#Karissa Sanbonmatsu

[yourdailyqueer]

Karissa Sanbonmatsu

Gender: Transgender woman

Sexuality: Queer

DOB: N/A

Ethnicity: White - American

Occupation: Structural biologist, researcher, public speaker, activist

Note: First to perform an atomistic simulation of the ribosome, determine the secondary structure of an intact lncRNA and to publish a one billion atom simulation of a biomolecular complex.

[wiccedpinkdelusionmentality]

The biology of gender, from DNA to the brain | Karissa Sanbonmatsu

[scottiestoybox]

The biology of gender, from DNA to the brain | Karissa Sanbonmatsu

Again a biologist destroys the idea that gender is binary, male / female.   Really just as science moved on from the ideas of 2,500 years ago of biblical writers that couldn’t understand the solar system or have an idea of germ theory, it has moved on from the 1950s stereotypical two genders model of male / female only model popular in the 1950s, where men were automatically at the top of the…

[coffeedrgn87]

I stumbled across this Ted Talk while opening the app for the first time in a long time (I generally watch the talks recommended to me via email) and I’m so glad that I took the time to watch this. I will let this sit with me and continue to influence my understanding of gender and how it all works.

[thetrillproject]

This quote is brought to you by~ Karissa Sanbonmatsu is a structural biologist, a transgender woman, and our #pridehero 🌈💪🥰 https://www.instagram.com/p/BtQqc0ulRTp/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=dyvn6g3ji2xt

[jesseneufeld]

Karissa Sanbonmatsu: What Can Epigenetics Tell Us About Sex And Gender?

We're used to thinking of DNA as a rigid blueprint. Karissa Sanbonmatsu researches how our environment affects the way DNA expresses itself—especially when it comes to sex and gender.

(Image credit: Marla Aufmuth/Marla Aufmuth / TED)

Karissa Sanbonmatsu: What Can Epigenetics Tell Us About Sex And Gender? published first on https://drugaddictionsrehab.tumblr.com/

[edsenger]

Karissa Sanbonmatsu: What Can Epigenetics Tell Us About Sex And Gender?

We're used to thinking of DNA as a rigid blueprint. Karissa Sanbonmatsu researches how our environment affects the way DNA expresses itself—especially when it comes to sex and gender.

(Image credit: Marla Aufmuth/Marla Aufmuth / TED)

Karissa Sanbonmatsu: What Can Epigenetics Tell Us About Sex And Gender? published first on https://brightendentalhouston.weebly.com/

[yaziyorsonhavadis]

İlk kez RNA yapısı oluşturuldu

İlk kez RNA yapısı oluşturuldu

Los Alamos ve uluslararası bilim adamlarından oluşan grup, kök hücre programlaması için hayati öneme sahip ve genomun “karanlık maddesi” olarak tanımlanan özel bir RNA molekülünün ilk kez 3 boyutlu görüntülerini oluşturdular.

Los Alamos Ulusal Laboratuvarı’nda Karissa Sanbonmatsu, RNA yapılarını daha iyi anlamak için kardiyovasküler hastalık veya yaşlılık sebebiyle kalp rahatsızlığı olan kişiler…

[unioncollegeespe]

Split-Sex Animals Are Unusual, Yes, but Not as Rare as You’d Think

Butterfly collectors all can remember their first gynandromorph: a butterfly with a color and pattern that are distinctly male on one wing and female on another. Biologist Nipam H. Patel, the sighting offered a possible answer to his question that he had for years, During embryonic and larval development, how do cells know where to stop and where to go? He was convinced that the delicate black outlines between male and female regions appearing on one wing, but not the other, identified a key facet of animal development. Dr. Patel, heads of the Marine Biological Laboratory said, “It immediately struck me that this was telling me something interesting about how the wing was being made.”

(Top left, a male blue morpho butterfly; top middle, a female. The remainder are gynandromorphic, with both male and female characteristics.)

The patterning on the gynandromorph wing shows that the body uses signaling centers to control where cells go during development and what tissues they become in creatures as diverse as butterflies and people, Patel said. Scientists and measures for centuries have been fascinated by gynandromorph butterflies and other half-male, half-female creatures, particular birds. The latest sensation was a half0red, half-taupe cardinal that became a regular visitor in the backyard of Shirley and Jeffrey Caldwell in Erie, Pa. Its color division strongly suggests that it is a gynandromorph, although the bird would have to be tested to confirm it. It extends beyond birds and butterflies to other insects and crustaceans, like lobsters and crabs.

Split-sex animals and insects could offer clues to why some human diseases strike one sex more than the other. Gynandromorphs suggest that there is more to learn than researchers thought said Jennifer Marshall Graves, a distinguished professor at La Trobe University in Melbourne Australia. She also went on to say that Mammals have X and Y chromosomes, birds and insects have Z and W, and some reptiles can change their sex depending on temperature, or a combination of temp and sex chromosomes. It has been believed that the sex of a bird was determined by a protein made by the DMRT1 gene, which would reach all the cells of the bird through the bloodstream. But for two sides of the bird to share the same bloodstream but not the same sex, there must be more.

Hormones can be the sole drivers of sex either, but they do play some role, Arthur Arnold said, a distinguished research professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Arnold showed that in gynandromorphic zebra finches, brain cells on the female side were more masculine than comparable cells in a typical female, showed by Dr. Arnold in a paper published in 2002.

What still remains a mystery is how gynandromorphs are born. For birds, the most likely answer is that a female makes an unusual double nucleus egg cell, one with a Z chromosome and one with a W chromosome, and each is fertilized by a Z sperm, making some cells ZZ and others ZW in the same individual. Dr. Arnold added, “Although this happens regularly, it’s very rare.” Gene editing is tricky in birds, so it has not been possible to experimentally induce this phenomenon in birds, and it's not well understood, he said. The same process is very unlikely to happen in mammals. Female mammals naturally have two of the same sex chromosomes and the instant a mammalian egg and sperm fuse, “dramatic changes prevent the entry of a second sperm.” Gynandromorphs occur naturally, usually resulting from a random genetic error, Dr. Patel said. With some flies and moths passing unstable sex chromosomes down to their offspring, he said. But it is also possible that stress can cause the unusual sex split. Dr. Patel has his scientists use radiation to create gynandromorph flies but it is difficult to sort out the potential causes, including environmental harm, in a wild population. It’s impossible to track an entire population to understand what percentage have unusual sex chromosomes. It still remains unclear why cells of the opposite sex end up on opposite sides of these gynandromorphs. A 2010 study in chickens showed that cells weren’t that evenly distributed; although many of the birds studied have been roughly 50/50 on either side.

Animals can also develop as mosaics, with some cells genetically different from others. Multiple of Patels butterflies show male coloration and patterns on parts of a wing, rather than the entire side.

(from left, a male pamela butterfly, a mosaic gynandromorph and a female)

His own research on sex genes has implications for treating a variety of human diseases that seem to vary by gender said Arnold. Rhonda Voskuhl, Arnold’s U.C.L.A. collaborator found that in multiple sclerosis, a genetically female mouse with two X chromosomes fares worse than a mouse with an X and Y, even if they have the same hormones. It would help treat M.S. in people if we understand why females fare worse, where there is also a gender difference with women accounting for three times as many cases as men. It is also noted that obesity, metabolic syndrome, autoimmune disease, Alzheimer’s, even eating differs by sex. Arnold said that twenty years ago, scientists didn't think that sex chromosomes played any role at all in causing sex differences in thee diseases. “But now we know it makes a difference in mice, so we can say: Where does it make a difference in humans?”

A better understanding of the role of sex in disease would eventually enable better treatments. Arnold said, “That’s kind of the hope ─ that sex differences are not only important to understanding diseases in men and women, but also to developing a more fundamental understanding of the disease processes, so that you can manipulate them.” In most cases, losing a chromosome or having an extra one is lethal, said Jeannie Lee, a geneticist and expert on the X chromosome at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. 46 chromosomes are within most people, 23 from each parent. Some chromosomes can come with an extra copy, including chromosomes 13, 18 and 21  ─ which is commonly called Down syndrome. Losing any chromosome other than a second sex chromosome is always lethal to a fetus. But the sex chromosome is the only one that people can survive with just one copy, Grave said. “Girls with a single X and no Y suffer few anomalies because the second X is largely inactive anyway. After all, males only have one X.”

(Trisomy 21-Down Syndrome)

People with anomalous numbers of sex chromosomes, such as those with Turner Syndrome, have a  range of problems from virtually no issues to infertility, heart problems and cognitive impairment. Turner Syndrome affects about one in 2,500 girls. It is also possible for people to be intersex, born with reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn't fit the typical definitions of female or male, which may but doesn't have to involve sex chromosomes, according to the Intersex Society of North America, an advocacy group. Karissa Sanbonmatsu, a structural biologist and principal investigator at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico says that it is not clear what mechanisms the body has to ensure that most men get only one Y and most women get two X chromosomes. In typical, one X is usually, but no always turned off and some research suggests that there is a mechanism that counts how many X chromosomes are present and generally turns of all but one of them. The interplay between genetics and hormones is complicated, “Genetics produce hormones but then hormones can reprogram DNA” she said, which might explain why there is a mismatch in some people between their sex chromosomes and their sex hormones. People with androgen insensitivity are born with XY chromosomes, but develop as female, because their cells cannot process male hormones. “So, it’s as if the testosterone does not exist,” she said. They are infertile. The more science learns about sex, “the more we find anomalies,” said Alice Dreger, a historian of sexuality. “Nature with conformity all the time in brutal ways and loving ways and all the rest of it,” Dreger said. “It does follow the human fantasy of everybody having to be normal. And humans don't follow that ridiculous idea either.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/25/science/split-sex-gynandromorph.html

[thecreatorsunited]

The biology of gender, from DNA to the brain | Karissa Sanbonmatsu How exactly does gender work? It's not just about our chromosomes, says biologist Karissa Sanbonmatsu. In a visionary talk, she shares new discoveries from epigenetics, the emerging study of how DNA activity can permanently change based on social factors like trauma or diet. Learn how life experiences shape the way genes are expressed -- and what that means for our understanding of gender. Check out more TED Talks: http://www.ted.com The TED Talks channel features the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design -- plus science, business, global issues, the arts and more. Follow TED on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/TEDTalks Like TED on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TED Subscribe to our channel: https://www.youtube.com/TED Brought to you by Vision Experimental Creative Business AI http://createwithvision.com

[aundrz]

NPR News: Karissa Sanbonmatsu: What Can Epigenetics Tell Us About Sex And Gender?

Karissa Sanbonmatsu: What Can Epigenetics Tell Us About Sex And Gender? We're used to thinking of DNA as a rigid blueprint. Karissa Sanbonmatsu researches how our environment affects the way DNA expresses itself—especially when it comes to sex and gender. Read more on NPR via Blogger https://ift.tt/2WCuITg https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

[mikalwatts]

Karissa Sanbonmatsu: What Can Epigenetics Tell Us About Sex And Gender? https://n.pr/2WClCWx

http://ifttt.com/missing_link?1588945050

[entrepreneurvision]

Karissa Sanbonmatsu: What Can Epigenetics Tell Us About Sex And Gender?

Karissa Sanbonmatsu: What Can Epigenetics Tell Us About Sex And Gender? We're used to thinking of DNA as a rigid blueprint. Karissa Sanbonmatsu researches how our environment affects the way DNA expresses itself—especially when it comes to sex and gender. Read more on NPR

[enzocalamo]

Karissa Sanbonmatsu: The biology of gender, from DNA to the brain | TED Talk

See on Scoop.it - Healthy Living

How exactly does gender work? It's not just about our chromosomes, says biologist Karissa Sanbonmatsu. In a visionary talk, she shares new discoveries from epigenetics, the emerging study of how DNA activity can permanently change based on social factors like trauma or diet. Learn how life experiences shape the way genes are expressed -- and what that means for our understanding of gender.

[thomdunn]

It is not clear what mechanisms the body has to ensure that most men get only one Y and most women get two X chromosomes, said Karissa Sanbonmatsu, a structural biologist and principal investigator at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. In typical females, one X is usually — but not always — turned off, she said, and some research suggests that there is a mechanism that counts how many X chromosomes are present and generally turns off all but one of them.

Split-Sex Animals Are Unusual, Yes, but Not as Rare as You’d Think