Anyone here creative?

[Devanshu]

Part of my recitation grade in bio depends on a "discovery" of a new species. I need to make a unique animal. I have to include things such as phylum info, genus, species, habitat, diet, ecological interactions, locomotion, reporduction, sensory structures, skeleton, and one unique feature at the cellular level. I have ideas for teh broad stuff like reproduction, skeleton, sensory stuff and so on, but I'm having trouble coming up with a clever idea for the animal. Any suggestions?

[Cobra]

How about a predatory animal that lives on the planes of Africa (or somewhere similar) that uses elastic tissues like the kangaroo to get up a high speed in order to catch prey?

An adaptation on the cellular level could be an enhanced metabolic pathway or increased levels of myoglobin for a greater oxygen-storing capacity. That would boost its ability to power on after the prey for a long time. Alternatively, if you could take a leaf out of the plant's book ( ) and have the cell paired with an extension, or maybe have internal structures such as the Golgibody, where you have ATP stored. Ion gates, responsive to increasing levels of ADP- molecules, could release more ATP into the cell.

Does this answer the question a bit?

Cobra

[Devanshu]

That does help. About the unique ability, i was thinking about being able to use carbonic anhydrase in a rapid way to increase or decrease the amount of co2 in the body (so hyper or hypoventilation would not be an issue and it would have the ability to be aquatic for longer than mammals). The use of ion gates is a good idea...I could work it in the neural signaling in some way. I like the idea about elastic tissues like a kangaroo idea...do you have any more knowledge about that? Thanks man.

[Cobra]

Elastic fibres along threads made of protein called a last and. Elastic fibres provide a rubbery quality that complements the non elastic strength of collagenous fibres. When you pinch the back of your hand and then let go, elastic fibres quickly restore your skin to its original shape.

Diverse adaptations for travelling on land have evolved in various vertebrates. For example, travelling mainly by hopping, kangaroos have large muscles that generate lots of power in the hind legs. When a kangaroo lands, tendons in his hind legs momentarily store energy. The higher the animal hops, the more energy the tendons store. Analogous to the tension of the spring on a pogo stick, the stored energy is available for the next jump and is a cost-free energy boost that reduces the total amount of energy that and more must expend to travel.

I am afraid I don't know very much more about the cell biology behind its elastic fibres used for this purpose.

As for the idea of a rapid acting carbonic anhydrase enzyme for rapid degradation of carbon dioxide, how do you propose to make the enzyme works faster? Do you think that by having many vesicles containing this enzyme within the cell may allow it to break down carbon dioxide faster?

How about if the cell had a specialised respiratory centre? As you know, glycolysis occurs in the cytoplasm and the products of this feed into the mitochondria within a cell. If you had a specialised compartment with an the cell then you could possibly have vesicles containing a chemical or protein with a high carbon-dioxide affinity that could temporarily store or carbon dioxide produced within both cycles, bypassing the problem and allowing a fast sprint with some endurance.

I'm out of ideas now, but I'll keep thinking about incase this isn't enough.

Good luck!

Cobra

[pyscrow]

Part of my recitation grade in bio depends on a "discovery" of a new species. I need to make a unique animal. I have to include things such as phylum info, genus, species, habitat, diet, ecological interactions, locomotion, reporduction, sensory structures, skeleton, and one unique feature at the cellular level. I have ideas for teh broad stuff like reproduction, skeleton, sensory stuff and so on, but I'm having trouble coming up with a clever idea for the animal. Any suggestions?

How about the
"Rabid Redneck Lurker"

Rare beastie found frequenting respectable forums, prone to outbursts of homophobic or racist vitriol at the slightest provocation?

Phylum- Ratbag
Genus- White Supremist
Species- Chosen Race
Habitat- as above
Diet- Vitriol
Ecological Intercations- attacks single victims in groups of 10 or more
locomotion- slime trails
reproduction- we dont want to go down that path do we?
sensory structures- one eyed, deaf and blind to everything but their own point of view

That help?

[Devanshu]

As for the idea of a rapid acting carbonic anhydrase enzyme for rapid degradation of carbon dioxide, how do you propose to make the enzyme works faster? Do you think that by having many vesicles containing this enzyme within the cell may allow it to break down carbon dioxide faster?

Many deep sea divers hyperventilate on purpose becuase this raises the body pH and causes the "urge to breathe" to go down. I forget what I was planning to actually do with it but when I was brainstorming for ideas I was thinking of having a specialezed "made up" structure that allows the organism to convert CO2 and H20 rapidly into carbonic acid and hydrogen ions at will so it can dive into water for long periods of time, yet still have lungs. This way it can be a both land and aquatic predator and could fit in the phylum chordata between an amphibian and a reptile. Does that make sense or should I move away from this idea?

[Cobra]

It does make sense as long as you can work out what to do with the excess of H+ ions. You'd need something with a high basicity in order to zap them and hold on to them without dissociating.

Do you know about the way acids and bases work? If you don't, I can explain it and you could incorporate it into your final explanation.

It is a damn good idea, though, because carbon dioxide would be the limiting factor provided your animal can store enough oxygen to keep going. I assume that this animal can have cell biology that's wildly imaginative?

Anyway, I think this sums up your adaptions physical adaptions:

- It's a sprinter, elastic legs for a built up speed attack

And supporting cell biology to meet sudden oxygen demands:

- Increased myoglobin concentration or another novel oxygen store
- Storage for ATP (since it's readily used up in "normal" cells)?
- Enhanced metabolism by means of a specialised respiritory centre within the cell containing glucose-rich cytosol, mitochondria and carbon dioxide disposal system
- The actual CO2 disposal system

The only thing we haven't covered is how this elastic tissue is formed - do you need to deal with this or is the one metabolic cell adaptation enough for your project?

As I say, if you want acids and bases explained (since it could be very useful for describing the carbonic anhydrase centre) then just let me know.

Metabolically (just another thought), could your organism have a modified glycolysis pathway so it will stockpile pyruvate as opposed to glucose as a raw fuel in muscle cells? This would boost availability of unstable phosphorylated fuels for Krebs and TCA. The only problem that I can see with this is that it may foul gluconeogenisis. I think this because muscles respond to the hormone glucagon by reversing glycolysis, converting pyruvate and other products of glycolysis using ATP back to glucose. As you know, the brain can only use glucose as a fuel, and I believe this is provided for a lot by the muscles. If we took this ability away, it could screw up gluconeogenisis and your organism would go into a coma and die if it went too long between meals!

On the other hand, you could pretend you didn't spot that!

Tomorrow morning, I'll show this thread to a couple of my friends who are a lot better at cell and molecular biology. If we come up with anything, I'll post up. It's certainly an interesting subject!

Cobra

[Devanshu]

I assume that this animal can have cell biology that's wildly imaginative?

I think thats the idea. By including made up "things", I think he wants to see if we can incorporate everything we have learnt this semester. About the excess hydrogen ions...oxygen has a high affinity for H+ so what if we store those in hemoglobin and send those to the lungs through capillaries to make H20 which flows from there through some tract to the kidney for reabsorption?

The only thing we haven't covered is how this elastic tissue is formed - do you need to deal with this or is the one metabolic cell adaptation enough for your project?

One is good enough...its the bare minimum but it'll probably be better than a lot of stuff others in my recitation come up with.

[Cobra]

You may find that oxygen is far to stable to add an H+ ion to. I'll look into it now.

Cobra

[Cobra]

Devanshu,

When does the work have to be in for? When's the latest I can submit ideas?

I'm off down to the library now to research two things that could rid us of our H+ problem:

- The possibility that our animal could produce the sodium or potassium salt of an acid's conjugate base, flush the resulting metal ion into the bloodstream so the kidneys can deal with it and retain the base to react with the H+ ion. The only trouble with this is it will probably dissociate again quite readily, defeating the object! This is a pH buffer solution, and is more likely to work for us.

- The possibility that we could bind it to a protein which could retain it until certain conditions are reached, much like the Bohr shift on oxyhaemoglobin will result in selective offloading of oxygen at different pHs. Incidentally, we'd best be careful and not mop up too much of the carbonic acid as the myoglobin in the cell requires a drop in pH (due to carbonic acid produced from CO2 + H2O) in order to trigger the release of more oxygen.

I'll also research a bit into diving animals, and see how they deal with large amounts of carbon dioxide.

Fingers crossed!

Cobra

[Cobra]

I think that we could use a buffer solution within this respiratory centre in the cell in order to store up H+ ions and give our animal a “grace period” where it won’t have to worry about the acid build-up. Here’s a bit about buffers, and the ones we could use:

Definition: “A buffer solution keeps its pH almost constant by resisting changes in pH when small amounts of acid or alkali are added to it” – “Access To Chemistry” (Alan Jones, Mike Clemmet, Avril Higton & Elaine Golding) – p263

- Blood pH = 7.4 - intravenous injections must be buffered
- Two types of buffer: acidic and alkaline
- Acid keeps pH below 7, alkaline keeps pH above 7

A buffer works by having a weak acid and the salt of a weak acid in solution. Both ionise in solution. You have a pool of H+ ions and a pool of the conjugate base. These are in equilibrium – as quickly as the acid re-forms, other molecules are re-ionising. Do you know about Le Chatelier’s Principle?

“If a system at equilibrium is disturbed by changing the conditions, the system will react in such a way as to oppose the change” – “Access To Chemistry”

Therefore, by adding acid to the buffer as we may do, the “pool” of conjugate bases from the salt will serve to “mop up” the excess acid and restore the equilibrium to normal pH.

In the body, carbonic salts are in equilibrium with the acid in the following reactions:



This plays a minor role in buffering the body pH. A more important buffer is the phosphate buffer system:



“These two buffer systems are normally sufficient to maintain the blood pH between 7.35 and 7.45” – p267 “Access To Chemistry”

What I propose is that we incorporate these two buffer systems into our respiratory centre within the cell. It will serve as a temporary acid storage system in addition to the carbonic acid buffer system already in place. Once the demand for ATP has ceased within the cell, normal reactions designed to eradicate acid will step in and the buffer should release H+ ions as fast as they are dealt with, according to Le Chatelier’s Principle.

To transport new ATP out of this structure and get ADP into it (so allowing the muscle cell to work) we can have an ADP/ATP translocase protein on the membrane of the respiratory centre. This will swap ATP (putting it out of the centre) for ADP (pulling it into the centre). Here’s a link with a little information to prove its existence:

http://www.chlamydiae.com/docs/biology/genome_atp.htm

As for the transport of glucose into this cellular structure against its concentration gradient (so we stockpile glucose), why don’t we use a transport protein like SGLT-1? Provided we can set up an Na+ gradient, where the concentration is lower within the cellular structure than in the cytosol, this should effectively shunt a lot of glucose into the respiratory centre for use in glycolysis. This gradient could be obtained by sacrificing a small amount of ATP to actively transport sodium back out of the structure. However, the net gain is that a lot of the cell’s glucose will be where it is needed most. Just an idea.

http://www.itd.ucdavis.edu/~dale/studies/SGLT1.html - Information about SGLT-1.

So, that’s the animal’s metabolism streamlined from glucose intake to ATP output. I hope this is on the right track – this is very much a far-out idea and I may have taken the wrong end of the stick with this proposal. If I have, we can hopefully work on it or scrap it altogether and start afresh.

Here’s what I propose for the cell overall (now that we’ve been through the biochemistry):



What do you think? Is it any use?

Cobra

[Devanshu]

CLEVER!!! I have my math test tomorrow so I wont be able to work on it today but I'll start typing up my report after that. If you like, I can send you a copy after I'm done. If I need anything else, I know who to come to.

Thanks a BUNCH.

[Cobra]

You're welcome!

I found that very interesting. As I say, I'll show a few friends (they're busy just now though) and if we come up with anything else, I'll post it up.

If you have any more questions or ideas, I'm always around to help. I'm only first-year so my knowledge isn't immense, but I'll try!

Cobra

[Devanshu]

I'm only first-year so my knowledge isn't immense

Same here. I've taken AP bio and some other advanced science courses (genetics, zoology etc.) in high school but thats pretty much it. This is my last assignment before the final so I just want to get it done because I know if I dont, I'll procrastinate(sp?) until the last minute and since I have a lab test the same day its due, I have more reason to start on it early. Anyway...I'll probably get around to writing the basic stuff tomorrow and move to the complicated stuff during the weekend. Your help is greatly appreciated.

[lordsmurf]

Well, don't know how much this would help, but I'd like to see an animal that can breathe both oxygen and extract from water (lungs AND gills) and then also have the ability to move at a near-identical rapid speed both on land and in water, with "flying" abilities like that of a squirrel for minor air travel.

It needs to be herbivore 60% or the time and carnivore 40% of the time.

It may or may not need to hibernate. Doesn't matter.

The female must be weaker. In fact, they die while having kids, and the males gets to have many mates this way. The reproduction of the species tends to shift more female, which is fine given the death rate. But it will not over populate too rapidly. The males other mates will take care of the young ones. It is a pack-like family.

The animal has some decent intelligence, like that of cat, a smart dog or maybe even smart primates. But we won't be speaking anytime soon.

On a cellular level, maybe some sort of mimic ability to match shapes and colors to hide or impersonate other items/creatures.

Skeletal could be a hybrid from flying squirrels and something else (fish, maybe). But still has to be strong bones, even if hollow or flexible. This is supposed to be a bad mother-f'r, like the t-rex was to the dinosaurs.

This doesn't have to be too sci-fi by any means, but can be quite real if you make it that way.

[Devanshu]

Good suggestions. I like the idea of the females dying during birth so that males and have many mates.

A thing I noticed though, the flying squirrel doesnt really "fly"...it glides.

[vitualis]

...so it can dive into water for long periods of time, yet still have lungs.

This is called a "whale"...

Remember, it is just an assignment and if it is supposed to have scientific merit, don't make it a super animal as these don't exist.

Instead, concentrate on imagining how an animal can evolve to do particularly well is a specific niche.

Regards.

[offline]

Having done something similar at high school and again at uni
I suggest that you do not place emphasis on physiology at the
cellular level. Rather you should encompass the fundamental
principles you have learnt during the year.

Classification is most important. Many will throw a mere paragraph
at it. You are not only placing your creature in a key, you are
describing its place in the kingdom and pointing to it's evolutionary
branch and development. Everything that your creature "is" in terms
of habitat, reproduction etc. must fit within its classification and
blend with those of its neighbors.

The creatures diet is critical - it should hint at all the other elements.

I would also argue the KISS principle: "Keep it Simple Stupid".
While it is fun to invent some alien creature, stick with something
that existing or at most borrow an interesting feature from another
animal. In this approach, your output should result in a seemless
well balanced report that demonstrates what your teachers
want to know - that you have a grasp of the fundamentals and can apply them in a scientific way.

[Devanshu]

...so it can dive into water for long periods of time, yet still have lungs.

This is called a "whale"...

But whales dont live on land.

[vitualis]

Okay... a seal then.

I suggest that you read up the physiology on how some of these animals do their amazing feats and then use those ideas for your "ficitional" animal. Best of luck.

Regards.

[lordsmurf]

I'd want a creature with dual gills (or something similar) and lungs ... not one that has to hold it's breathe.

If any animal fits in this category, let me know. This is so far away from my field and school/college studies that I wouldn't have a clue.

[Craig Tucker]

If any animal fits in this category, let me know.

Kevin Costner in waterworld.

[Devanshu]

While it is fun to invent some alien creature, stick with something existing or at most borrow an interesting feature from another animal.

On the contrary, we've been asked to make a "new" physiological structure as a requirement (as long as obeys the laws of thermodynamics). If he likes it enough, he'll stick it in his "animal hall of fame" in his office and reward upto 5 bonus points. As for borrowing parts from other animals, I'm doing plenty of that. For instance, it will have a pit organ for thermoreception like snakes do to make it a better predator. Another example is in reproduction...the female releases phermones during her ovulation cycle and the males have a vamorenasal organ w/ chemoreceptors that detect these phermones and then the male spermatocytes are activated and rapidly divide to produce sperm.

@ lordsmurf...I'm using your idea about females dying during birth.

[Faustus]

I'll give you an idea, work from there: Jeex

[indolikaa]

I'll give you an idea, work from there: Jeex

Now THAT was a good one.

@Cobra,

Let me guess. You're majoring in history.

[Faustus]

I'll give you an idea, work from there: Jeex

Now THAT was a good one.

@Cobra,

Let me guess. You're majoring in history.

I thought so, of course my first thought upon seeing the thread titile was "Well... my sound card is!"

[Cobra]

@Cobra,

Let me guess. You're majoring in history.

Neuroscience.

Cobra