Five Bullet Wednesday- Fish eyes, Mushrooms, Passions (Patreon)

Update on Piscivore diet---
No, I haven't started eating only fish, but I came across something the other day while reading the Vitamin E chapter in the Textbook of Veterinary Physiological Chemistry. I posted this to my instagram the other day (below) In case the image doesn't show up, it says:  "The antioxidant action of tocopherol(vitamin E) is effective at high oxygen levels, and thus tends to be concentrated in lipid structures exposed to high partial pressures of O2 (e.g., membranes of the respiratory tree, the retina, and erythrocytes; see deficiency symptoms below)."

It's not uncommon to eat the eye of the fish in Japan(though they're rarely as big as a man's hand). Actually right after I texted this post to my girlfriend, she texted me her lunch which was stewed fish head  (kabutoni). "Fish eyes? I just ate one. They're supposed to be healthy, right?"

Actually, that textbook chapter on Vitamin E continues to say:
"The need for vitamin E, therefore, partially depends upon the dietary intake of UFAs (unsaturated fatty acids). Animals consuming large quantities of fish-based diets (which normally contain high amounts of UFAs) without adequate antioxidants such as vitamins C or E, can experience peroxidation of body fat and fat necrosis."

So I guess if I do a piscivore diet, I'll need to supplement with vitamin E or buy a big bag of fish eyeballs to eat with my fish meals. (Like good ol' Hugo.)
(+Excellent video by Chris Masterjohn if you're interested in this.) 

Lecture I enjoyed---
"Paul Stamets: Mycology and Mushrooms as Medicines" - Great talk by Paul Stammets. He talks about how Mushrooms are saving bees and growing brains. At  35:17, after explaining Lion's Mane mushrooms improve mild cognitive impairment, he says:

"There's a clinical study on mild cognitive impairment... interestingly when the individuals after several weeks went off the lion's mane, their progression towards dementia restarted. So, in this patient population, the continued use of lion's mane seemed to stave off the otherwise natural progression towards dementia.
Well, it is known that Lion's Mane mushrooms, the erinacines remove amyloid plaques, which interfere with nerve transmission, and (they) cause remyelination."

Who/what made you interested in the field you're interested in?---
I remember watching this video (yes it's a Skillshare video, I'm not here to advertise them more, hence not posting my affiliate link...) with Aaron Draplin that really got me interested in illustrator and vector art. So far the most I've done with it is make this Japanese brochure, but I found it's fun to use and has a lot of potential if I could get better at it. 

So, I haven't gotten good at it, but it's something on my list and before watching the Draplin video illustrator was just some thing that seemed complicated and uninteresting.

Does anyone have an example of someone/something/some video, book or blog that sparked your interested in a topic you weren't particularly keen on before?

Predictions & More problems with Mouse models---
"A little over a hundred years ago, Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves as a possible consequence of his theory of general relativity. Two years ago, these waves were first detected by LIGO."[S]
"In 1862, Darwin was studying a Malagasy orchid called Angraecum sesquipedale, whose nectar stores lie inaccessibly at the bottom of a 30cm long spur (tube). Darwin predicted that the flower was pollinated by a moth with (a 30cm) tongue long enough to raid the spur. Darwin predicted that the flower was pollinated by a moth with tongue long enough to raid the spur. Few people believed him, but in 1903, zoologists discovered Darwin's predicted moth, Xanthopan morgani praedicta, and it did indeed have a very long tongue."[S]

While looking around for interesting predictions about human physiology, I came across this paper that says:
"Does it matter that rodents used as preclinical models of human biology are routinely housed below their thermoneutral zone? Although typical animal-house temperature (21–22°C) is comfortable for humans working there, it is cold for laboratory rodents. In their review (4), Maloney et al. compile evidence showing that such rodents are cold stressed, hypermetabolic, hypertensive, sleep deprived, obesity resistant, fever resistant, aging resistant, and tumor prone compared with mice housed at thermoneutrality. ...experiments done on cold rodents may lead to false predictions about human physiology."

Does anyone know of any other good predictions made about human physiology or nutrition like "Based on X, we should expect Y vitamin to be concentrated in this body part." or "There should be some genetic disease that provides X benefit but Y detriment because of Z environmental factor"

(Corona)virus & Vitamin E - - -
At least in the case of influenza here's what goes down: Virus replicates in the lungs causing damage → leads to a "dramatic inflammatory burst" which increases reactive oxygen species (ROS's) generation, causing more damage. A very simplistic way to imagine ROS's is like the little ball in "Breakout" that flies around smashing into bricks, except the ball is a molecule with an oxygen atom with an unpaired electron ready to give drugs (electrons) to kids (almost any kind of biological molecule) or steal bricks(electrons) from the foundation of your house (cellular components).

We have antioxidant defenses to combat these ROS's, but influenza attempts to mess up this defense system to generate more ROS's and lower our defenses. Vitamin E is a fat soluble antioxidant.

Paper: "The oxidative stress in influenza virus-infected organism provokes free-radical oxidation of unsaturated lipid chains in the cell membranes. As vitamin E is a lipid-soluble substance and possesses a hydrophobic tail, it tends to accumulate within lipid membranes. There, it acts as the most important chain breaker, reacting with lipid peroxyl radicals much faster than they can react with adjacent fatty acid side chains. Among the antioxidants tested in influenza virus infections in mice, vitamin E occupies the leading position because of its efficacy in preventing oxidative damage through its free-radical scavenging activity."

Maybe I'll eat more fish eyeballs with my normal diet since Japan is the second most coronavirus infected region.

It's not Wednesday.---
Sorry guys. I'm late on this one - been really busy with some paperwork I might update y'all on later. Here's a bonus fun fact for being late:

Relaxing your muscles is not a passive process where you need to just tell your muscles to stop using energy on contractions. Smooth muscle relaxation requires a decreased concentration of calcium ions which requires energy in the form of ATP.

An example of how relaxation requires energy is the state of rigor mortis. This is when muscles become not mushy like you took a ton of valium, but rigid after death. How does that work?

I'll quote from this part about Smooth Muscle Relaxation from a  book I'm reading called Life: The epic story of our mitochondria.

"All this calcium must be move back out of the cytosol and into the sarcoplasmic reticulum. However, this process requires the use of a pump since the calcium must now move up the concentration gradient—and going against the gradient requires energy. That energy, of course, comes from ATP. The enzyme embedded in the membrane of the sarcoplasmic reticulum called calcium-magnesium-ATPase (Ca-Mg-ATPase), when activated, binds two calcium ions, which are then transferred to the inner part of the sarcoplasmic reticulum and released (sequestered, ready for the next stimulus signalling a contraction). This pump also has two ATP-binding sites, and both must have ATP attached for it to work. However, there are intricacies we need to discuss. The first ATP-binding site has a high affinity for ATP, and therefore, any ATP in the vicinity binds to this site readily. Once bound to this site, ATP releases its energy, and is turned into ADP. The second ATP-binding site does not attract ATP so easily. In fact, the only way for ATP to bind here is to ensure a high concentration of ATP so that hopefully one will just “fall” into the binding site. Building up this concentration obviously requires significant amounts of ATP to be produced."

"In death, fuel and oxygen are no longer delivered to the muscles, and ATP production stops. Without enough ATP, the calcium ions cannot be pumped out of the cell, and the muscles can no longer “relax.”

QUESTION---
What did you guys think about this one? Was it too technical? Anything other kind of updates you're hoping to see in these weekly posts?