Visit to CPI

A few weeks after talking to George Ewart as mentioned in my last post, he contacted me to say that he had been at lunch with an old friend who was a non executive member on a board of a company called CPI (Centre for Process & Innovation). At this lunch he mentioned the talk that he and I had and his friend offered to take us both on a tour of CPI, to show us around the centre's facilities and meet some of the members of staff. Of course, this was fantastic news as this could be a great example of a place that I could see myself working at in the future, and it would give me an opportunity to understand more of the business and see how it drives scientific processes in the real world. 

I got in touch with Sandy Anderson, the non exec board member, who was kind enough to arrange a full day's programme for George and I, as he had not seen the centre before either.  

I decided to do some background research on the centre before I went, to understand more about what I would see. CPI employs just under 400 people, and are based in the North East of England, with their main site being in Wilton. They were set up by ONE North East, and their current CEO was Nigel Perry. They particularly specialise in working with other firms and companies to develop commercial products, medicines/biological testing and technologies. I also researched around a few of the people I knew I would be meeting, such as Sandy Anderson OBE who was actually a governor at my school for almost a decade, and stopped when I was in year 8, in 2012. Alongside his current position in CPI, he has also been the chair and pro chancellor of Teeside University as well as chair of various other companies including senior vice president at ICI. Dr. Lucy Foley, the head of Biologics centre in Darlington (which I would be visiting later) who studied chemical engineering at UCL, and went on to become a teaching Fellow at Newcastle University, and Dr. Tony Jackson who had previously worked at ICI, and will have no doubt shared connections with George. He then worked under AzkoNobel for 6 years, being project director and research team leader before coming to CPI and being their head of Research at the Formulations Centre, which George and I would also be visiting later in the day. CPI had recently gained £15 million of funding from a scientific council for future formulation projects, set up two new buildings in the NETPark in Sedgefield, including a graphene research centre- something which my chemistry teacher would absolutely love to see. 

On 19th of May, I caught the train to Darlington and was picked up by George as we made our way to the Biologics centre to meet Dr. Lucy Foley. I had not realised that this centre was so brand new! Everything was beautifully designed in this centre, with some very cool panoramic views around the main conference rooms of the labs. We were given a full floor-to-floor tour of the place, from the liquid nitrogen tanks outside to the heart of the machinery and computer modelling rooms. They even had a feature that allowed an iPad to be pointed towards any wall and show-in real time- the pipes behind the walls or ceilings to ease the problem of fixing pipes or doing maintainence accurately and efficiently. We had a talk with Dr Foley in which she explained all of what goes on in this centre, and showed us particularly her area of expertise, fermentation. They had around 50 small (maybe 500ml?) fermentation reaction vessels in one room which were being constantly measured and had different amounts of reactants in them, all hooked up to a self producing graph to find the optimal mixture of ingredients and conditions so that they could then scale up to the 10 or even 100 litre vessels in order to mass produce the product. In the one and a half hours we had there, I was very impressed by the whole place and asked Dr. Foley if they would be interested in linking with my school, for the possibility of a school trip or maybe for a lecture to one of our science societies as we have such a variety of good chemists and biologists at Durham school, to which she said she would put me in touch with their STEM co-ordinater to arrange this. She also offered me a week's work experience at CPI during the summer which I happily accepted! 

The next place we went was CPI Wilton; where the company was based. Upon arrival we had lunch with the CEO, Nigel Perry. He really helped me to understand the business side of what CPI do, and explained in more detail the projects that were taking place all around the area. The lead scientist there also showed us around the labs that they had, with all sorts of amazing equipment. Some of the coolest things I remember were polypeptide sorting machines, they would be moved parallel across a membrane with specific conditions on either side to facilitate the movement of certain proteins and not others. By passing them parallel to the membrane you do not change their structure by force and by altering the conditions (for things like specific amino acid charges and polymer shape) you can vary the range of polypeptides which cross, selecting them, in effect. I also remember a fluid which the polypeptides would travel at different speeds through and this was hooked to a computer which would be able to identify the identities of the proteins collected. 

The final place we went on our tour of CPI (which was turning into a tour of the north east of England!) was over in Sedgefield, at the "NETPark" where I met Dr. Tony Jackson and had a look into some printable electronics and Graphene research they were doing in their brand new centre. He explained how they were revolutionising the precision with which they could print and even said they could now print at an atomic level, around (1x10⁻⁹ metres) and showed us some incredible examples of technology which had been printed and woven into clothing and touch pads which were printed into a seemingly solid table surface which were unbelievably sensitive and gave a beautiful image on a computer screen. The graphene was interesting especially to talk about because it was a section of the GCSE chemistry course and we had to learn about it as a giant covalent structure. One thing he did mention was graphene's possible asbestos-like properties, as far as being unreactive enough to slice DNA apart and cause mutations, and so as a safety precaution until more is known it unfortunately has to be kept behind glass or in containers! He also talked to me a lot about his particular route through Both CPI and AzkoNobel and his experiences of leadership in interesting foreign countries including Germany and China as well as how his family life had affected his career path and his need to balance the two. This gave a deeper understanding for my future and will be something I am sure I will need to take into account at some point.

I loved the day I had at CPI, and I hope to do many more similar things to it in the future. I am so thankful to George for introducing me, and then to the whole of the staff who showed us around at CPI and for organising such an opportunity for me. Defintiely somewhere I could see myself working in the future... 

EDIT: Work experience commences in the 1st wee
k of August and a school trip will be arranged hopefully in Sep/Oct this year. 

Body Worlds exhibition Newcastle

A few months ago I noticed that the centre for life (Newcastle's science centre) was hosting another Body Worlds Exhibition, similar to ones I had previously seen in Amsterdam and a previous Newcastle exhibition. I loved these exhibitions as they were so interesting to me and like the Wellcome collection in my last post, blurred the lines between art and science. In fact I used a lot of Body Worlds' exhibits for inspiration for my GCSE art module on structure, I did the structure of the anatomy of the human body.

If you haven't seen Body Worlds before, I'll explain a bit about it: The brainchild of Dr. Gunther Von Hagens, an Austrian doctor of medicine, who wanted to educate and show the public the wonders of human anatomy, Body Worlds is a travelling exhibition of real human specimens who have been "plastinated" in a chemical process which removed the body tissue and replaces it with an exact plastic replica. The result is an awe inspiring detailed 3 dimensional model of how the human body fits together and what you would really look like under the skin. It's sort of like a human body cross section book, but in real life and much more detailed. Over 40 million people have viewed a Body Worlds exhibition, and it has been a massive success with exhibitions in over 100 cities worldwide from 1995 to the present. Although some of the images you are seeing around this post may not be to your liking, I highly recommend going to experience any exhibition you can find near you. 

Both of the pervious exhibitions I had seen were about the human body, one being Pulse and the other Vital, so they particularly focused on the circulatory system and internal organs respectively, however this exhibition was entitled "Animal Inside Out" and featured all sorts of organisms from the kingdom animalia, including things from pigeons and frogs to a giraffe and an elephant! I encouraged a couple friends who were also interested to come with me, even though one was actually a vegetarian! The variety of organisms was one for he things I enjoyed most about this exhibition as they differed from the same human forms (normally you aren't allowed to take photographs of the plastinates to respect protect the identities of the plastinated human's, but as this was animals photography was allowed so I took many pictures to post on the blog) 

I have included a section which I found interesting at the very beginning of the exhibition on the process of plastination, invented by Dr. Von Hagens himself, using Acetone to dissolve the soluble fats and then replacing the structures with Silicon which enters the cells through a vacuum pump at which point they can position the limbs and tissues how they need and will then harden the body for display. 

The first plastinate we saw was of a Dog, posed catching a frisbee, jumping in midair. The muscle groups which you can see are particularly accentuated are the neck, shoulder and jaw muscles and this makes sense as the bulk of a dog's power is from its back and shoulders as it had the evolutionary advantage of using its mouth to bite and neck to balance during running (such as is particularly noticeable in a greyhound running at full speed) the red groups are the muscle bulk and the white parts are tendons, connective tissues and joints, such as is visible on the front paws and wrists. 

The next three exhibits were great to see in a row, three ostriches showing the different layers of muscle bone and circulatory system that was present all over the body. Comparing all of these techniques made me appreciate just how  much of a complex organism like an Ostrich is. Muscles interwoven with bone and blood vessels branching out through the muscles in a seemingly arbitrary pattern, but maintaining constant blood flow to all aerobic reactions needing to take place in the ostrich's muscles. The genes and hormones that regulate these processes of where things grow and defining boundaries between tissue types must be so complex, no wonder there must be so much information in every nucleus of the cell. 

I find it fascinating to take my knowledge of biological systems and how they have helped shape the physiology of the organisms in the exhibition and then think deeper about the millions of billions of biochemical processes that would have to have taken place to make all of this possible, and then even further down to think about how the laws of physics and characteristics of chemicals and elements have shaped the world we live in, and how if they had been at all different would I still be writing this as I am now?







One of my favourite plastination techniques Von Hagen uses is the plastination of capillaries, as it makes you realise just how dense your network of blood vessels is, that if all the capillaries are used, there is a surface just as the skin would be covering the entire shape of the horse. No cell in the body is less than 0.1 micrometers from a capillary. you may as well be looking at the horse's head actually dyed red, but in fact if you were to use a microscope you would see that every single capillary is separate and gaps are left for cells. The Ostrich Circulatory system mentioned and shown above was only showing the major blood vessels, as if it has been done like the horse you would only see a red ostrich.






The next two exhibits were two of the most impressive: a Brown Bear and a Gorilla, both gigantic and imposing in stature with their huge muscle groups on their shoulders and torso, evolved and adapted to be high ranking in their food chains over millions of years. one of the only Human palatinates was featured in this exhibit next to the Gorilla, to show how closely related we were but also how different our physical bodies are. Unfortunately photography of the human palatinate is not allowed, but i was able to take a picture of the human brain, and the difference between the size of the gorilla's and the human's is what was extraordinary, the human's was not much bigger, yet we are the only species capable of language and communication. I suppose it was slightly misleading as the usual way the comparison is made is by brain size in relation body weight, but it made an impact.

The biggest two plastinations I have ever seen were left until last: an elephant and a pair of giraffes. the giraffe was so tall, and was split directly down the middle to expose the internal organs from behind. the elephant was expanded, with each layer of tissue being slid away from those under it to make it seem even larger than a normal african elephant. This technique also exposed the muscles and parts of bones or arteries which would not normally be shown as they are buried between layers or at least are not seen easily on the surface. The entire brain and nervous system was laid out underneath the elephant at it's feet, immediately made me realise just how much distance a nerve pulse must have to travel to get from the elephant's brain to it's foot and all the way back in a movement- would this time difference make a slight lag? Would we perceive the elephant's foot as moving after a noticeable delay once the elephant had thought to move it's foot? The brain itself was huge, but in comparison to the body size, had nothing on the human brain, of course. i have ridden an asian elephant in Thailand, and I do remember feeling as though they had some intelligent understanding, more than i have ever felt that a horse or cow had. Their trunks have a finger like feeling appendage to the end of it which they pass far above their head in search of bananas they know you have and (their favourite) a giant leek-like vegetable, which they would crunch through on a walk and you could feel the force and noise of the crunches through the vibrations in the back of their necks where you sat.


The second of the pair of Giraffes was a clever way to display an animal; it was slices of plastinated sections of giraffe suspended from the ceiling in the shape of a giraffe, so you could look at the layers and follow specific organ systems or tracks all the way through the body as the lights shone through.


This exhibit was another great success for body worlds in my opinion, and I think that anyone with a a keen interest in animals, humans, physiology, biology or even life in general should go to see this exhibition, I can't recommend it enough.

Teamwork at Sunderland Analytical Chemistry Competition

The 3 highest achieving chemists from our school were selected to take part in an analytical chemistry day at Sunderland University, and I was asked to write up the day's event for the school newspaper. Although we did not win, I believe we did well as we seemed to all get results that matched up with the motives and the culprit in the end.

Marrow murderer at large!

A year 12 team of Anu Krishna, Fraser Gaines and Will Bowles representing the school were invited for a day of a analytical Chemistry at the labs of Sunderland University on Tuesday. They were each given a booklet containing a story of a man called Dave who wanted to grow a prizewinning marrow in his garden; however he had made some enemies in the village and his marrow ha
d subsequently been destroyed by a mystery marrow murderer. 

Three suspects were narrowed down: firstly, Jason, a boy who had his football confiscated by Dave for kicking it into his garden who was believed to have held a grudge and be seen with a large bag of salt near the time of the crime. Next was Ms.Dale, a fertiliser retailer in the village who threatened to sell Dave fertiliser canister that's contents had been replaced with water. Finally was Mrs. Pembroke who had been recently spotted with copious amounts of silver nitrate, a toxic chemical, which she had no conceivable need for and also happened to hold a grudge against Dave and his marrow contest. 

Flame Photometer

Each of these suspects were to be investigated using analytical chemistry methods by each of the three members of the team, with Anu sorting the Silver nitrate scandal, Fraser testing for Phospherous in the Fertiliser and Will working on the salt scheme. 

Will made samples of different concentrations of salt water to be compared with both water obtained from the marrow plant's surrounding soil and soil from elsewhere in the garden. Using flame spectroscopy (where a sample  of a chemical is sent through a methane flame and the energy absorbed is an indication of the proportion of a certain element in the sample) Will found there to be less than 0.01 ppm (part per million) of Na⁺ in the water, and there was no difference between samples taken directly from the marrow soil and elsewhere in the garden, thus exonerating Jason from having committed such a terrible crime.

The Silver Thiocyanate ion titration

Anu was next, using a Ferrous thiocyanate indicator to detect a colour change from milky to grapefruit pink with the thiocyanate ion ([SCN]⁻) when combined with silver nitrate ([Ag]⁺[NO₃]⁻) and 6 molar nitric acid (HNO₃) to form a Silver thiocyanate precipitate when all of the iron had been used in conjunction with the thiocyanate

([Fe]³⁺3[SCN]⁻ with excess [Ag]⁺ means [Ag]⁺[SCN]⁻ silver thiocyanate precipitate is produced.

 By titrating this solution Anu was able to work out there was no significant difference in the amount of AgNO₃ in the soil around the marrow plant, and it was much less than the weakest concentration solution she had prepared in the lab, meaning that Mrs. Pembroke had also not poisoned the prized marrow.

It all came down to Fraser Gaines' phosphate fertiliser activity, as he used the analytical test for phosphate ions; ammonium molybdate-(2[NH₄]⁺[MoO₄]⁻²)

If phosphate was present the solution turned a dark marine blue, and the concentration of phosphate was proportional to the depth of the blue colour. 

Ammonium Molybdate

Fraser mixed varying concentrations of phosphate to use as comparisons, and then tested the sample from the marrow patch and the soil from elsewhere in the garden, finding a distinct difference between the two; the one from the rest of the garden was a dark blue, with a high concentration of phosphate [PO₃]⁻ ions, where the Dave had previously used fertiliser before Ms. Dale had started to be suspected of selling watered down fertiliser, the other from the marrow patch being a light transparent sky blue, indicating a paucity of phosphate ions, which, after using analytical photospectroscopy techniques ( which measure the absorption of light of a substance), Fraser could identify as having the same concentration as the weakest solution he had prepared, showing that Ms. Dale had indeed watered down the fertiliser to sabotage the growth of the prized marrow.

The 'Smoking Gun'

 Having taken longer to complete the analytical side of the practical work, the team was left to write a conclusion with fo
llow up questions, which were answered in a shortage of time and unfortunately did not secure them first place. 

The experience was both interesting and difficult, while improving their understanding of chemistry through analytical practical skills which will no doubt be good experience for university and later life for all three members of the Year 12 team.

Meeting with George Ewart- ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries)

ICI logo- founded in 1926 as the
product of four companies merged.

Through conversation with one of my mother's work contacts about A levels and future interests, it transpired that her father worked in a company called ICI -Imperial Chemical Industries- a chemical company founded in Britain in 1926 and for much of it's history has been the largest manufacturer in Britain. As I am thinking about the future and what types of things you can go on to do with degrees from university in things like chemistry, biochemistry and biomedicine, this seemed like a great opportunity to question what exactly her father did and his general path through life. She told me that he had studied Chemistry at Glasgow University and after he graduated he had been involved with ICI, at first being employed with a more chemistry-centric role to his work, but later rising through the company until he became the Managing Director of ICI's overseas unit in India.
She also explained that he was extremely enthusiastic about encouraging young people into chemistry and related fields, and would be more than happy to have a meeting with me. Of course, this seemed like an amazing opportunity, and so I jumped at the chance to meet Mr. Ewart and ask him about his career and see if he would answer any questions I had about the career path I might want to choose.
Before I met Mr. Ewart I had done some more reading around about ICI and what it specifically is involved in: the company was the result of a merger between four substituent companies; Brunner Mond, Nobel Explosives, united Alkali Co. and British Dyestuffs Corp. In its early days, it was competing with other large chemical firms such as IG Farben and DuPont and it's original base was in Billingham, Stockton-on-Tees, not far at all from where I live. It has contributed to many industrial processes and been key to developing new chemical products, things like:

Pthalocyanin

  Dulux Paint colour pigments (with DuPont in 1932)

  Pthalocyanin(1929), a blue/green dye used in artist's paint and even    used in a large proportion of CDs

  Perspex (1932) and Polyethylene (1937) of course you've heard of these

Terylene polymer

  Terylene (1941) a polymer used   about 30% for bottles and 60%   for fabrics (also known as PET)

  Crimplene (1950) a fabric   material resistant to creases

it also branched out into more Pharmaceutical products, creating ICI pharmaceuticals in 1957 under which things such as Halothane (1951) was produced, an anaesthetic agent. Inderal (1965) a beta blocker, Tamoxifen (1978) was a drug used to combat breast cancer by being an inhibitor of the processes enabling breast cells to grow, therefore it is especially used for men with breast cancer. Between these years it had also been developing many successful Pesticides, such as primiphos-methyl, primicarb, brodifacoum and lambda-cyhalothrin.

 Various changes in ICI's CEOs skyrocketed it's profits and in 1970-75 it was Britain's largest Exporter, and began to make huge business moves such as Acquiring Atlas Chemical industries in America and BNS (British Nylon Spinners) as well as selling other parts of it's company. ICI was included in the FTSE100 while this buying and selling continued until it found itself in debt of £4 billion, at which point it sold its chemical commodities, £1 bn to ICI Australia, and £3 bn to DuPont in 1997. After this, it was taken over in 2006 by AzkoNobel with an initial bit of £7.2 billion, however this was later increased to £8 billion and accepted by ICI. It still has bases in Stockton-on-Tees, Redcar & Cleveland, Manchester, Slough, Ayrshire and Hertfordshire.

Picture of George Ewart
taken for Indian news.

I also managed to find some news from India about Mr. Ewart's division, specifically that the Indian division of ICI was involved in rubber chemicals and explosives, particularly the formation of Nitroglycerine. It employed around 7,100 people at the time.

George and I had a great couple of hours of conversation, as he took me through his career path from his various experiences of great things and memories from Glasgow university where he studied, to his particular memories of his first roles in ICI, where he travelled to many eastern european countries to be the middle man between the chemical producers back in the UK and the sales teams for the consumers in these countries, therefore his role in these positions was to decide on particular prices, as he had knowledge of the costs, processes and yields of these chemical reactions. This gave him confidence in the business sides of things, and he encouraged me to open my mind to travelling to different countries to build experience in foreign places.
He asked me what A levels I was taking and how I was getting on with them. I Replied that I enjoyed both Biology and Chemistry the most out of my four (Bio, Chem, Physics and Latin) and was wondering where in particular he thought might be a good area to focus for the future sorts of fields within the chemistry/biology world to which he replied that he thought biochemistry and biomedicine were probably the most up and coming sectors, due to the newly available technology we are leaning how to utilise. Of course when he was young, chemistry was all the rage, without biology having caught up for example, Crick and Watson only discovered the specific structure of DNA in 1953, and so much more was need to be discovered before the corporations could successfully build business in fields relating more heavily to biochemistry and biomedicine technologies.
Another interesting point raised during our discussion was the idea of being accepted into a company to work, and them sponsoring me through university in order to take me back and have me working in the company with a degree. I have searched around for this sort of opportunity however most companies do not seem to offer this, at least not openly. It was fantastic to have met and had a long and meaningful conversation George, as I hope he will be a useful contact in the future, and continue to be a source of inspiration to me.

The Changing Periodic Table

(colours are off in this post and i don't know why- technical malfunction!)

When using Google today to search for a belated present for my dad, I saw the Google icon was a periodic table, with Dmitri Mendeleev holding a cube marked S 32, as it is his 182nd birthday. As I have a keen interest in chemistry and the father of chemistry, if ever there was one, was Mendeleev, I decided to learn about him and his table and thought would share some of what I found.

At the time, chemistry was a much more mysterious subject, with around 60 elements known, but not put into a specific order other than by their atomic weights. Mendeleev and other scientists noticed that although they were ordered by weight, the similar chemical properties of the elements were not at all ordered; for example lithium, sodium, and potassium were all reactive with water to similar degrees and in similar ways, but were separated by about 7 or 17 places, or that similar compounds were formed when Flourine, Chlorine, Bromine and Iodine were used, but again were too far apart to show that they were linked when put into order of atomic weight.

Monument in St.Petersburg to Mendeleev depicting
the periodic table

Mendeleev worked tirelessly to attempt to find a pattern, or a way of organising the elements that showed clear trends, even writing out the names numbers and characteristics on small cards and arranging them in different ways until he came to the conclusion that he was missing cards. Not too dissimilar from that feeling of annoyance when you don't have all the pieces to the puzzle you're trying to complete, Mendeleev left gaps in his arrangement and predicted the properties the elements yet to be discovered. He was so certain of himself that he even published a paper arguing with the observations of french chemist Paul Francoise Lecoq about an element Lecoq had discovered called Gallium in 1875... and he was correct having never seen nor worked with the element.

The periodic table is one of science's crowning achievements, a catalogue of the universe's atomic building blocks. 
(NOTE: I do not know why, but the text will not conform to the usual blue colour in the next few paragraphs)
Some of my favourite elements include:

Caesium- beautiful but dangerous

Caesium, from the latin caesius, meaning ,right blue, because of the coloured compounds it forms. It is a beautiful light champagne/gold colour at room temperature but is also extremely explosive in water and many other solutions due to its ability to give away an electron, forming Caesium hydroxide, a strong baseIt's also even the definition of the second in atomic clocks which measure how many billions of billions of times it vibrates.

Carbon because of its versatility in life, from capsaicin to benzene, from morphine to chlorophyll they are all dependant on carbon and the whole subject devoted to it, organic chemistry, is fascinating just because of the apparent similarity of molecules which can then actually be entirely different from each other.

Mercury and Gallium, the only two liquid metal elements at room temperature (or just above) both are fascinating to play with, even if most of their chemistry is more limited than some other elements. One of the most poisonous and dangerous compounds ever found, dimethylmercury, an organometallic, is pretty scary, though. (only 0.01ml can be absorbed though the skin and kill in weeks)

Gallium- fun to play with

Of course there are new advancements being made with the periodic table all the time, especially with discovering the new elements like Uub, Uut, Uuq etc. just a few weeks ago elements 115 and 113 were confirmed in Japan and Moscow simultaneously using massive particle accelerators, firing atoms of calcium and americium (40+95) to make Uup or Ununpentium (Un-1-un-1-pent-5-ium). Unfortunately very  few atoms might be synthesised this way and all isotopes decay into helium nuclei (alpha radiation)in between 16 and 220 milliseconds, but have faith: an 'island of stability' has been predicted in which we might be able to create atoms which don't decay so fast that we might actually be able to do some real chemistry with!

Darker block corresponds to longer stable isotopes, as you can see at around 122 there may be some stable isotopes

My speculation:

The remnants of Ubu or Ubb?

This possible atom would probably be a new member of the alkali earth metals or the alkali metals, so I predict somewhere in the near future there might be something new to throw in water or make some strong hydroxide with! (although this is highly unlikely due to tiny tiny amounts made in particle accelerators. It will probably have the symbol Ubu 121 or Ubb 122 (Unbiunium and Unbibinium respectively) Ubu will probably have the largest radius of any atom. I wonder if any of these elements have been created before in supernova explosions, but are just so short lived that we would never detect them of course. I suppose we will see in time if I am right or totally wrong writing this now..

Science behind Spiciness

Whether for pain or pleasure, at some point in your life you will probably have eaten a hot chilli. Having lost a bet at lunch, It makes a great forefit for any competition between school friends.

While my mouth was on fire after eating a "birds eye" chilli I wondered exactly what it is about chillis which causes such a reaction, so I decided to do some research on it.

The tongue has a multitude of different receptors for different flavours and sensations, including one called "TRP-VR1" (Vanilloid Receptor 1) which detects  actual heat- if you were to eat something which has a high temperature these receptors are activated, letting a flood of ions through a protein channel, travelling through the nervous system and reaching the brain, which interprets the signal as "ouch", and so pain is felt.

Capsaicin

The active ingredient in any chilli is a molecule called capsaicin- C₁₈H₂₇NO₃. This molecule binds to the receptor, forming a waxy layer over it and signals it to open the protein channels making your brain feel heat pain on your tongue or wherever the capsaicin contacted. (The eyes, inside of the nose and other mucous membranes also contain these receptors, which is why getting any in your eyes or up your nose hurts all the same) the waxy nature of capsaicin from its hydrocarbon tail means it is non soluble in water, explaining why water does nothing to help wash away or cool down the mouth.

Bird's eye chilli

There is a scale to measure the "heat" of a chilli called the Scoville scale, devised by an American pharmacist, Wilbur Scoville in 1912 (whose birthday happens to be toady). In the test to determine how hot a chilli is, a panel of at 5 "expert taste testers" eat an exact weight of dried chilli dissolved in alcohol to extract the capsaicin and then are given a sugar water drink until at least 3 of the 5 agree there is no heat left. Of course the test is no perfect and often has varying ranges for the same chilli due to the human perception of when there is any heat left. The scale graduates in 100s of Scoville heat units (SHU). At the lowest end is a bell pepper, at 0 SHU and paprika at 100 SHU. Nice heat you might find in a mild tesco curry would be around 500 to 1000 SHU. Above 20,000 SHU is usually not considered to be a nice heat on its own, like Tabasco sauce. Hot supermarket curries may have 100,000 SHU. The birds eye chillis we buy and use in school are about 200,000 to 300,000 SHU. When I eat them my eyes and nose stream and I can't feel my mouth for a good 15 minutes, past this point there is only discomfort. My uncle
used to keep some naga chillis which are 750,000 SHU, and I have seen videos of people who do the most ridiculous chilli challenges online  using the famed "ghost pepper" which comes in at 1,000,000 SHU. The hottest pepper officially ever grown was the Carolina reaper, achieving a painful 2,200,000 SHU- about 10 times as hot as the ones I have had. 

The Carolina Reaper

But all of these chillis have extra flesh and other chemicals in them which hold off the heat of pure capsaicin. The chemical is used in higher concentrations in pepper spray, which comes in at 5,000,000 SHU. Pure crystal capsaicin  is pretty awful stuff, peaking at between 15,000,000 to 16,000,000 SHU. This kind of heat can just blow your head off-and has been made illegal in the United Kingdom as of 2013. 

Chillis make these chemicals as a defence mechanism, as most animals are affected by it, and wouldn't ever dare eat it again after the painful ordeal. Farmers who try to breed the hottest chillis tend to make harsh environments, apparently sometimes even cutting off branches of the plant in an effort to make them "feel as if they are being eaten, so they make their chillis hotter" I have heard stories about some chilli farmers verbally abusing their plants in an effort to make them hotter, although I don't really see the science behind it. 

Birds are one of the few animals which are not affected by hot peppers because they don't possess any TRPVR1 receptors. 

In nature there are compounds made by specific plants which actually do a better job than capsaicin can do on your receptors. 

Euphorbia poissonii, a highly toxic plant grown in Nigeria contains a chemical called Tinyatoxin, which clocks in at 5,300,000,000 SHU- over 300 times hotter than pure capsaicin, and 1000 times hotter than law enforcement grade pepper spray. Nigerian farmers reportedly use the plant's fluids as a pesticide.

Euphorbia Poisonii

Above: Tinyatoxin-(5,300,000,000 SHU)

Below: Resiniferatoxin-(16,000,000,000 SHU)





Even Tinyatoxin's heat pales in comparison to the King of chemical heat: Resiniferatoxin. Although the only difference between it and Tinyatoxin is the ether group on the carbon ring on the right side of the diagram this chemical is the ultra active analog of capsaicin, making the police's pepper spray seem harmless. It weighs in at 16,000,000,000 SHU of course this and Tinyatoxin's Scoville heat ratings have been estimated based on chemical analysis, because as little as 10 grams of it is a fatal dose, overloading the nerves which signal pain, and giving respiratory failure. Very very small mixtures of these chemical, although it seems illogical, have been used as effective pain medication due to numbing effects and are even being used in treatment of Peripheral neuropathy, to help nerve pathways refire.

 Left: Euphorbia Resinifara

Resiniferatoxin is found in Euphorbia Resinifera- a type of little cactus in north Morocco. As if spikes weren't enough to keep animals away from a cactus! I think I'll stick to the bird's eye chillis...

Pharmacogenomics & Stem Cell Banking- Dr. Nick Hole

I attended this lecture by Dr. Nick Hole on the 16th of November

 Above: Undifferentiated stem cells as seen under a microscope

This lecture's title interested me, as I have been told that the future's medical procedures may rely on genetics and stem cells and it is a much talked about subject and increasingly interesting. Dr Hole organised everyone who attended the lecture into 4 groups to understand how the ethics and business sides of stem cell banking may work in the future. The basic idea we were given was that all stem cell banking would be made legal by the government, and that each group must give their opinions on how the process should proceed. The groups were acting as the NHS, the private stem cell bank, a group of parents who wish to use the service and a pro-life group.

 Being in the private stem cell bank, our team's job was to be able to offer a different service to the NHS. We agreed would be targeted towards parents who may wish stem cells to be taken from bone marrow and embryonic stem cells at an annual cost until used with a few specific guarantees in place: that we would keep the stem cells safe and available at any time, that the stem cells are only available to the particular family who donated them, they will not be shared to anyone else. This was almost the opposite to the NHS who agreed that they would offer this service of donation to everyone, there would be total anonymity when donating (like a blood bank) and that the stem cells could not be kept under the specific conditions to keep them fresh so must be renewed every few months due to the cost of deep freezing for extended periods of time. The family group agreed that they would pay around £100 annually per person for a proportion of healthy stem cells to be frozen in the event that they or their future child may have a need for them, the pro life group were of course debating on the use of the our company's embryonic stem cells, believing all human life is sacred, and banking the stem cells lacked humanity and killed people, however our group countered that the government had passed law that allowed embryonic stem cell banking and it was an entirely optional process which a family could take part in which may save a future child or family member- (of course the pro-life group was comprised entirely of 6th form scientists who were more likely to view stem cell banking as a good idea)

The next topic that was brought up by Dr. Hole was the use of genes and the future of medicine in recombinant DNA technology, coding and altering genomes to find new drugs, which may be biologically synthesised. Cyclin genes control most of the growth and division, and are conserved throughout evolution. By synthetically regulating where genes are expressed we can regulate almost anything about any eukaryotic cells- around 210 types with 25,000 genes between them. This prompted Dr. Hole's question: can redevelop bespoke drugs by coding one's genome which are specific to that individual? In a way this process has already begun on a simple level, with synthetic biologists engineering microbes to produce useful molecules and biofuels. there is no large input of energy to synthesise these compounds, they are generally far greener and less industrial methods of producing desired compounds also. 

Diagram of the Telomeres

Genes govern everything about our body. Telomeres are repeat sequences of chromosomes which accumulate mutations. These telomeres naturally shorten with age and as you get older this is one reason why cancer becomes more likely, the cancer cells don't 'commit suicide' because of telomerase, an enzyme which actually repairs the cancer cells and allows them to continue dividing rapidly and dangerously  when repairs to the telomere begin to fail. Genetic alterations could vastly change the way these parts of our genes function, and anti cancerous telomerase drugs are being produced. Dr. Hole predicted that over 4000 genetic diseases could be cured with new drug sequences- the very day I was in this talk, I had an allergy test, where small pins coated with with allergens were pricked onto my skin to see which of them produced antihistamine reaction and left a bump on my skin, in the future the nurse would have my Genome coded and find the relevant gene which caused the antihistamine reaction to be released to the grass pollens which I am allergic to!

    Artemisinin

Craig Venter coded an entire genome of 'Mycoplasma Mycoses' - a 1.08 million long sequence and inserted this genome into an empty cell... which began to divide and grow, proving specific genetic cloning may be possible, and along with it complex alterations, known as designer organisms. for example, a malarial combatting drug called artemisinin may be coded for in terms of genes, and then these gens inserted into bacterial cells which produce the drug and has a much higher yield than obtaining it from plant which requires separation from other unwanted compounds. The only downsides to these genetic 'cures' is that the long term effects are not known.

The future of medicine will most likely incorporate stem cells and genetics, and it is an interesting take to view genetics as we currently view drugs.