Zevatrons, colliding neutron stars, cellular suicide switches and Frankie the x-ray machine operator at LaGuardia

 ....Needless to say I have been learning a LOT with some crash courses in biology, cancer, and ionizing radiation.  There is some really fascinating (albeit terrifying) stuff going on with me right now.  I am choosing (at least at this very moment(read: subject to change)) to focus on the fascinating side of things.

Back to the first post that I made in this journey how did we get here? There is some more interesting information (from a science perspective and less from a personal perspective).  Turns out that most likely this is NOT caused from some sort of inheritance (as much as I would like to blame my Mom, it looks like I can't do it at this time).  It looks like this is more likely to be caused by environmental reasons.  Which is where the ionizing radiation comes into the picture.  Some of the questions that were asked in this investigation were about me having lots of scans as a child for some disease.  Which....I didn't....as far as I am being told by my parents....and I will believe them on this one....I also don't have specific memories of my Dad coming back from the nuclear power plant with glowing plutonium rods for me to play with so a more recent exposure to radiation is probably more likely.  So it could be some sort of very strange nuclear (pronounced "New-Clear" (yes the pronunciation is a pet-pev of mine)) radioactivity



....a 2nd pet-pev of mine was the flesh-out vs. flush-out (thanks for that one Dave, can't get that one out of my head either despite recent extreme measures :-)).  

So....where do we get ionizing radiation from now?  What could have done this?  Well...it could by a myriad of different things and apparently we are bathed in ionizing radiation pretty much constantly. Cosmic rays are particularly fun...Like a Zevatrons that created the OMG particle (same energy as a bowling ball dropped on your toe from about the height of your waist but contained in a single subatomic particle)


...or we also have colliding Neutron stars that can pump them out too...

But...in reality they are also created by the sun and lots of other things....and that is just one source of ionizing radiation.  I like the thought of something hitting me from lightyears away in some super crazy high energy situation and finally hitting me in just the wrong spot at the wrong time.  I choose to believe that it happened on a specific beautiful day on the beach when I snapped this picture.

....although it was probably something more mundane and boring like some layover that I had in LaGuardia trying to get back home and Frankie was too interested in his flaming-hot-Cheetos (and I do agree they are way better than normal Cheetos) to care about the calibration of the x-ray machine or the shielding and it was just spraying everywhere and got me then.....

But your DNA getting shredded by Ionizing radiation is not enough to give you something really nasty like I got you need a bit more help (or lack of help actually).  There is something that sounds like I should have known (or remembered) from Biology class called "apoptosis".  A really cool process that helps our bodies deal with DNA getting shredded on a somewhat regular basis.  This reminds me of "Ophiocordyceps" which is a fungus (that fun enough "The Last Of Us" was based on) where ants will become infected then guardian ants will carry infected members out of the nest to die on their own and not infect the rest of the ant colony. 



...anyway....we have something called TP53 that helps with this process.  I'll let you dive down that rabbit hole if you are interested.  But TP53 (AKA "guardian of the genome") can activate apoptosis when a mutation is detected (haven't researched how tp53 knows that something is mutated or not (more homework for later I guess)).  Again would like to blame mom for this but more than half of TP53 problems are environmental and not inherited.  So lesson for this post is drink more green tea which has been proven to increase levels of tp53...which helps cells commit cellular Seppuku when honor (ok detected mutation) demands it.




....also have to say love the fact that the Samurai are into the male-pattern-baldness hair style (learned it is called "chonmage")






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