“The Case for Biology - AfterEllen.com” plus 3 more

The Case for Biology - AfterEllen.com
From the clinics to the bench and back -- phenytoin as ... - EurekAlert
UAH shooting victim released from hospital - Everything Alabama Blog
For Templeton Prize, intelligent design opponent ... - Minnpost.com

Posted: 28 Mar 2010 10:38 PM PDT

After reading the last post ("It runs in the family...") I was very interested in gaging some of your attitudes, thoughts, feelings, on homosexuality as having a biological basis. I've only come to thinking about this recently after taking a class in medical anthropology. My professor, himself an anthropologist and epidemiologist and, lest I leave out, GAY, has done research on what is called the 2D:4D ratio. This compares the lengths of your second and fourth fingers in relation to each other. The paper piqued my curiosity and so I did a little more googling on the topic and there's quite a bit of investigation into this, though it is still somewhat speculative.

The more masculine ratio is a longer ring finger relative to the index. The opposite is typical for women, but the masculine trait can be present for some too (like myself). The 2D:4D research posits, in the latter instance, that female fetuses are producing much more androgen hormones than average. Hormones in turn play a huge role in brain development. Certainly this does not prove homosexuality is purely biological. For one, not all identifying homosexual women exhibit the male 2D:4D ratio. But it's enough to get you thinking.

taken from http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200506/sexuality-your-telltale-f... :

"Some scientists believe prenatal sex hormones are also part of the puzzle of homosexuality and that a high level of testosterone may wire the brain for attraction to the same sex. Intriguingly, research shows that a prenatal testosterone level is most strongly linked to homosexuality in women, according to an article in the Archives of Sexual Behavior. Lesbians are more likely than straight women to have a masculine finger ratio..."

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From the clinics to the bench and back -- phenytoin as ... - EurekAlert

Posted: 29 Mar 2010 07:56 AM PDT

Public release date: 29-Mar-2010
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Contact: Dr. Silvia Pellegrini
silvia.pellegrini@bioclinica.unipi.it
Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine

This release is available in Chinese.

Phenytoin is a well known antiepileptic agent widely used throughout the world. Recent clinical studies in patients with bipolar disorder have suggested that, as for other anticonvulsant drugs commonly used in the treatment of bipolar patients including valproate and carbamazepine, phenytoin may have mood-stabilizing effects in addition to its well-known anticonvulsant properties. In a study published in the March 2010 issue of Experimental Biology and Medicine Veronica Mariotti and colleagues utilized DNA microarrays to investigate the molecular underpinnings of the potential mood-stabilizing action of phenytoin by looking at its effect on gene expression in the rat brain.
As compared with untreated animals, rats treated for a month with phenytoin had 508 differentially expressed genes in the hippocampus and 62 in the frontal cortex, including genes involved in GABAergic and glutamatergic neurotransmission, neuroprotection and other genes thought to be crucial for mood regulation. Furthermore, some of these same genes have been shown to be modulated by classical mood-stabilizer agents, like lithium and valproate.
Thus, the findings of this study indicate that chronic phenytoin administration modulates the expression of genes involved in mood regulation and genes that are targets of established mood stabilizers. Dr Mariotti noted that "The results of this study provide preliminary insights into possible molecular mechanisms of action of phenytoin as a potential mood stabilizer and, more in general, the pathophysiology of bipolar disorders".
The study is the product of a fruitful collaboration between the Molecular Biology Laboratory of Dr. Silvia Pellegrini at the Department of Experimental Pathology, University of Pisa Medical School, Pisa, Italy and the Laboratory of Professors Galila Agam and R.H. Belmaker at the Psychiatry Research Unit at the Faculty of Health Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel.
Dr. Steven R. Goodman, Editor-in-Chief of Experimental Biology and Medicine, said "Mariotti and colleagues have provided very interesting results on the changes in gene expression in rats treated with phenytoin. There findings shed significant light on the mood altering effects of this antiepileptic drug".

Experimental Biology and Medicine is a journal dedicated to the publication of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research in the biomedical sciences. The journal was first established in 1903.
Experimental Biology and Medicine is the journal of the Society of Experimental Biology and Medicine. To learn about the benefits of society membership visit www.sebm.org. If you are interested in publishing in the journal please visit www.ebmonline.org.

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UAH shooting victim released from hospital - Everything Alabama Blog

Posted: 29 Mar 2010 08:46 AM PDT

By Pat Ammons Newcomb, The Huntsville Times

March 29, 2010, 10:19AM

Stephanie Monticciolo and Joseph LeahyHUNTSVILLE, AL - Stephanie Monticciolo, the staff assistant injured in the Feb. 12 shootings at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, has been released from Huntsville Hospital.

According to her Caring Bridge Web page, Monticciolo is still recovering from injuries she received when Dr. Amy Bishop allegedly shot her and five other people during a biology department faculty meeting.

Three members of the faculty, Dr. Gopi Podila, chairman of the biology department, Dr. Adriel Johnson and Dr. Maria Ragland Davis, were killed. Dr. Luis Cruz-Vera and Dr. Joseph Leahy were injured.

Cruz-Vera was released from the hospital on Feb. 13, but Leahy continues to recover at the Shepherd Center, a rehabilitation center in Atlanta that specializes in traumatic brain injuries. According to the Leahy family's blog, Leahy is able to feed himself soft foods and can walk with assistance. He continues to have respiratory and eyesight problems.

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For Templeton Prize, intelligent design opponent ... - Minnpost.com

Posted: 29 Mar 2010 08:25 AM PDT

A highly respected evolutionary biologist has received the 2010 Templeton Prize, an award issued each year by the John Templeton Foundation to a person "who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life's spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works."

This year's winner, Francisco Ayala, is perhaps best known scientifically for his research into the evolutionary history of the parasite scientists have associated with malaria, with an eye toward developing a cure for the disease. He also pioneered the use of an organism's genetic material as molecular clocks that help track and time its origins.

But for the past 30 years, he has been at the forefront of battles to keep creationism and its more-sophisticated offshoot, intelligent design, out of public-school biology classes, noting that they actually represent religion masked as natural science. At the same time, he has vigorously argued that religion is a vital pillar in American life.

The U.S. scientific enterprise is the envy of the world, he says, and the country is the most religious of any nation in the western world. "It is nothing short of tragic to see these two pillars of society are often seen as in contradiction with each other," he said during the award's presentation last week at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington.

"Properly understood, there can be no contradiction because they deal with different subjects," he said.

Although he has been reluctant over the years to describe his own religious leanings, Ayala argues that religion and science are "different windows" for looking at the world. Only when each tries to make "assertions beyond their legitimate boundaries" do the two appear to clash.

"Science gives us an insight on reality which is very important; our technology is based on our science," he says. "But at the end of the day, questions important to people, questions of meaning, purpose, moral values, and the like" are not answered through science.

Beyond championing the roles science and religion can play in their respective domains, he also has argued that "scientific knowledge, the theory of evolution in particular, is consistent with a religious belief in God, whereas the tenets of creationism and the so-called intelligent design are not."

While intelligent-design advocates point to the complexity of many biological processes as too intricate to have emerged from a random evolutionary process, Ayala points to many of biology's flawed designs as evidence of a lack of intelligence behind them.

"Any engineer who would have designed the human jaw bone would be fired the next day," he says. Instead, he terms biology's flawed products as "a consequence of the clumsy ways of nature and the evolutionary process."

Ayala, a professor at the University of California at Irvine, began his dual journeys into science and religion during his formative years in Spain, where he graduated from college with a bachelors degree in physics. After graduation, he studied theology there, and five years later became an ordained priest.

But during his theological studies, two geneticists took him under their wing, and in 1961, Ayala moved to New York to take up graduate studies in evolutionary biology and genetics at Columbia University. And he left the priesthood.

Over the course of his career, he has won awards for his scientific work and has served on several high-level science advisory panels in the U.S. In 2001, President George W. Bush awarded Ayala the National Medal of Science.

In a prepared statement, John Templeton Jr., the president and chairman of the John Templeton Foundation said, "Ayala's clear voice in matters of science and faith echoes the Foundation's belief that evolution of the mind and truly open-minded inquiry can lead to real spiritual progress in the world."

Ayala says he will donate the $1.42 million prize to charity.

Peter N. Spotts reports for the Christian Science Monitor.

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Biology

Monday, March 29, 2010