Question: How much blood do we have in our human body?
Ms. Barasha Baruah, Class-VI
Mangaldai Town Girls’ H.S School
Answer: On an average, an adult human has around 4.7 to 5.5 liters of blood. The volume of blood is approximately 7 percent of one’s body weight. However, it is highly variable and generally depends on many factors like gender, weight and height.
Question: What is RNA interference?
Shri Hridit Basumatary, Class-IX
St. John’s School, Balipara
Answer: RNA interference (RNAi) is the process in which expression of a gene is inhibited by RNA (siRNA or small interfering RNA) molecules by specifically neutralizing the targeted messenger RNA (mRNA) molecules. This mechanism is used to reduce the expression of the targeted gene, i.e. in the process of gene knockdown or silencing.
Question: What is smallest known infectious agent?
Shri Divraj Doimari, Class-XI
Kendriya Vidyalaya No. 2, AFS (Tezpur)
Answer: The smallest known infectious agent is ‘Prion’, which stands for ‘Proteinaceous Infectious Particle’. Prions are composed of a single protein. Proteins are folded structures; however, failure to get folded into the native shape may result in a misfolded protein which lacks normal activity. Prions are such misfolded proteins with the ability to transmit their misfolded shape onto normal variants of the same protein. Prions can infect brain tissue and cause normal proteins to change shape leading to cell death.
Question: What is unique about the current Coronavirus infection spread across several countries of the world?
Ms Bidisha Basumatari, Class-IX
Kendriya Vidyalaya No. 2, AFS (Tezpur)
Answer: Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses, some of which cause respiratory illnesses in human including common cold. The virus that is causing the current epidemic is a new coronavirus that was not previously known, i.e. it is a novel Coronavirus. It has been named as 2019-nCoV. It is even different from the Coronavirus that caused SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) that occurred as a pandemic in different parts of the world a few years ago.
Question: Is there any difference between babies born normally and those born out of in vitro fertilization (IVF)?
Shri Priyanshu Basumatari, Class-X
St. John’s School, Balipara
Answer: Babies born out of IVF are as normal as other babies born normally. The only difference in case of IVF baby is that mother’s eggs are first fertilized with the father’s sperm in the test tube in the laboratory under the supervision of skilled experts, and then after the zygote undergoes division and growth for a few days in the laboratory, the growing embryo is transferred to the uterus of the mother for further growth till birth of the baby after stipulated time. In fact, otherwise it is impossible to distinguish between an IVF baby and a normally born one.
