Pharmacist Blog about what I encounter and find useful/interesting

"Periodic table of, ... everything" Lately I stumbled upon this insanely detailed periodic table. You can click any element and it will show you its wikipedia page, its properties, orbitals, isotopes, ... you can even combine all atoms to see what compounds they form with eachother! I highly recommend to look into it and play around with it, it might be of good use later on. The language choices are very large, you can access the table in your native language, hell, even esperanto is there! (Tip: bookmark this website in your browser) http://www.ptable.com/ By courtesy of: Periodic Table Design and Interface Copyright © 1997 Michael Dayah.  Preview of the website (I made the red box to indicate you can choose what you want to look up of the atoms):

Hair loss Hair loss is generally not a bad thing when you reach a certain age and most men seem to cope with it perfectly. However, when you are at a young age and when you already suffer from hair loss, this can be stressful. Young adolescents with baldness is a weird sight, and this can cause problems in social life. Most common cause for hair loss is the generic factor. This cannot be prevented or reverted, which is frustrating for the young person.  Note: don't wait too long before you do something about it if you want to, your hairs may not come back, only a small fraction if you're lucky. Minoxidil Luckily, science always finds a way. The molecule minoxidil has been found to stimulate hair growth and stop hair loss. It was first used as a vasodilator to lower blood pressure but was shown that it also has the side-effect, namely anti-hair loss.  It is applied topical on the scalp, a solution of 5% with a puffer, applied once or twice a day. However, once tr

An animation of the ubiquitin-proteasome system The following animation from the text book " The Cell: A Molecular Approach, Fifth edition - Geoffrey M. Cooper/Robert E. Hausman " is very very handy to understand the process of the ubiquitin-tagging of proteins and following the degradation of this protein.  Note: very basic animation; narrated can be easier to understand. http://sites.sinauer.com/cooper5e/animation0802.html

The proteasome Proteins are constantly being synthesized and at the same time being degraded in each cell of our body. One of the most known mechanisms of proteolysis (= protein degradation) is the degradation done by lysosomes. However, an other important mechanism is degradation by the ubiquitin proteasome system (UPS). First of all, it is needed to understand that a cell maintains its protein concentration by a constant turn-over of proteins: when there is a lot of synthesis of a certain protein, this certain protein will also be degraded by a higher level, and vice versa. A protein that has to be degraded will be marked by a polyubiquitin chain which consists of 4 or more ubiquitinmolecules. This protein will be transported to a 26S proteasome. This structure in the cell is built by a 19S part and a 20S part. The 19S part mainly serves as a recognition and binding structure for the polyubiquitinated protein, and the 20S part will destroy the protein. Once attached to the