Cystic Fibrosis

Cystic Fibrosis is an inherited chronic disease that affects the lungs and digestive system of many people in the United States. A defective gene and its protein product cause your body to produce thick, sticky like mucus that clogs the lungs and leads to lung infections, it obstructs the pancreas and stops enzymes from helping your body absorb and break down food. The symptoms and signs of Cystic Fibrosis are: salty tasting skin, persistent coughing with phlegm, frequent lung infections, wheezing or shortness of breath, poor growth, weight gain in spite of a good appetite, and greasy, bulky stools or difficulty in your bowel movements. Today, medical treatments have further enhanced and extended life for children and adults with CF (Cystic Fibrosis). People with the disease can now usually live into their 30s, 40s, and even longer. This disease has about 1,000 new cases of CF diagnosed each year. More than 70% of patients are diagnosed with disease by the young age of 2. A little less than half of the CF patient population have an age of 18 or older. The age predicted to live by CF patients is 30 years old.  Not everyone who has the mutant gene can get CF. You can have 1 perfect copy of that gene, but it takes 2 perfect copies to get it.
      The function of the protein that is defective in CF is usually in the epithelial cells lining the airways of the lung. There are channels in the lining cells where ions can pass. Usually the movement of ions brings water to the surface of the airway and keeps the mucus from getting dry, and staying moist. The gene that is defective blocks the channels, and causes the mucus to dry out. Then it makes it difficult  for somebody to sift the mucus, which becomes prone to infection by bacteria. In the lining of a person with CF, the vital chloride channel is blocked. so there is no movement of chloride ions in the mucus. Having no ionic gradient, theres is no water that moves towards the surface, and the mucus ends up drying out. Sometimes the protein may be present in the cell membrane, but may not function the way it is supposed to.
    There are a few ways that you can treat having the disease of CF and 3 of those ways are; Antibiotics, mucus-thinning drugs, and bronchodilators. The drugs with antibiotics are used to treat and prevent lung infections. They may come in pill form, inhaled in a mist, or delivered intravenously. The mucus-thining drugs are drugs that reduce the sticky mucus that you get, and makes it easier to cough it up, which improves the function of your lungs. Bronchodilators are medications such as albuterol that can be used as inhalers, or nebulizers. They help you keep your airways open by relaxing the muscles around your bronchial tubes. People who have CF have to go through a lot, and you may experience many emotions, but especially anger and fear. They are most common in teens, but openly talking about it can help a lot. IIt would also help to talk to other people with the same problem as you. If you have a child with CF, you can join support groups, or meet with other parents on your own time that also have children with CF. Psychologists are also another a good thing to consider. They can help the children as the grow into their teen years. CF can be a very serious thing that you have to live with throughout your life time.

Cell Membrane Structure

A Cell is composed of two distinctive environments: Hydrophilic aqueous cytoplasm and hydrophobic lipid membranes. Lipid environment is defined by the family of molecules that are characterized by their hydrophobic nature and their common metabolic origin. Lipid molecules are slightly soluble to insoluble in water. Lipids are hydrophobic because the molecules consist of long, 16-18 carbon, hydrocarbon backbones with only a small amount of oxygen containing groups. Serve many functions in organisms. Major components of waxes, pigments, steroid hormones, and cell membranes. Fats are synthesizes from two different classes of molecules: fatty acids attached to the alcohol glycerol. Fatty acids are usually 16-22 carbons long. There are 2 different types of fatty acids, saturated and unsaturated. Saturated fatty acids have no carbon- carbon double bonds, while unsaturated fatty acids have one to three double bonds along the backbone carbon chain. Double bonds introduce kinks in the carbon chain that have important consequences on the fluid nature of lipid membranes. Unsaturated fatty acids have lower melting points than saturated fatty acids. To construct a fat, 3 fatty acid molecules are attatched to the glycerol through an ester bond between the carboxyl group of the fatty acids and the three alchohol groups of a glycerol molecule.  A fat molecule can be composeed of1-3 different types of fatty acids each of which can be saturated or unsaturated. Saturated Fatty acids are usually 16-22 carbons long. Fat stores energy and insulates molecules. Saturated fats don't have any.
     Phospholipids contain two fatty acids attached to the glycerol head. A third alcohol of the glycerol forms an ester bond. Being a triprotic acid, the phosphate head has the potential to form ester links with a variety of other types of molecules like amino acids or carbohydrates.

    This a poster of a Fluid Mosaic Model that i drew with another person in my class, it shows how membranes are structured in a very simple/ cartoonish way.

    Protien channels also play a huge role in your body. Protien channels are trans-membrane proteins found in the phospholipid bilayer membranes in our bodies. These channel proteins allow specific molecules to pass through, crossing the membrane. When you want to move your finger, the protein channels send a message to your brain and nerves to move that finger. The same with any other thing that you move in your body.

                                                                   Diffusion and Osmosis Lab
       We did a diffusion and osmosis lab in our class. In this lab we had a solution of glucose and starch and placed it inside a bag of dialysis tubing. In a cup  outside of the tube, we had water and iodine mixed together. Then we put the tube of glucose and starch mixture inside of the cup with iodine and water, but first tied off the ends tight to make sure they wouldn't mix. After about 30 minutes passed we checked the glucose level of the water in the cup and it came out negative. Over the weekend we let the membrane tube sit in the cup, and the results were that the fluid inside the membrane tube leaked into the cup with iodine and water. The iodine from outside the dialysis tubing also leaked in, because it urned it a different color from mixing with the starch. When we tested both the liquid in the cup and membrane tube, the both had a high glucose level, that was definitely way positive.

     We decided to do another version of the lab and weigh the substances so we could see what left and went into the dialysis tubing. We did four different cups with the substances and water mixed in the dialysis tubing. The four different substances were Corn syrup, Sodium acetate, Antacid tablets, and Sodium bicarbonate. We weighed them three different times to see the results that would come out. The first time we weighed them, we weighed before we put them in the cup of water and cup one with antacid tablets weighed 13.43g. Cup two with the sodium acetate weighed 13.74g. The third cup with corn syrup weighed 11.93g, and the 4th cup with sodium bicarbonate weighed 11.66 g. An hour later we weighed them again, and the 1st cup weighed14.74g, the 2nd cup weighed 23.09g, the 3rd cup weighed 15.88g, and the 4th cup weighed 12.09g. We also did the same thing the day later. Cup one was 14.23g, the second cup was 16.23g,  the third cup was 8.47g, and the fourth was 11.46g. As you can see when we weighed them the hour later, they were at their highest, because thats the time when the water goes through all the little pores in the dialysis tubing, and water moves very quickly because it doesn't have very big molecules, so that is what made that possible. Over night and part of the next day is when the other substances started coming out slowly, because they have bigger molecules than the water and are more dense, so it takes longer for them to go through the tubing. The sodium acetate collected the most water out of all of them, because the molecules of the acetate went through the pores in the membrane easier than all of the substances. Now that we did the lab again in a different way, we really the saw the diffusion and Osmosis come out in the experiments.

Here is a Graph of the data we found out in our lab: