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AskScience Panel of Scientists XXV

Please read this entire post carefully and format your application appropriately.

This post is for new panelist recruitment! The previous one is here.

The panel is an informal group of Redditors who are either professional scientists or those in training to become so. All panelists have at least a graduate-level familiarity within their declared field of expertise and answer questions from related areas of study. A panelist's expertise is summarized in a color-coded AskScience flair.

Membership in the panel comes with access to a panelist subreddit. It is a place for panelists to interact with each other, voice concerns to the moderators, and where the moderators make announcements to the whole panel. It's a good place to network with people who share your interests!

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You are eligible to join the panel if you:

  • Are studying for at least an MSc. or equivalent degree in the sciences, AND,

  • Are able to communicate your knowledge of your field at a level accessible to various audiences.

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Instructions for formatting your panelist application:

  • Choose exactly one general field from the side-bar (Physics, Engineering, Social Sciences, etc.).

  • State your specific field in one word or phrase (Neuropathology, Quantum Chemistry, etc.)

  • Succinctly describe your particular area of research in a few words (carbon nanotube dielectric properties, myelin sheath degradation in Parkinsons patients, etc.)

  • Give us a brief synopsis of your education: are you a research scientist for three decades, or a first-year Ph.D. student?

  • Provide links to comments you've made in AskScience which you feel are indicative of your scholarship. Applications will not be approved without several comments made in r/AskScience itself.

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Ideally, these comments should clearly indicate your fluency in the fundamentals of your discipline as well as your expertise. We favor comments that contain citations so we can assess its correctness without specific domain knowledge.

Here's an example application:

Username: /u/foretopsail

General field: Anthropology

Specific field: Maritime Archaeology

Particular areas of research include historical archaeology, archaeometry, and ship construction.

Education: MA in archaeology, researcher for several years.

Comments: 1, 2, 3, 4.

Please do not give us personally identifiable information and please follow the template. We're not going to do real-life background checks - we're just asking for reddit's best behavior. However, several moderators are tasked with monitoring panelist activity, and your credentials will be checked against the academic content of your posts on a continuing basis.

You can submit your application by replying to this post.



Watch MONKEY MAN from Dev Patel and Jordan Peele at home now.


AskScience AMA Series: Say cheese! We are scientists who took 1.6 million pictures of a bacterial nano-motor. Ask us anything!
AskScience AMA Series: Say cheese! We are scientists who took 1.6 million pictures of a bacterial nano-motor. Ask us anything!
Biology

Hello, Reddit!

We are members of Iverson Lab at Vanderbilt University, Dr. Tina Iverson and Prash Singh. We study the connection between metabolism and cell fate when organisms respond to their environments. One of our projects seeks to understand how bacteria use a nano-motor to move in response to environmental conditions. This is important because these nano-motors allow bacteria to move towards energy-rich environments for survival and hide from antibiotics during infections. Globally, bacterial infections account for 1 in 8 deaths each year. Currently, antibiotics are our best defense; however, due to factors such as antibiotic misuse/overuse, genetic mutations, and gene transfers, bacteria are becoming increasingly resistant to these drugs bacteria are becoming increasingly resistant to these drugs. There is an urgent need for alternative approaches to combat harmful bacteria.

How does a very small motor direct bacteria? Think of bacteria as tiny boats that have propellors but no rudders. This means that their propellers have to be able to guide the direction. These specialized propellors are called flagella, which resemble Indiana Jones-style whips. Depending on how the bacteria rotate the flagella, these features can both serve to move the bacteria forward and change the direction of swimming. At the base of each of the flagella is a very small and extremely efficient rotary motor that controls this direction of flagellar rotation and is the key to the entire process.

To visualize and understand the inner workings of the bacterial flagellar motor our recent research used a technique called cryo-electron microscopy. We captured and analyzed millions of pictures of these bacterial nano-motors at 100,000-fold magnification. We then combined them to reconstruct models of the different states of the motor which are shown here: https://youtu.be/sGiVNUN2ypg. Our results suggest that the motor uses interlaced cogwheels to change how the flagella rotate and guide the bacteria https://youtu.be/MsPPyNWhqPoh . We can also propose how this nano-motor can accept torque from multiple sources so that bacteria can swim at different speeds (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TLm5aoy3PM).

We are here today on Reddit to answer your questions about our findings, experiences, future directions, and more.

We will be here to take your questions from 12-1PM ET (1600-1700 UTC). Ask us anything!

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