1. Francisco J. Fuster<br />804-10-2676<br />Rise Program<br />Seminar essay:<br /> People don’t understand how hard it is to come up with something new and creative. This is really hard to accomplish in scientific research because there are so many things being invented on a daily basis. Scientists not only have to find something that is innovative, but also useful for society. In this sense, researchers have a sort of pressure they have to live up to; they have to come up with something that can potentially save lives.<br /> An example of an innovative research is Lori Isom’s experiment. She took an already existing technique and applied it to a specific disease. She induced pluripotency from skin cells, to make these cells reach their undifferentiated state. From here, the application of certain transcription factors, these cells can turn into the desired type of cell for further studies. Lori applied this technique to the cells of an epileptic patient. She made neurons in vitro that already had the disease. She observed that the epileptic seizures were provoked by an overflow of ions through the ion channels in the neurons that triggered an episode. She specifically applied it to Dravet syndrome which causes epilepsy in newborns and later causes mental retardation to these kids. This is an ongoing research that promises to have good results from some day.<br /> The next seminar was also creative; it included the application of pluripotency. This time, cells were cultivated to create tissues. Since organs get damaged, they need some sort of repair. This innovative technique takes the skin cells back to the undifferentiated state, to later turn it into a specific tissue. The advantage is that is already has the person’s DNA so it should fit in perfectly after implantation.<br /> The last seminar consisted of a study directed towards pharmacology. Shelby Ellery talked about the addition of bridged nucleosides to drugs to help stabilize them. These bridges can activate some drugs and deactivate others and thus chemically stabilizing a solution. To measure how unstable something is, she used atomic absorption which measured the amount of atoms in a solution. A slight change in this reading can alter a drug’s effect, and in long term hurt the patient. This research is directed to help relieve some of the harmful side effects that some drugs have.<br /> As we recapitulate, we can see that the first two seminars used a same technique. However they were applied in different ways. One was used for the study of the Dravet syndrome so the cells can be treated in vitro, so malpractice can be avoided. This way further health complication can be avoided by not giving wrong medication to a patient. The other was used to cultivate tissues for implantation. The last one involves the use of atom absorption spectroscopy to try and stabilize some drugs. These scientists showed creativity even when used the same technique applied to different problems.<br />