Formerly King'S Muscle Lab

Friday's Physiology Fact this week is thanks to the National Aquarium Denmark Den Blå Planet (as Vicky's on holiday in Copenhagen). This lovely zookeeper did a live squid dissection and explained how squid have three hearts and eleven brains - crazy. (Plus there are nice birds and fish to watch behind her.) Enjoy!

We're hoping this is the mood all our JFS student panel members are in after getting their GCSE results today... 🤞🤞🤞

Friday's Physiology Fact: the tiny but raucous coqui frog of Puerto Rico. The coqui has the loudest call of any amphibian, despite being super-tiny (34-40mm). The calls are so loud that the coquis should theoretically deafen themselves when they call, but they have adapted to overcome this. Rather than the sound wave reaching the eardrum only from the outside, the sound is transmitted to the inside of the eardrum as well via the lungs. This means that the vibrations of the eardrum are reduced overall by cancelling each other out and the frog gets to keep its hearing! 🐸 🔊

#fingerscrossed for all those getting their #alevelresults today. We've already heard from some of our #studentpanel members who've got into @kings_college_london - hooray! #congratulations to those who've got the results they want and need. To those who haven't - don't worry, it may be difficult now but you will take a different path to the one you expected, but it will work out. 🍀 🤞💪 😊 😔 🎉

Friday's Physiology Fact: the golden mole, one of the cutest little creatures out there. Golden moles have iridescent fur, no eyes and no external ears. They live in the deserts of southern Africa, where they "swim" through the very fine sand. They have very long, very coiled cochleas in their ears which makes them sensitive to very low-frequency sounds, and enlarged middle ear bones which allows them to detect seismic vibrations. These ear structures mean that golden moles are very good at hunting - they run around on the sand and then every now again stick their head into the sand to detect termites' alarm calls or the vibrations of them burrowing. They also have amazingly efficient kidneys, so much so that they very rarely need to drink. And really, they're just gorgeous!

#Friday #lungfunction #selfie with @drchrisharris

Abbie from our student panel joined us yesterday for the annual revamp of the departmental display board. This is what she put together, with some (remote) help from fellow panel member Gilad. Thanks to them both for their hard work - it was great to hear from Abbie that she feels she has developed her creative skills through this task. Design is a key science skill with all the conference posters we have to do!

Friday's Physiology Fact: in video format this week, as we share the amazing work of Student Panel members Leila, A'aishah and Manaal from Burntwood School who have made this fantastic video about how we test respiratory muscle strength in young children and babies. 👏 👏 👏 to the students for producing this almost entirely independently, showing an amazing understanding of the techniques and how difficult this testing can be for children and their parents.
This video will be used to support the ASPIRO gene therapy trial at the US National Institutes of Health, as well as in teaching at King's and elsewhere. We extend our thanks to the parents who kindly volunteered their children to be subjects in the video - we know it wasn't easy.

Friday's Physiology Fact: what has Juliette been up to these last few weeks? We didn't want to describe her project in detail as potential participants' results might have been affected by understanding the purpose of the study. Happily, Juliette has now finished recruiting subjects so we can do the big reveal!
We were interested in this study to find out if the type of distraction we give people during our respiratory measurements makes a difference to the data we collect. ...Juliette's psychology expertise was perfectly suited to this and so she has measured respiratory muscle activity alongside other respiratory parameters in a group of volunteers while they listen to music, watch calm or tense video clips, or do nothing at all.
Data analysis is ongoing, but we are grateful to student panel members Alison and Sophia for producing this lovely video all about the study. Thanks too to The Physiological Society for supporting Juliette's placement in the lab!
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Couldn't have asked for a more gorgeous pair of girls to help us with making a video about respiratory muscle testing techniques to support @nihgov and #audentestherapeutics Thanks too to @gailsbakery for delicious "persuasion" (#bribery) cakes! @ King's Muscle Lab

Last week Vicky headed off to the USA on another trip supporting the #audentestherapeutics #INCEPTUS & #ASPIRO studies. First stop: @nihgov in Bethesda to see Drs Sarah Neuhaus and Reghan Foley in the amazing Clinical Center - an entire hospital solely for research. Testing went well and we successfully solved a few little problems that had cropped up in previous testing sessions. Second stop was to see Oscar Marquez and new team member Carlos Yanes at @ucla. Training and testing went well, and it was great to see another patient progressing well after #genetherapy dosing. Vicky for once had company in the form of Juliette's College mascot Beaver from @st_annes_college @oxford_uni, plus the weather was amazing and there were a few spare moments for a swim and to top up the #vitaminD levels. What a week!

Friday's Physiology Fact: gene editing to create weird and wonderful fruit and veg! For a long time growers have bred different plant varieties together to create new strains with desirable characteristics, like sweeter flesh or different colour skins. Now, gene editing technology can do almost immediately what has previously taken generations. The gene editing technique Crispr-Cas9 has been so far used to make seedless tomatoes, wheat that can be eaten by people with coeliac disease, and mushrooms that don't go brown. By targeting certain genes that control the switching on and off of other genes, scientists hope that in future they will be able to change aspects such as taste, colour and texture, meaning that fruit and vegetables could become more appealing - so maybe kids will eat their greens because they'll taste like strawberries?!

Great to see former Student Panel member Beth Tobiansky (centre) today, three years after her #workexperience placement with us 😮 Beth is now studying Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology @officialuom and came to act as a subject for Mark, Spencer and Juliette. She brought her friend Tam (right) along too, who studies History @universityofleeds So great to catch up - once again JFS students past and present are helping advance our research!

Friday's Physiology Fact: anti-aging drugs are a reality! A team at the Healthy Aging and Longevity Research Institute at the University of Washington has just completed a trial involving 264 older people, half of whom took a combination of two drugs called mTOR inhibitors. They were monitored for a year for respiratory infections, and the group who took the drugs experienced an average of 1.5 infections per person compared to 2.4 in the group taking a placebo. It is hoped that drugs of this sort could help address the decline in immunity that occurs with age, and could perhaps be given at the same time as vaccinations to boost their efficacy as well as potentially being a treatment for degenerative conditions.

@st_annes_college mascot Beaver is spending this weekend hanging out in the office "garden", making the most of the sunny weather to top up his vitamin D levels (important for #lunghealth). #summerstudentship #JulietteWestbrook

Friday's Physiology Fact this week is simply about how bloomin' great these guys are. Spencer, Juliette and Mark have been storming through their #physiology #research studies this week, in the lab all day every day. Their #muscle and #respiratory measurement skills are 👌 and their commitment to #science can't be faulted. #welldone and #thankyou! #summerofscience #greatresearchers