Robots continue to advance and develop every year, and these consistent improvements continue to amaze us with how much they physically resemble humans. Even though these robots lack spiritual qualities and function way below the human brain, we still admire these developments, for they lead to even more discoveries and help us understand the miraculous human body even more.

Notwithstanding our medical knowledge that continues to build upon nearly 3,000 years of shared human experience and research, new discoveries about the human body, the magnificent work of God Almighty, continue to increase our admiration.

The discovery of the “Interstitium” and the “Subcapsular Proliferative Foci” in 2018 allow us to develop an even greater appreciation for the complexity of our bodies. They are called the “macro organ” and “micro organ” according to the amount of space that they occupy in our bodies, along with the nicknames “buffer organ” and “control center organ” according to their function. These newly discovered biological structures did not attract much attention earlier because, in accordance with our current understanding, organs are more easily visible structures such as the hands, arms, eyes, nose, kidneys, and lungs that have a certain shape and a set of clearly-defined functions. It is interesting that although these complex structures are so widespread in our bodies, they were not known until recently; they are now considered as organs [1].

The Macro Organ: Interstitium

According to an article published in Scientific Reports on March 27, 2018, the “interstitium” was discovered rather serendipitously by David Corr-Loce and Petros Benias of Mount Sinai Beth Medical Center along with Neil Theise, a pathologist from New York University. The discovery came when these physicians were analyzing a cancer patient’s bile duct. Although they had been conducting the same routine over the years, it was the first time they had the sight of slots between examined tissues. They realized that the interstitium was unnoticed earlier due to the disappearance of interstitial fluid after they had examined the tissue with their usual histological methods. Subsequently, the researchers found that this structure was found not only in the bile duct but also in many other organs.

Specifically located under our skin, these micro-compartments were also found in almost all organ membranes except the intestines, lungs, veins, and muscles in order to form a network around the organs with malleable but sturdy proteins. The interstitium, the entirety of the intercellular spaces filled with liquid, has been defined as the largest organ in the body. Actually, examining cells and tissues has been the subject of histology and cytology science for the last 150 years, and the fluid that fills the tissues and forms a basis for supporting these cells was not new to the medical world. However, its definition as a new organ was a first.

The researchers froze the biopsy tissues obtained from the bile ducts of 12 patients in order to preserve and examine the anatomy of the discovered structure. One of the reasons that this organ exists is because it protects the surrounding organs by acting as a shock-absorber and has an effect similar to that of a car’s bumper. Damage to tissues and internal organs remains minimal when one falls, hits something or is impacted Using a micro-endoscopic camera, the volume of this whole organ was revealed to be about ten liters in an adult human [2].

It was later discovered that the interstitium is also present in the structure of lymph nodes, the most important part of the body’s immune system, and that cancer cells enter the lymphatic system through the interstitium. In this case, the interstitium play a significant role as a passageway, or conduction interface, for spreading cancer cells across the body. In an analogy, this organ is akin to the water in which fish swim, the air that surrounds us, and the soil that borders the roots of trees. In this liquid that rotates the cells and spans on the base where they are positioned, any exchange of substances of body biochemistry is regulated within the required amount and size to provide a good setting to the cells, and the hard mechanical effects that may impact the cells are alleviated and absorbed by this liquid pad.

Each discovery of the interstitium’s features, including its significant contributions in the fight against cancer, reveals more and more about how this great organ aids in intercellular communication.

The Micro Organ: Subcapsular Proliferative Foci

One of the most important features of the immune system is that it has its own “memory.” The cells of the immune system can remember the infections a person has contracted before, and can fight infections before they spread. How quickly the immune system reacts based on memory may vary, for instance depending on the type of infection, but is usually quite rapid. Considering how many bacteria multiply in a matter of seconds, a quick response must be launched to prevent infections from spreading across the body.

Professor Tri Phan of the Garvan Medical Research Institute led the team of researchers that discovered the subcapsular proliferative foci (SPF), a “micro-organ” that appeared in the lymph nodes during an infection. Lymph nodes and lymphoid organs such as tonsils, thymus, and spleen are surrounded by a protective capsule made of connective tissue. This capsule was considered to serve the purpose of a mechanical support only to enclose and protect the lymph nodes. However, recent research has shown that in some areas under this capsule, cells that had been alerted to previous encounters with harmful invasive organisms are gathered. These main subcapsular cells are memory B cells that carry information on how to counter the invasive organisms. Memory B cells also proliferate into plasma cells, which are highly important for producing antibodies. Therefore, when an infection reoccurs in our body the subcapsular proliferative foci act quickly to form the first defensive front to prevent the possible spread of infection.

The purpose of vaccines is to activate the attenuated form of a harmful organism to be stored in the body’s memory as an immune response. If the body comes back into contact with similar bacteria in the future, the immune system will remember how to fight it. The discovery of the sub-capsule foci also revealed that these centers are the home for the memory B cells. If they can unveil the development and training processes of the memory B cells in these slots, scientists can produce vaccines that enhance the memory of the immune system even more quickly and efficiently.

The reason why these structures have not been noticed earlier is due to their emaciation, brief emergence, and disappearance. The sub-capsule proliferation centers presented in the article “Memory B Cells Are Reactivated in Subcapsular Proliferative Foci of Lymph Nodes” published in Nature Communications on August 22, 2018 are defined by some authoritative scientists as the “micro-organ.” According to the findings about this new organ, if our infection-fighting immune system would have activated longer than it currently does, we would easily die. Every minute is very crucial in this struggle. These excellent centers that produce memory cells under the lymph node [3] capsules fight bacteria which can replicate in multitudes every 20–30 minutes during an infection.

Although the world of science has been working with the microscope for about 400 years, these centers that have been embedded in our body since its creation could only be noticed today when the microscope design has reached its technological peak.

There are trillions of bacteria living in the intestinal cavity, skin, and orifices of our body. Some of these are already protective and beneficial, yet others are pathogenic. But they do not make us sick because of B cell production centers. When our immune system is weakened for any reason (such as stress, insomnia, or malnutrition) these bacteria can cause illnesses and meet little resistance. These sub-capsular micro-organisms surrounding the lymph nodes were placed in the most strategic places across the human body to fight infections in the fastest way, while the lymph nodes were placed at locations that are most vulnerable to microbial attack.

Consequently, these discoveries increase our admiration for the palace and magnificent realm called our body. It is likely in the light of this information that the anatomy and histology books may be rewritten and the definitions of organs and tissues may be redefined.

References

• Claire Maldarelli, “Scientists found a new organ, but it might not be what you’re expecting,” Popular Science, 3 April 2018.
• iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/newly-discovered-microorgan-helps-explain-how-vaccine.
• nature.com/articles/s41598-018-23062-6

Global Climate Report. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov). July 2019.

It’s summer, and it is hot out there; but if it feels like record-breaking temperatures are becoming more common globally, they are. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and European Copernicus Climate Change Service announced that July 2019 was the hottest month across the globe ever measured since measurements began, in 1880. Global temperatures averaged 16.73°C in July, which is 0.95 °C higher than the 20th-century average of 15.78°C . Average Antarctic sea-ice coverage was 8.5% below the 1981-2010 average. And sea ice coverage was 10.5% below the overall average, which is based on records beginning in 1979. The scientists also released geographical data, showing that the regions where temperatures varied furthest from averages, were Alaska, Central Europe, Northern and Southwestern parts of Asia, and certain regions in Africa and Australia. These findings corroborate scientific predictions regarding the effects of man-made climate change. Human activities, primarily from burning fossil fuels, emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere. Increasing greenhouse gas emissions are associated with warmer global surface temperatures. The planet’s 10 hottest years on record have all fallen in the past two decades. Scientists and policymakers around the globe are also feeling this heat.

Unless significant measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions are adopted, scientists expect temperature records to keep falling. Scientists say global temperatures could increase by at least 3°C this century, which will create conditions on Earth that have not been seen in more than 2 million years. Given the notable trends in higher temperatures and natural disasters, we might be pushing the climate system toward states that we haven’t seen in our societal experience – and even in our species’ experience.

Manipulation of brain circuits using smartphone-controlled device

Qazi R et al. Wireless optofluidic brain probes for chronic neuropharmacology and photostimulation. Nature Biomedical Engineering, August 2019.

Scientists recently designed a device that can regulate brain circuits using a tiny brain implant controlled by a smartphone. This bluetooth-enabled device utilizes replaceable lego-like drug cartridges to target neurons with drugs and light. Existing methods to deliver drugs and light to the brain typically involve metal tubes and optical fibers. These tools are rigid and can substantially damage the brain’s soft tissue over time. Moreover, this bulky equipment often limits the patient’s movement because of the wired connections, making them unfit for long-term use. To achieve chronic remote-controlled drug delivery without exhaustion and evaporation of drugs, scientists invented a neural device with a replaceable drug cartridge, which could allow neuroscientists to study the same brain networks for several months without depleting the drug supply. These “plug-n-play” drug cartridges were integrated into a brain implant for mice with a soft and ultrathin probe (about the thickness of a human hair), which consisted of microfluidic channels and tiny LEDs (smaller than a grain of salt), for unlimited drug doses and light delivery. The implant is regulated via a smartphone, allowing researchers to trigger precise combinations and sequences of drug and light delivery. In animal models, these stimuli can be triggered with the target outside of the laboratory, allowing researchers to wirelessly instill changes in the animal’s brain while in its natural habitat. Using these neural devices, researchers are now able to perform fully automated animal studies where the behavior of one animal could positively or negatively affect behavior in other animals by conditional triggering of light and/or drug delivery. This device will allow researchers to better dissect the neural circuit basis of behavior and how specific neuromodulators in the brain tune behavior in various ways. In addition, the device can be utilized in complex pharmacological studies to develop potentially new therapeutics for pain, addiction, and emotional disorders.

The secret weapon of E.Coli 

Melson E. at al. The sRNA DicF integrates oxygen sensing to enhance enterohemorrhagic Escherichia colivirulence via distinctive RNA control mechanisms. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, June 2019.

Scientists have revealed how E. coli (Escherichia coli) bacteria seeks out the most oxygen-free parts of your colon to cause the worst infection possible. E. coli normally live in the intestines of healthy people and animals. Most varieties of E. coli are harmless or cause relatively brief diarrhea. But a few particularly nasty strains can cause cramps, diarrhea, vomiting – even kidney failure and death. Children are particularly at risk. A new study uncovers how this foodborne pathogen knows where and when to begin colonizing the colon on its way to making you sick. Bacterial pathogens typically colonize a specific tissue or organ in the host. Therefore, as part of their infection strategies, bacterial pathogens precisely time deployment of proteins and toxins to these specific colonization niches in the human host. This allows the pathogens to save energy and avoid detection by our immune systems and ultimately cause disease. The researchers in this study identified how E.Coli detects low oxygen levels in the large intestine and then produces proteins that allow it to attach to host cells and establish infection. Oxygen actually diffuses from the intestinal tissue into the gut, and there are comparably higher levels in the small intestine than the large. Remarkably, E. coli specifically waits until it has reached the-low oxygen large intestine before striking. E. coli controls this process via a small form of RNA that activates particular genes when oxygen levels are low. This is the point when the infection really gets established and the bacteria are able to begin to manufacture harmful Shiga toxins. The researchers predict that other bacterial pathogens, such as Shigella and Salmonella, likely utilize a similar control mechanism. Researchers suggest that if we can find a way to block oxygen sensing, we may be able to prevent the infection by allowing E. coli to pass harmlessly through the body.

So-called ‘new’ viruses most probably derive from existing viruses; in general, viruses of today have ancestors and relatives. However, as viruses show great variety, and many of the viruses of gravest concern mutate rapidly and unpredictably, it is not always possible to trace their ancestry with any great confidence. A ‘new virus may be genuinely new or a major evolutionary variant arising from genetic processes such as mutation or recombination. Their rate of mutation is so high that controlling them, or predicting their behaviour, is well-nigh impossible. High mutation rate means that no RNA (ribonucleic acid) virus population is a single entity, but rather a ‘quasi species’. Introduction of a virus from one species to another and dissemination from a smaller to a larger population are also among the basic mechanisms by which viruses emerge.

The emerging viruses are surfacing from ecologically damaged parts of the earth. When viruses come out of an ecosystem, they tend to spread in waves through the human population. Among the most notorious are: Lassa, Rift Valley, Oropuche, Rocio, Q. Guanarito, VEE, Monkeypox, Dengue, Chikunganya, the Hanta viruses, Machupo, Junin, the rabies like strains Mokola and Duvenhage, LeDantec.

AIDS: Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a more difficult case compared to, for example, influenza, itself a great killer – the influenza pandemic of 1918-9 in China caused some 20 million fatalities. We do not know the origin of HIV, but a probable primate origin is often suggested, and appears highly plausible. HIV-2 (one of the major strains of HIV) may be a mutant that jumped into humans from an African monkey known as the sooty mangabey, perhaps when monkey hunters or trappers touched body tissue. HIV-1 (the other strain) may have jumped into man from chimpanzees – perhaps when hunters butchered chimpanzees.

HIV attacks the type of lymphocytes known as helper T-cells that stimulate the activity of B lymphocytes that produce antibodies. After an HIV infection sets in, helper T-cells begin to decline in number and the person becomes more susceptible to infections.

The AIDS virus mutates rapidly and constantly. It is a hyper-mutant, a shape-shifter, spontaneously altering its character as it moves through individuals. It mutates even in the course of one injection.

The drug AZT has been found to be helpful in prolonging the lives of AIDS patients. Also, it has been shown that administration of Interleukin-2 and AT-538 can prevent viral replication in cells in the early stages of the infection.

The Filoviruses

Marburg and Ebola viruses were recently elevated to family status as the Filoviridae. The name, ‘thread viruses’, is based on their morphology. These viruses made their appearance in the 1960s and 1970s in the form of frightening nosocomial and occupational outbreaks, initially among polio vaccine production workers in contact with Ugandan green monkeys and their kidney tissues, then in independent hospital epidemics of devastating proportions during 1976 in the Sudan and Zaire. Mortality from these infections can range to nearly 90%, that is 90% of infections, not just of clinical illnesses.

The incubation period of a filovirus in a human being, is from 3 to 18 days during which time the number of virus particles climbs steadily in the bloodstream. Then the suffering begins.

Marburg was the first filovirus to be discovered. It erupted in a factory producing vaccines using kidney cells from African green monkeys. Thirty-one people caught the virus. Seven infected persons died in pools of blood in just two weeks. This fatality rate of one in four makes Marburg an extremely lethal agent, yet it is the mildest of the filoviruses. No vaccine is available.

Ebola Sudan

The next indication of the existence of filoviruses came from an extraordinary pair of epidemics in 1976. In the Sudan the initial focus was a cotton factory in Nzara, and several of the earliest recognized cases worked there in a single room. Travel to nearby Maridi introduced the virus into the medical care system, with subsequent latrogenic dissemination that devastated the Maridi hospital. In this outbreak, 150 out of 280 infected people died.

In 1979, it recurred in Nzara, Sudan. The index case had worked in the same room in the cotton factory identified in the earlier epidemic. Twenty-two out of 34 infected patients died. When it first erupted, the medical stuff had used dirty needles which facilitated the spread of infection. Again, no vaccine is available.

Two months after the start of the Sudan emergence in 1976, an even more lethal filovirus emerged. The Ebola Zaire, a new strain was nearly twice as lethal as Ebola Sudan. The fatality rate of Ebola Zaire is 9 out of 10. Staff at a hospital which had been at the epicenter of the epidemic were almost all wiped out: 13 out of 17 of the doctors and nurses died. The disease erupted more or less simultaneously in fifty-five villages near the headwaters of Ebola River.

This epidemic was clearly dependent on the use of unsterilized needles and syringes for its major dissemination between villages, although multiple later generations of cases occurred among family contacts without any defined exposure route.

Ebola is distantly related to measles, mumps and rabies. It is also related to certain pneumonia viruses, to the parainfluenza virus which causes colds in children, and to the respiratory syncytial virus, which can cause fatal pneumonia in a person who has AIDS.

Ebola kills a great deal of tissue while the host is alive. It triggers a creeping, spotty necrosis that spreads through all the internal organs. The liver bulges up and turns yellow, begins to liquefy and then it cracks apart. The kidneys become jammed with blood clots and dead cells, and cease functioning. As the kidneys fail, the blood becomes toxic with urine. No vaccine is available.

Ebola does in ten days what it takes AIDS ten years to accomplish. In principle Ebola-like viruses could spread out all over the world in just one month and a half. Richard Preston, the author of Hot Zone argues that AIDS may be the first step in a natural process of clearance. What is being cleared is human beings: the earth’s immune system, so to speak, has recognized the presence of our species and is starting to kick in and signal its potential to rid itself of an infection by human beings. There can be no excuse for failing to reflect radically on the way we manage our economies, our societies and our lifestyles. We have no absolute right of tenure of this planet, nor does our collective intelligence or our science and technology afford a reliable immunity from vulnerability, whether as individuals or as a species. We do need to be fearful perhaps, though not to panic – so that we redress the balance in favour of humility in our attitudes and activities, so that we become more caring and careful in using our God-given faculties to prevent the worst before it happens.

References

• MADER, S. S. (1992) Human Biology, WCB Group.
• PRESTON, R. (1993) Hot Zone, Random House, New York.
• MORSE, S. 5. (1993) Emerging Viruses, Oxford University Press, New York.
• DOWDLE, W. (1993) ‘The Origins of Plagues’, Science, 261 (September 17).
• GRIFFIN, B. E. (1994) ‘Live and Let Live’, Nature, 368 (March 3).