UNIV 300 – Week 4 Assignment

o The name of the resource you chose and the specific book within that collection that you used. (If you used the Oxford Reference Collection, what book or encyclopedia within the collection did you use to find your information? If you used Britannica, what was the heading/title of the entry you used?)

-          Oxford Reference Collection

o   A Dictionary of Biomedicine

o   A Dictionary of Psychology

o What new idea or information did you find about the topic?

               I learned a few things about the individual subtopics/subjects within my topic (correlation between periodontal bacteria and Alzheimer’s Disease):

-          Porphyromonas gingivalis collagenase: An “unusual peptidase” (enzymes that break down peptides into amino acids), associated with periodontal lesions (associated with bacterial infection).

-          Fimbrillin: The protein that forms bacterial pili (fimbriae).  Fimbriae have been most extensively studied in P. gingivalis, the bacterium responsible for periodontal disease.  Fimbriae are required for attachment (through integrins) and invasion of the gingival mucosa.

-          Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) – I did not know there are different types of AD: Familial Alzheimer's disease-1 (AD1) is caused by mutation in the gene encoding the amyloid precursor protein (APP). AD2 is associated with the apolipoprotein E4 allele (ApoE4), AD3 is caused by mutation in the presenilin-1 gene (PSEN1) and AD4 by mutation in the PSEN2 gene.

o What are some subtopics you read about in your search?

-          P. gingivialis is among a short list of pathogens that are currently causing the greatest antibiotic resistance problems.

-          As I included above, I found the topic of Fimbrillin in my search and had to include that.

o What potential research questions came up while you were reading? (It’s okay if these are still vague or broad).

-          How does the bacteria affect the brain?  What is significant about that bacterial infection that differs from other bacterial infections?

o List words that might be used for future searches. Be sure to include and label at least one DISTINCTIVE term, one BROAD term, one NARROW term and one RELATED term, as discussed in Week Three. These should be single words or short phrases that indicate a single concept.

-          Periodontal infection – broad

-          Gingipains – distinctive – (I looked this up using the Oxford Collection, however, it did not produce any results)

-          Antibiotic resistance in P. gingivialis – related

-          Tau proteins – narrow – (I also looked this up using the Oxford Collection, however, it was very technical and way over my head)

• In a short paragraph, briefly compare this article with the Wikipedia article you looked at last week. 

Last week, I looked up P. gingivialis on Wikipedia and compared it to this week’s search.  Certainly, Wikipedia has much more information as it includes other associated subtopics.  Interestingly, this week I found a term that was included in the Wiki article (fimbriae) which was located under the topic of fimbrillin.  Wiki did not include the information about fimbrillin, but this search produced a curiosity which led me to connect the two.