job. His summary of the article was very well written and explained a lot. He explained the purpose of this experiment very well, and made me realize that more people need to pay attention to how important cancer is and what we can do to help. More effort can be put into Cancer research and by reading this article it really shows what can be done. Kenny did an outstanding job explaining how he feels about this article and his perspective what society can do to improve cancer research.
I thought Kenny was missing the very important details in his summary. I was confused as to who researched this and the background of why they came about doing this research. Another thing Kenny could have done differently was explain the experiment earlier in the article so it wasn’t as confusing for the writer. This article is very important for people to read so people can become more away of how cancer rates are rising all the time.
I felt that Kenny did a great job reviewing this article. I really liked how Kenny began his review explaining what, exactly, rats had to do with nausea. I felt that, because he did this, it made the article relevant. I also really liked how Kenny then shifted the focus from rats and nausea to what the research meant for humans. Again, this is something that Kenny did in his review that made it much more relatable. Finally, I liked that Kenny explained how nausea drugs work to block serotonin levels that can cause nausea. I felt that this added some depth to his review.
While I felt that Kenny did a great job, there were a few parts of his review that left me slightly confused. Firstly, when Kenny explained this discovery about serotonin levels and treatments to stop serotonin production, I was a little thrown off by his rapid transition to how it related to cancer. Since it was the first time that cancer was mentioned in his review, I felt that the transition could have been made smoother. Secondly, I felt that, at times, Kenny’s sentences were a little bit too wordy or complex, which distracted me from the main point of the article and his review.
After reading Kenny’s review, I learned about the causes of nausea and how it all seems to stem from serotonin levels, which I felt was interesting and important to know.
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