How bananas may be used to fight the plastic waste crisis?
🛍 Plastic bags take up to 20 years to decompose. With very little plastic being recycled, most end up in landfills or littered in the greater environment, creating serious environmental consequences. Finding a plastic-like alternative that will decompose relatively quickly would go a long way in fighting the ongoing plastic waste crisis.

🍌ℹ️ Bananas are the fourth most grown crop in the world, trailing only rice, wheat and corn, and almost 36 million tons of banana peels are produced yearly.

🍌➡️🛍 According to a new study, banana peels may be utilized to create biodegradable films and one day replace plastic as the dominant food packaging material.

✅ A produced film was strong, transparent, and more importantly, biodegradable within 30 days at 21% soil moisture content ⬆️.

✔️ Further research will look to improve the film's flexibility and investigate the scalability and commercialization of this preparation process.

Subscribe- t.me/askmenow

What are some fascinating facts about pollen?

🟡 Not All Pollen Types Trigger Allergies
Pollen is an allergen and plants that release it into the air, such as ragweed, oaks, elms, maple trees, and grasses, are most often responsible for triggering allergy in humans, having a hypersensitivity to this type of pollen. However, because most plants that flower transfer pollen via insects and not via the wind, flowering plants are not typically the cause of allergic reactions.

🔴 Plants Use Trickery to Spread Pollen
Flowers that have white or other light colors are more easily seen in the dark by nocturnal insects like moths. Plants that are lower to the ground attract bugs that can't fly, such as ants or beetles. Some plants also cater to insects' sense of smell by producing a rotten smell to attract flies. Still, other plants have flowers that resemble the females of certain insects to lure males of the species.

🟠 Plant Pollinators Can Be Large or Small
When we think of pollinators, we usually think of bees. However, a number of insects such as butterflies, ants, beetles, and flies and animals such as hummingbirds and bats also transfer pollen. Two of the smallest natural plant pollinators are the fig wasp and the panurgine bee. The female fig wasp, Blastophaga psenes, is only about 1.55mm ( in length. One of the largest natural pollinators happens to be the black and white ruffed lemur from Madagascar.

🟤 Pollen is the Primary Source of Protein for Bees
The protein content of pollen varies between 2.5% and 61%, depending on the plant species. For context, beef is approximately 26% protein.

🟣 Pollen Contains the Male Sex Cells in Plants
Pollen is the male sperm producing gametophyte of a plant. A pollen grain contains both non-reproductive cells, known as vegetative cells and a reproductive or generative cell. In flowering plants, pollen is produced in the anther of the flower stamen. In conifers, pollen is produced in the pollen cone.

⚪️ Pollen Grains Must Create a Tunnel for Pollination to Occur
In order for pollination to occur, the pollen grain must germinate in the female portion (carpel) of the same plant or another plant of the same species. In flowering plants, the stigma portion of the carpel collects the pollen. The vegetative cells in the pollen grain create a pollen tube to tunnel down from the stigma, through the long style of the carpel, to the ovary. Division of the generative cell produces two sperm cells, which travel down the pollen tube into the ovule. This journey usually takes up to two days, but some sperm cells can take months to reach the ovary.

🟢 Pollen Is Required for Both Self-Pollination and Cross-Pollination
In flowers that have both stamens (male parts) and carpels (female parts), both self-pollination and cross-pollination can occur. In self-pollination, sperm cells fuse with the ovule from the female part of the same plant. In cross-pollination, pollen is transferred from the male portion of one plant to the female portion of another genetically similar plant. This helps in the development of new species of plants and increases the adaptability of plants.

🔵 Some Plants Use Toxins to Prevent Self-Pollination
Some flowering plants have molecular self-recognition systems that help prevent self-fertilization by rejecting pollen produced by the same plant. Once pollen has been identified as "self", it is blocked from germination. In some plants, a toxin called S-RNase poisons the pollen tube if the pollen and pistil (female reproductive part or carpel) are too closely related, thus preventing inbreeding.

Subscribe- t.me/askmenow

Telegram

Ask Me

Get Daily General Knowledge Questions and Answers Feedback and ads: @askme\_feedbackbot

Is Pollen always yellow?
*🟨 Pollen* is the fertilization agent of plants and the essential element for the survival of many plant species. It is responsible for the formation of seeds, fruit.

🟨 Pollen is a botanical term that referred to "the fertilizing element of flowers" and was first used as long ago as 1760 by Carl Linnaeus. it has come to be known as "fine, powdery, yellowish grains or spores."

🟨🟥🟪🟫 Though pollen is associated with the color yellow, pollen can come in many vibrant colors, including red, purple, white, and brown ⬆️.

🟨 Since insect pollinators such as bees, can't see red, plants produce yellow (or sometimes blue) pollen to attract them. This is why most plants have yellow pollen, but there are some exceptions. For instance, birds and butterflies are attracted to red colors, so some plants produce red pollen to attract these organisms.

ℹ️ The scientific study of living and fossilized pollen grains is known as palynology.

Subscribe- t.me/askmenow

What is Peto’s Paradox?
In a multicellular organism, cells must go through a cell cycle that includes growth and division.

Every time a cell divide, it must copy its millions/billion base pairs of DNA, and it inevitably makes some mistakes. These mistakes are called somatic mutations.

If every cell division carries a certain chance that a cancer-causing somatic mutation could occur, then the risk of developing cancer should theoretically increase with both the number of cells and the lifespan of an organism.

However, multiple studies showed that gigantic animals do not only get more cancer than humans, but actually even get less, suggesting that super-human cancer suppression has evolved numerous times across the tree of life. This is the essence and promise of Peto’s Paradox ⬆️.

Peto’s Paradox is named after a British epidemiologist Richard Peto (1943-), who noted the relationship between time and cancer when he was studying how tumors form in mice.

Subscribe- t.me/askmenow

How does the Vangunu giant rat look like?
*🐀*🏝🇸🇧 The Vangunu giant rat (Uromys vika or U. vika) from the South Pacific island of Vangunu in the Solomon Islands *was first described ⬆️* in 2017, when one representative of the species was found dead after loggers took out a section of forest.

✍️ It was the first new species of rodent described in the Solomon Islands in more than 80 years.

⚠️ Due to logging of its lowland forest habitat this one of the world’s rarest giant rodent was considered critically endangered and researchers long feared that it had gone extinct.

❎ For several years, periodic efforts to scientifically identify and document this species were fruitless.

✅ Recently, researchers finally captured images of four of these creatures ⬆️.

🐀🥥🏝 The Vangunu giant rats are about twice the size of common rats, and can chew through coconuts.

🙏🌳🌴 According to scientists, the future of the species relies on the preservation of Zaira primary forests.

Subscribe- t.me/askmenow

What are critical functions of meiosis?
Meiosis has several critical functions in organisms:

1️⃣ Production of Gametes is one of the primary functions. In animals, these gametes are the sperm and egg cells. In plants, meiosis leads to the formation of spores, which then develop into gametophytes that produce gametes.

2️⃣ Halving the Chromosome Number:
The chromosome number of a species remains constant from one generation to the next. By reducing the chromosome number by half, gametes form with a haploid (n) set of chromosomes. When two gametes fuse during fertilization, this restores the diploid (2n) number of chromosomes in the zygote, ensuring genetic stability across generations.

3️⃣ Promotion of Genetic Variation in multiple ways:
**▪️Crossing-over: During prophase I, homologous chromosomes undergo crossing-over, where sections of chromatids exchange places. This results in new combinations of genes on each chromatid.
*▪️ Independent Assortment: During metaphase I, how the pairs of homologous chromosomes line up at the metaphase plate is random. This means that different combinations of maternal and paternal chromosomes end up in each gamete.
▪️ Random Fertilization***: The fusion of any sperm with any egg during fertilization adds another layer of genetic variability.

4️⃣ Evolutionary Significance:
The genetic variation introduced by meiosis provides raw material for natural selection. Organisms with advantageous genetic combinations are more likely to survive and reproduce, passing on those beneficial genes to their offspring. Over time, this leads to evolutionary changes in populations.

5️⃣ Repair of DNA Damage:
Before entering meiosis, cells undergo DNA repair mechanisms. If there’s damage to the DNA, the processes within meiosis, especially recombination, help correct certain types of damage. This ensures that genetic information passes to the next generation as accurately as possible.

6️⃣ Prevention of Chromosomal Abnormalities:
Gametes receive the correct number of chromosomes. Errors in this process lead to conditions like Down syndrome, where an individual has an extra chromosome 21.

✍️ Summary: meiosis maintains the chromosome number across generations, generates genetic diversity, aids in evolutionary processes, repairs DNA, and prevents chromosomal abnormalities.

Subscribe- t.me/askmenow

Telegram

Ask Me

Why do ***🐢***turtles live so long? There's an evolutionary answer and a biological answer to this question. ***✔️***The evolutionary answer is relatively straightforward: some natural enemies of turtles, like snakes***🐍***, birds***🦅*** and raccoons***🦝***, love to eat turtle eggs.…

Which type of cell division is crucial for sexual reproduction and genetic diversity?
*🟢*↔️🟢 A type of cell divison that ensures genetic diversity and the continuity of species through sexual reproduction is called meiosis**.

It is the process that is not part of the cell cycle and where a cell replicates DNA once but divides twice, producing four cells that have half the genetic information of the original cell. It is how organisms produce gametes or sex cells, which are eggs in females and sperm in males.

Meiosis involves 2️⃣ divisions, so it’s typically broken down into meiosis I and meiosis II ⬆️.

✔️ Cells enter meiosis I from interphase, which is much like interphase in the cell cycle. When cells commit to meiosis, DNA replicates. It consists of:
Prophase I
Metaphase I
Anaphase I
Telophase I

*✔️ Meiosis II is similar to mitosis but involves the division of haploid cells. It consists of:
Prophase II
Metaphase II
Anaphase II
Telophase II*

Subscribe- t.me/askmenow

What happens if cells do not go through all checkpoints?
Not all cells go through all checkpoints of the cell cycle. Some fast-track through certain phases. Also, the time it takes for cells to complete the cycle varies. In humans, it ranges from two to five days for epithelial cells to an entire lifetime for certain neurons and cardiac cells.

Disruption in these regulatory checkpoints can lead to cells with damaged or missing genetic material.

Deregulation of the cell cycle can have grave consequences. When the checkpoints fail, it can result in:
🆘 Cells with incomplete or damaged DNA.
🆘 Uncontrolled cell division.

This uncontrolled division and growth of cells leads to the formation of tumors. Not all tumors are malignant, but those that are can invade nearby tissues and spread to other parts of the body (metastasis), leading to cancer ⬆️.

ℹ️ Cancer is a disease in which some of the body’s cells grow uncontrollably and spread to other parts of the body.

Subscribe- t.me/askmenow

Why do women need more sleep than men?
According to a study, men need 7-8 hours of sleep where women need 8-10 hours that leads to different circadian rhythms and to more sleep for women.

The sleep cycles are similar, but cortisol goes down and melatonin goes up sooner in women than men.

The interaction between circadian phase and time asleep was significant for sleep efficiency, in that the circadian disruption of sleep became stronger as sleep progressed.

While a person sleeps, their hormone levels are being replenished, and when a woman is deprived of sleep it can mess with cycles that take place within the female body that don’t happen for men.

Another study found that for women, poor sleep is strongly associated with psychological distress, and greater feelings of hostility, depression and anger. In contrast, these feelings were not associated with the same degree of sleep disruption in men.

ℹ️ As per studies, women require about 20 minutes more sleep than men.

Subscribe- t.me/askmenow