Is it possible to run out of words?

Because it sure feels like I already have.

A lot of my classes have lots of weekly writing assignments so I have been doing a lot more reading and writing about things than I ever have in previous semesters. And while it is in subjects that I find to be intellectually stimulating, I somehow find myself in the position of not knowing what to say. I've done the reading, I've done the outlining but right now, I can't put words on paper to make something meaningful and distinctly mine.

Considering it is actually my job to work with words, finding the best and most precise words and presenting them with finesse, it seems like a kind of odd problem to have-not being able to say anything.

I don't actually have any profound messages that I wanted to say with this, no romantic metaphorical resonances I wanted to strike. I just wanted to share. Maybe I just need more sleep.

The Bees are at their Breaking Point: If they die, we might go with them

While some may think of distant poverty-stricken countries when hearing the phrase “wide-spread hunger”, it is the reality that our nation will be faced with if something is not done to conserve honeybee colonies. Since 2006, scientists have reported that honeybee colonies are dying at record rates of 30%, a substantial jump from the previous annual average of 5-10% and the number is only increasing. It is easy to think that this is an esoteric issue that is best left to the crusades of well-meaning yet eccentric environmentalists. However, this is a natural disaster that affects the daily life of the consumer. Considering that bees are directly or indirectly responsible for roughly 75% of the food that we eat, the decline of the honeybees has very dire implications for our future as a nation.

Do you enjoy consuming food? If so, then the honeybee crisis is actually incredibly relevant to you. One may think that honey is the only commodity that the bees contribute to the food market. However, the US Department of Agriculture reports that honeybees are responsible for pollinating over $15 billion of crops each year and agricultural products constitute some of the fastest growing American exports. Honeybees pollinate many commercial crops including apples, almonds, citrus fruits and many more. Some crops, like almonds, rely exclusively on professional bee pollination each year on a massive scale. Beekeeping is in and of itself a dynamic industry and farms pay to have truckloads of bees help them out each spring. There are many other indirect ways that bees affect the food industry as well. For example, crops like alfalfa are pollinated by bees but not directly used as a human food source. However, they are then used to feed cows that are in turn responsible for producing many dairy products as well as being used for meat. One may wonder why the average consumer may not have noticed this crisis at the food markets but the average price of almonds per pound has actually more than doubled in the last five years. The honeybee population is at the center of the food industry and absolutely crucial to the continued success of the US economy as well.

The honeybee crisis appears to be caused by several of factors. First introduced to the US in the late 1980s,  varroa mites are parasites that have been an increasing problem for the bees in recent years. The mites target the maturing honeybees, causing them to be more susceptible to disease and eventual death. Thus, in colonies affected by the mites, few bees ever reach adulthood. A lonely queen is left to watch over young bees who will never grow up, waiting for workers who will never return.

However, perhaps the most significant factor contributing to the bee crisis is the use of certain insecticides. In 2007, the EPA estimated that the US used a record-breaking 1.1 billion pounds of insecticides.  While insecticides have been used for many years, a new class of nicotine-derived insecticides called neonicotinoids has come under fire most recently. After being approved by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2005, the use of neonicotinoids has increased dramatically. However, recent research has come to light supporting the fact that these chemicals can have seriously detrimental effects on honeybee populations. A clinical study showed that honeybees exposed to these compounds were unable to find their way back to their hives and died due to the subsequent lack of protection. Neonicotinoids also differ in their mode of dissemination, as they are ingrained into the seeds of plants and can thus persist for many months when other pesticides might have washed away. The increased use of neonicotinoids correlates to the rise in honeybee mortality and unless something is done, the numbers will only continue to escalate. Furthermore, there is evidence to suggest that although separately the EPA might not consider the insecticides lethal, roughly 20 different chemical residues have been found in devastated beehives. This suggests that the chemicals are unexpectedly far more potent together and play a role in bee deaths. Together the mites and pesticides are the perfect storm to absolutely decimate honeybee populations.

We do not have to stand idle watching this crisis unfold; there are several things that we can do. By buying food that has not been treated with pesticides, we can change the market. Companies currently have no incentive to choose bee-friendly methods but might be swayed by consumer demands. However, organic foods have become a bit of cultural cache here in the US and are not necessarily accessible to everyone. So more than just hoping to change the markets indirectly, we can take action by appealing to the legislative bodies, which could lead to a solution with longevity. The European Union has already banned the use of certain pesticides and the time has come for us to finally try and open the conversation here that our European counterparts have been having for many years. This is not an issue that is only for the tree-hugging bohemians, it is an issue that concerns us all. Consider this the call to arms to help our apiarian comrades.

Hacking the Bacterial Social Network

While we update our Twitters, Facebooks and Instagrams throughout the day, many might be unaware that a similar phenomenon is happening at the microbial level as well. In a two-part lecture, Bonnie Bassler, a professor and researcher at Princeton University, proposed that bacteria everywhere from the ocean to our gut relay and receive messages to one another through chemical signals. These signals help the bacteria know when to change their behaviour when other bacteria are around. For some, that means illuminating the marine darkness. For others, it means producing toxic chemicals to wreak havoc on our immune systems. Many disease-causing bacteria actually use this chemical network to sense when there are enough of their comrades before launching an attack against the immune system. But if the message can be sent, can it then be intercepted? In addition to presenting their previous research on what is currently known about this signaling system and combining several scientific disciplines, Bassler and her team worked with the bacterium that causes cholera to see if they could do just that.

Central to understanding the work of the researchers is the concept of quorum sensing. Bacteria have a chemical “language” that allows for communication with other members of the species, when they would otherwise be completely isolated from one another. When they receive messages from other bacteria, the bacteria then knows to modify its behaviour. Sometimes this means producing light, as the researchers found from their initial work with a species of marine bacteria. For others, the bacteria know to produce toxins that would otherwise be ineffective to carry out alone. Furthermore, bacterial species are able to transmit messages that can be received by other bacterial species as well. Long thought to be isolated but co-existing entities, Bassler and her associates proved that there is actually a bacterial nexus existing right beneath our eyes.

Armed with the knowledge of bacterial communication, Bassler and her team wanted to see if it was possible to hijack this communication network. Although the team initially worked with marine bacteria, Bassler turned her attention to the pathogenic bacteria that causes cholera, under the assumption that it uses the same chemical network as well. Cholera is a fast-disease that causes dehydration through extreme diarrhea, caused by the release of toxins by a certain species of bacteria. Though it often calls to mind images of a distant past, cholera still claims up to 120, 000 lives every year and can kill within hours after the onset of infection. Unlike some of the other known pathogens, the bacterium that causes cholera is most dangerous at low levels. When there are not too many other bacteria of the same species around, cholera-causing bacteria ramp up the productions of toxins that make us sick. When the numbers of bacteria increase, the cells send out a message to stop producing toxins and instead focus their attention towards infecting a new host.

For cholera-causing bacteria specifically, Bassler and her team wanted to see if they could send the cells false intelligence.  Bassler’s team wanted to manipulate experimental cells by sending them a synthetic signal to stop producing toxins while the cells were at low density. After isolating and characterizing what they believed to be this chemical signal responsible for turning off toxin-production, the team created a synthetic molecule that they hoped would mimic the actions of the real “off” signal.  When they added the synthetic molecule to cells infected with the bacteria, toxin production decreased dramatically.  The team then moved onto mice infected with cholera and saw similar drops in toxin levels. With the addition of the synthetic molecule, the researchers were able to restore the animals to health.

The team’s findings are incredibly exciting from a curative perspective. It implies that patients infected with the bacteria could be treated effectively and efficiently. However, the chemical mechanism this treatment does not necessarily work for all species of bacteria. The signaling system is complex and many other pathogens use the opposite mechanism whereby they are largely inactive but ramp up virulence at high densities. Therefore, instead of trying to mimic the chemical signal directly, researchers would need to create a synthetic antagonist (an off-switch) that is a molecule that would counteract the messenger rather than trying to duplicate the messenger itself. We should definitely take heart in the fact that some of the signals are species-specific. This has huge implications for the future of antibiotics. By finding ways to exploit signals for only one species, we can target harmful bacteria without the risk of also targeting good bacteria species or healthy tissue cells. Currently, antibiotics lack specificity and end up killing good and bad bacteria alike in addition to causing painful side-effects. By proposing a novel type of antibiotic, Bassler and her team may have laid the foundation to revolutionize the way that we treat diseases and lead to less noxious medications.

Breaking out from the Ivory Tower

I think coming up with topics to write about here has been one of my longest-lasting conflicts.

I consider myself a content creator... sometimes. I have always agonized about what to put here-I want to write about things that were relevant and engaging. I wanted to create content that was intelligent and poignant. For awhile I was very adamant about not writing about my thoughts or feelings, lest some future admissions council find it and decide I was not worthy to attend their institution-and actually I'm still working with that today. I also wanted to write about things that were not in any shape or form related to the things that I was learning in school. I think I was trying to prove the point that I was an engaged person who was not just some nerdy bookworm and that I was a person who thought about issues outside the realm of academia.

But as more and more of my time became dedicated as classes became more and more difficult, I had less time to ruminate on things outside of my studies. As a result, the posts here just became less and less frequent and less and less enthused.

I only recently have started to understand why I didn't really feel comfortable writing about the things that I am learning in school. There are two main reasons, the first being that I didn't think that what I was learning was relevant. Interesting to me, but would anyone else think so? The second reason, and far more embarrassing one, is that I didn't feel comfortable explaining things that I myself didn't understand. I had hoped that this problem would go away and that magically by the time I was a senior in high school I could read complex scientific journal articles and understand them perfectly. Unfortunately this seems to be a recurring phenomenon that I think will be an ongoing event so long as I am a person that is learning things.

The reason that any of this came to mind is because I am in a class designed specifically for writing about academic subjects but for the general public. Yes, we had to have classes specifically designed for this purpose. And while I obviously think that it is a worthwhile endeavor, I think that speaks volumes about how disconnected we the Wellesley community are from "the Real World", so much so that we need to have classes with the main objective of helping us communicate our passions and interests to the hypothetical layman. Being a senior in college has made me hyperaware of the fact that in one year's time I will have to find a place for myself in this "real world" I keep hearing so much about.

So you can probably see where I'm going with this-I am going to be trying to post the articles I write for class here on the blog and maybe even the other things I've written about before. While I can't pretend I will love every subject I write about, I do think it defeats the purpose of writing for the general public if no one but my classmates and professors read my writing. I'm actually really really nervous about doing this because the serious subjects will never go viral the way that another post I write might. But I guess I have to take the leap that the while the good things may not be the most exciting click-baitable things they are still worthwhile.