Midterm 1 Flashcards
What is the energy distribution system?
(Energy distributed between everything) It emphasizes a systems biology approach example the involvement of many systems (cardiovascular, muscular etc.)
What is systems biology?
Is the systematic study of complex interactions in biological systems
What is the main goal of systems biology?
Is to better understand the entirety of the processes that happen in a biological system
What is the opposite of systems biology called?
Reductionist paradigm where organizational levels tend to be isolated (reduction reducing the amount looking at)
What does systems biology consider?
It considers interactions and dynamics; complexity!
How would one study using systems biology?
Studies biological systems by putting an emphasis on biological, genetics and chemicals monitoring the genes seeing what happens with all and making mathematical models that can show how the system reacts to varying disruptions
What are emergent properties?
Properties of an entire system (or organism) that are not evident from examining the individual components
Examples: are personalities multiple systems would have to be monitored to formulate one’s personality
(emerging from looking at multiple things, putting things together cause emerging to happen)
What does systems biology incorporate?
From genes to proteins to tissues to organ systems
What is bioinformatics? And what is its purpose?
To predict outcomes or responses in a living system and involves mathematical modelling (what they think will happen to the whole body and systems if one has drugs for ex)
What are examples of the omics…
Genomics, Proteomics, Metabolics
What is genomics?
The study of an organisms complete set of DNA
What is proteomics?
Study of the set of all proteins produced within a biological system typically could be an organ, an organ system, or the entire organism
What is metabolics?
Study of metabolites within a unit; eg cell, tissue, organ, organism (how people metabolize things differently)
What is the main difference between reduction vs integration approaches?
Systems biology is about putting together rather then taking apart, integrating all parts instead of reduction
Reduction method is bad because?
It offers no concepts to understand how system properties emerge example personality
Why are isolated models sometimes good? (molecules, cells, organs, or tissue)
- Have great control over the experimental conditions
- Can clear up certain mechanisms
What are the positives and negatives for the integrated whole-body approach?
Bad: There is less control over the variables; less mechanistic cant look at everything at once in detail
Good: more applicable to the real world
What is an example of a reductionist approach?
- Stimulation of fat by using leptin to show how it burns fat well; bad because it doesnt take into account the other hormones at play; shows its not effective
- Type 2 diabetes and regulation of blood glucose blood taken only at a certain time; location only a single site; did someone eat something that increased or decreased the amount of sugar in blood
What is an example of a integrated approach?
- What limits maximal oxygen uptake (using the whole body exercise cycling and running, rather then using a single leg extension)
What are antioxidants and how are they helpful?
Are molecules that protect your body against damage from reactive oxygen species (ROS) in your body
- ROS can cause harm if levels become too high in the body
- Linked to aging and multiple diseases
Should one take antioxidants?
Yes and no because it can prevent some of the beneficial cellular adaptations to exercise training
What does it mean when P is less than 0.05? What does n mean?
BIG CHANGE; sample size number of people or rats
Reductionist approach vs systems-oriented perspective differences
Reductionism:
- Conditions where one or few components are responsible for the overall behaviour of the system
- Acute, simple diseases
- Eg uti
- Disregards component-component interactions and dynamics
Systems-oriented Perspective:
- Conditions where interactions between components are responsible for the overall behaviour of the system
- Chronic, complex diseases
- Ex. diabetes
- Costly in resources and time
Biological processes are…
complex and sometimes hard to predict
What makes each human a unique biological system?
EMERGENT PROPERTIES; they give variation within the human species in spite of 99.9% genetic homology. They are a property which a collection or complex system has, but which an individual member does not have
How similar are we to chimpanzees?
98%
How similar are we to fruit flies?
65%
What are the characteristics of life?
- Responsiveness to the environment (the way physical activity, and drugs impact us)
- Growth and change
- Ability to reproduce
- Have a metabolism and breathe
- Maintain homeostasis
- Being made of cells
- Passing traits onto offspring
Who is Robert Sapolsky?
A neurologist and primatologist, explore the long-term health impacts of stress (e.g. long-term stress exposure contributes to mental health risk; investigate how culture/society influences our moral compass
What does the control and communication network do?
Coordinates our functions i.e. our networking
What are the components of the Control and Communication Network?
- The Central Nervous System (Brain and Spinal cord)
- The Peripheral Nervous System
- Somatic (voluntary) Nervous System
- Autonomic (involuntary) Nervous System - Endocrine System
- Endocrine Tissues and Exocrine Glands Hormones - The Support and Defense System
- Support, movement, maintenance, repair, adaptation, defences (non-specific and specific)
What are the properties of the CCN?
- Controls and coordinates the function of all physiological systems and individual organs, including itself
- It is always “on”
- it is distributed throughout the whole body
- Each component of the network has multiple functions; the network has redundancy
- Info flow within the network is via chemical-based, cell-cell communication
- MIND IS NOT SEPARATE FROM BODY
The CCN is the integrator of inputs to health, disease and aging
Genetics, environment and lifestyle
What is the 7-dimensional health?
Spiritual, physical, mental, occupational, environmental, emotional, social
What does it mean when there is a compromised function/structure of the CCN
Aging and diesease
What are examples of processes which represent diminished/abnormal function
Diabetes, cancer, autoimmune disease, Alzheimers
How does systems biology enhance medical and healthcare practice what is the name of the medicine institute?
P4: personalized, predictive, preventive, participatory
What are the types of experimental models for human medical and health research
A. Simulations with mathematical models/computer (in silico)
B. In vitro (in glass) and ex vivo (out of the living)
C. Animal models
D. Human participants
What are examples of invitro and ex vivo models
Isolated perfused (and beating) heart, growing skin, transformed (cancer cells)
Main purposes of In Vitro and Ex Vivo Research
- Allows for more controlled experimental conditions
- Understanding fundamental mechanisms
What are research examples for animal models?
Embryonic metabolism: turning off and on genes and pathways
- Use a fluorescent tag to follow digestion of a nutrient, synthesis of proteins, cholesterol, etc
ELEGANS and DROSOPHILIA MELANOGASTER
Why are rats used in the lab?
- Very social and intelligent
- Used to study lifestyle effects on metabolism (diet, exercise, drugs fat rat)
- Not a good model for human infant nutrition and metabolism
Why are mice used in labs?
- Popular due to ease of applying recombinant DNA technology
- Used to study lifestyle effects on metabolism results may differ from rats!
Is a mouse a good model to study the role of leptin in humans when the mouse does not have the ability to secrete leptin?
No, because humans contain leptin it is rare that one does not have it
Why are pigs used in labs
- Best non-primate model for human infant development and metabolism
- Used to study organ transplants (xenografts) (humans may have pig heart valves)
Why are primates used in labs?
- Closet model you will get to a human
- Ethics and cost
What types of research? - human pathologies (AIDS etc)
- transplantation
- drug abuse, toxicology
What are non-clinical studies
- Non-interventional (no medicinal/lifestyle treatment given)
- Cannot predict or prove “cause and effect” of a medicinal substance
- Only predicts associations/correlations
- Epidemiological studies are most common
- Eg. beneficial to eat more fish showed lower cardiovascualr risk
What are clinical studies?
- Any investigation that involves participants that evaluate the effects of one or more health-related interventions on health outcomes
- A medicinal/lifestyle treatment and/or a control substance/placebo is given
- Can be used to predict cause and effect
- Double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trials are the gold standard for medical and healthcare research
Does research show that non-intervention studies have no benefit?
False as;
- helps to form hypotheses to test
- unethical or nonfeasible to run an intervention model
What are the steps of a human clinical trial?
- Preclinical- animal studies before testing on humans
- Phase I Clinical Trial: is the drug safe for humans a small group of people
- Phase II Clinical Trial: Does the drug work for its intended purpose uses a larger group of people (100s)
- Phase III Clinical Trial: How does the drug compare with other available treatments? Given to an even larger group of people
- After approval- ongoing assessment of long-term use, benefits and risks
What is evidence-based medicine?
When one applies scientific evidence to clinical decisions
What is the Cochrane Review?
a database of systematic reviews and meta-analyses which summarize and interpret the results of medical research
What is the highest level of study design what is the gold standard?
The randomized controlled tests
What are higher levels of evidence on the evidence pyramid?
Critically appraised papers, critically appraised topics and systematic reviews
To make an optimal decision what must one include?
- Patient values
- Research evidence
- Clinical data
In the case study with the kid who had a vitamin deficiency, what went wrong in the evidence-based medicine diagram?
Both research evidence (wasn’t understanding the whole picture), and clinical data (monitoring the patient) could have prevented it from getting more severe
What is evolutionary medicine also known as
Darwinian medicine; is the application of modern evolutionary theory to understand health and disease
Examples: is our modern diet unhealthy? Should we try to mimic early diets?
(looking at the past and see if its beneficial to todays medicine)
What is integrative medicine?
Treats the whole person and not just disease symptoms
- Is a healing-oriented medicine that takes account of the whole person, including all aspects of lifestyle
Ex. aromatherapy, acupuncture
What is collective medicine?
Connections between the health of humans, animals and the environment (collective all of them)
What is one health defined as?
As both a concept and an approach
- As a concept speaks to the interconnectedness of animal, human and environmental health
- As an approach, it involves working together across disciplines to combat complex health challenges that arise at the intersection of human, animal and environmental health
What are some examples of enhancement medicine?
Botox, viagra, anabolic steroids
What are examples of biological systems considered from the dimension of time
Trajectory (growth, development and aging) (years, decades) -long term
Rhythms (maintenance/repair, other processes) -less than a year
Homeostasis or Balance (maintenance of steady state) (seconds, minutes, hours) -acute in blood potassium levels
Energy and Info Flow (action potentials enzymatic reactions) (milliseconds, microseconds)-info flow like neurons firing quick
Lifestyle vs Healthspan?
Lifespan: how long do I have to live
Healthspan: how long will I be living a healthy, independent lifestyle
Factors that influence aging?
- Weight/build
- Excercise
- Sleep
- Education level
What are biomarkers?
Indicators of the biological state of the organism
Graph of age (years) what biomarker is above
Height (height changes depending on time) height shows health because of bone degeneration
What does a biomarker need to be a biomarker?
- Reflect normal (healthy) function (eg a high HDL cholesterol) or disease processes (eg. high blood PSA) or predict the risk of future development of disease (eg high LDL cholesterol)
- Have a predictable range across a category or must be routinely monitored
- Have methods available for accurate and precise measurement
What is chronobiology?
The study of timescales and cycles in biology; a branch of bio concerned with natural physiological rhythms
What are the 3 types of biological rythms?
Ultradian: (less then 24 hours)
- Appetite eg gherelin (meals); cortisol (pulse)
Circadian (24 hours)
- Cortisol: lowest a midnight (sleep), peak at 8am (after awakening)- stress response
Infradian: (more than 24 hours)
- Menstrural cycle
What is the Diurnal Variation/Circadian Rhythms?
Based on a 24-hour cycle
- Controlled by peripheral “clocks” that are governed by a “master or central clock” is a brain region called “suprachiasmatic nucleus” KEEPS TIME BASED ON LIGHT SIGNALS FROM RETINA
- Controls gene expression, regulation of enzyme activities, neural function, hormone secretion etc
- They coordinate sleep, nutrient supply and activity patterns with metabolic patterns required at different stages of the day
What controls the molecular clock?
- Entrained by light/dark cycles
- Still intact for blind individuals
- Probably involves melatonin
- Blue spectrum light inhibits melatonin release
What happens when one disrupts circadian rhythms?
Shift workers tend to have more heart attacks, obesity, diabetes, cancer
Late chronotypes (owls)
- More likely to suffer from mental stress and to be smokers
Can height still be used as a biomarker knowing about how circadian rythyms affect height?
- Fluid levels in bones, the disks are either narrower or reform depending upon the time of day can have an impact on one’s height
- Measured at the same time every day
What can be used to determine bone mineral density?
Dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) to determine bone mineral density is a more definitive approach to see if one has osteoporosis
What does bone mineral turnover mean?
Allows the bone to serve as a functional calcium store for the whole body, when we need calcium for non-bone tissues, obtain it from the dissolution from minerals in bone, when we have excess calcium entering the bloodstream from the diet, we deposit calcium in bone
What does it mean when one has a T-score of more positive for the risk of osteoporosis fracture
Means low risk
What does the Energy Distribution System
Emphasizes a system biology approach ie the involvement of multiple systems (adipose, cardiovascular, muscular, liver and gut, nervous system etc)
