Why Science Nerds Wear Glasses.

Ever wonder why science nerds wear glasses?
Recently, a contact lens wearing lass was infected by an amoeba which was infected by a virus which was infected by a virophage which was infected by a parasitic piece of DNA called a transpoviron. It’s like a microbial inception. (This article originally appeared on io9.com)

Woman with eye infection had an entire microbial ecosystem in her contact lens solution

by George Dvorsky

There’s a reason why optometrists say you should regularly replenish your contact lens solution and throw out your lenses after the expiry date. Last year, a young woman contracted an eye infection after using tap water to dilute her cleaning solution, and while wearing contact lenses that were two months past their expiry date. Subsequent analysis of her lens solution revealed an entire cornucopia of microorganisms that were spawned from a single amoeba, including a giant virus that was also infected with a virus — and a piece of DNA that was capable of infecting both of them.

Thankfully, the woman’s condition, keratitis, was not serious and was easily treatable — but the subsequent analysis of her contaminated lens solution was quite revealing, if not disturbing.

The research, which was conducted by Bernard La Scola and Christelle Desnues, was initially concerned with an amoeba they found in the fluid. But after looking at the amoeba more carefully, the researchers discovered that it hosted two different microorganisms, including a giant virus that had never been seen before (what is now called the Lentille virus).

This Lentille virus, after infecting the amoeba, created a kind of “virus factory” where its genetic material was copied, thus spawning new viruses that were architected from its genetic script.

Now, if this wasn’t surprising enough, the researchers also discovered that the Lentille virus was also infected with a virus, what’s called a virophage. This virus-within-a-virus, named Sputnik 2, is only capable of reproducing in cells infected by other viruses (in this case, the infected amoeba). Amoebas that are infected with this virus continue to release virophage particles, which means the virus can continue to infect other amoebas on their own.

But there’s still more: Both the giant Lentille virus and Sputnik 2 virophage contained even smaller parasites called transpovirons — highly mobile chunks of DNA that can relocate themselves into the genomes of viruses and tuck themselves away inside of virophages.

So, in summary, the researchers discovered that a transmissible DNA sequence managed to find its way into a virophage (and potentially the giant virus itself), which in turn latched onto a giant virus, which then infected an amoeba — an amoeba that eventually found its way into the eye of a 17-year old girl.
You can read the entire study at PNAS.

Just When You Thought It Was Safe…

Adorable Dinosaurs

Hard evidence that giant tyrannosaurs were cuter than you ever thought possible

by Annalee Newitz of i09.

Imagine a tyrannosaur weighing one and a half tons, completely covered in soft, downy plumage. Even its tail is fluffy with feathers. Though we’ve known for a while that many dinosaurs were covered in feathers, a group of Chinese researchers have now provided direct evidence that gigantic, deadly tyrannosaurs might have looked a bit like wuffly birds. Three nearly complete, well-preserved fossils give us a glimpse of tyrannosaurs the way we’ve never seen them before.

The fossils were found in the Liaoning Province in China, in the “Yixian formation,” a package of rocks that is known to date to the early Cretaceous period. Described today in Nature magazine, the creatures are in the subgroup Tyrannosauroidea, which is part of the Therapod family that includes both the iconic T. Rex as well as winged dinosaurs who eventually evolved into today’s birds. The animals that paleontologist Xing Xu and colleagues dubbed Yutyrannus huali would have been quite large for tyrannosaurs (the largest, an adult, likely weighed almost 1.5 tons) and were probably the apex predators of their region.

The researchers write:

Most significantly, Y. huali bears long filamentous feathers, thus providing direct evidence for the presence of extensively feathered gigantic dinosaurs and offering new insights into early feather evolution.

In these fossils, you can see the long, flowing tail feathers that would have trailed out behind these huge beasts. The question that Xu and his team ask is why these large dinosaurs would have needed feathers. Usually feathers and fur are used for insulation, but creatures with large bodies often lose their hair because they generate enough body heat that insulation is unnecessary. Y. huali is by far the largest dinosaur known to have had feathers, and there is plenty of fossil evidence that other large tyrannosaurs had scaly skin.

The researchers speculate that these tyrannosaurs may have been adapted to extremely cold environments, while other tyrannosaurs lived in more tropical regions. Another possibility is thatY. huali didn’t have feathers all over its body — it might have had some areas of bright plumage for display, but scales elsewhere.

Read the whole scientific article in Nature

Microscopy Monday {No.4}

An antique microscope slide of a thin section of diseased ivory. (15x)

Stephen Nagy is a psychiatrist and amateur microscopist who took this image specifically for entry into the contest. It shows how a disease process can alter structure of ivory, creating strange and beautiful evocative shapes, which lead to people imagining that they see something else in the image. The image was taken using standard polarizing light techniques, with crossed polarizing filters, a first-order red plate, and an additional compensating plate made of ordinary cellophane. Image-stitching technology though Adobe Photoshop that created this composite of sixteen separate exposures or images, seamlessly merging them into one image which shows much more of the ivory’s structure.

Image by Stephen Nagy.

The Truth About Dinosaurs

Mr. T-Rex always did have a hard time with a shovel, due to their awkwardly short arms.
Poor T-Rex.

 

Happy April Fools Day!

Happy April Fools Day, Internet!
In celebration of the trickiest of days, I present to you random “science facts” floating around the internet, all of which are completely, completely untrue.

Now excuse me while I go plant some rice grains.
I’ll be sure to wash up with kitten saliva afterwards.
Speaking of which, where on earth does a person get “one glass of cat salvia?” Can I get that at the local Safeway, or do I have to special order it online?

Meryl Streep Is A Mimic Octopus

The mimic octopus, Thaumoctopus mimicus, can imitate 15 aquatic animals (that we know of), including sea snakes, lion fish, flatfish, giant crabs, stingrays, and jellyfish. It can even do giant seashells, because why should it limit itself to just animals?
There are mimics that it can do that we haven’t figured out what it’s trying to mimic. Robert Krulwich of NPR wonders if maybe it’s unknown mimics are a product of its imagination.

Octopi are so intelligent, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they possess imagination. I love how Mr. Krulwich describes this creature as the Meryl Streep of the ocean.

I bet if the mimic octopus saw a picture of Meryl, it would instantly try to transform into her.

…Or what if Meryl Streep is a mimic octopus in disguise?!
The hair in this photo does look suspiciously like octopus arms. It would also explain her ability to morph into any role with apparent ease. It would make sense that the greatest living film actress is an octopus.
No human could be that awesome.

I’m on to you, Meryl!

New Species of Alaskan Water Flea Discovered And It’s ADORABLE!!!

New species discovered by scientists in Northwest Alaska

by Doug O’Harra

Scientists have discovered a new variety of water flea in a roadside pond on the Seward Peninsula outside of Nome, suggesting that life in the Alaskan Arctic may be far ecologically mysterious than previously thought.

This tiny crustacean — now named Eurycercus beringi — was identified during a multi-year, trans-continental investigation of water fleas that squiggle through small lakes across Alaska, Siberia and other Northern Hemisphere locales. The creatures fill a niche near the bottom of the freshwater food chain, providing summer food for birds while munching on even smaller life that erupts during the intense, brief Arctic summer.

Among other things, the scientists documented 10 different species of water fleas in these northern ecosystems instead of the two previously thought to live there. That represents a remarkable five-fold increase in water flea diversity in the Far North.

Don’t dismiss these findings, reported Feb. 24 in the journal Zootaxa, as just some arcane taxonomic trivia about weird-looking pond monsters — especially in the face of widespread permafrost melt and climate change.

With summers growing warmer and vegetation shifting, aquatic life unknown to modern science might be squirming incognito off the toes of our XtraTufs in potholes and tundra lakes that have begun to vanish and shrink. As these water bodies drain into the Earth or dry up, their biological treasures could vanish with them.

“It is well known that parts of Alaska and Siberia have suffered a huge reduction in freshwater surface area, with many lakes and ponds disappearing permanently in the past few decades,” explained co-author Derek J. Taylor, a biologist at the University at Buffalo, in this story about the research. “What we’re now finding is that these regions with vanishing waters, while not the most diverse in the world, do contain some unique aquatic animals.”

“Some of these subarctic ponds that water fleas inhabit are held up by permafrost, so when this lining of ice melts or cracks, it’s like pulling the plug out of a sink,” Taylor added. “When you see the crop circle-like skeletons of drained ponds on the tundra you can’t help but wonder what animal life has been lost here.”

Along with Eugeniya I. Bekker and Alexey A. Kotov of the A. N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution in Moscow, Taylor concentrated on the quarter-inch-long water fleas from the genus Eurycercus in ponds across the globe. One surprising finding? These particular water fleas appear to be more diverse in northern regions than in the tropics.

“This is a counterintuitive concept, as scientists have long supposed that the advance and re-advance of ice sheets reduced much of the species diversity in colder climates,” Taylor explained in this story. “However, there is growing evidence that some northern areas remained ice-free and acted as hideouts during the harsh glacial advances.”

Contact Doug O’Harra at doug(at)alaskadispatch.com

Microscopy Monday {No.3}

Immature sperm in the spermatocyte stage of the crane fly, Nephrotoma suturalis. (60x)

Image by Rudolf Oldenbourg.

Outside Ovaries

The following is written by Michael Marshall of New Scientist

First Animal With Ovaries On The Outside

Species: Allapasus aurantiacus
Habitat: On and around the seabed off the coast of California

If there’s one way we can be sure that life on Earth really is the result of evolution, and not the guiding hand of a cosmic engineer, it’s the hideous design flaws. The examples are too numerous to list, but let’s just consider one: human males have their testicles on the outside.

It seems they work better that way, because sperm production works best slightly below human body temperature. But it isn’t half inconvenient – as any male who has ever been kicked in the goolies will tell you.

Spare a thought, then, for the newly-discovered acorn worm Allapasus aurantiacus. The females are the first animals known that have their ovaries on the outside. But according to their discoverers, they are the first of many.

(The best shot starts at the 20 second mark)

Deep-sea worms

Acorn worms are quite different to the more familiar annelid worms, as they are close-ish relatives of backboned animals. They live on the sea bed, often burrowing into the sediment.

No one had noticed A. aurantiacus until June 2002, when Karen Osborn of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC spotted one via a remotely-operated vehicle deep into the Monterey Submarine Canyon off California, around 3000 metres down. Intrigued, she had it brought to the surface.

Once Osborn got a closer look she realised it was an acorn worm. Unusually large eggs, each almost 2 millimetres across, were pouring out of it. The new species belonged to a family of acorn worms called Torquaratoridae, which all live in the deep sea – unlike many acorn worms, which prefer the shallows.

Ovaries on display

Each worm has two “wings” – flaps of skin on the main body along much of its length. In an unprecedented arrangement, the ovaries are attached to the inner surfaces of these wings.

“Usually you want to protect these things, and keep them near and dear,” Osborn says. Even human testicles have several layers of skin protecting them. But the eggs of A. aurantiacus are only protected by a single layer of cells. That might make it easier for sperm to reach them, Osborn says.

She has since found a few males, whose genitals are in the same place on their skin. It’s not clear how they fertilise the females’ eggs. One possibility is that the males release sperm into the water, whereupon the females take it in through their gills and squirt it over the ovaries – which are ideally placed by the gill outlets.

Floating free

The worm uses its wings as sticky pads to attach itself to the sea floor. “They secrete a ton of mucus, and that probably helps them adhere,” Osborn says. “Mucus is a big part of their lives.”

Mucus may also be the key to the worm’s ability to float above the sea bed – something that only the deep-sea acorn worms do. Osborn thinks they secrete a balloon of mucus around themselves, which catches currents that then carry the worm away.

But first they have to get off the sea bed, and to do that they excrete the contents of their guts. This material acts as ballast, so getting rid of it means they drift upwards.

First of many

Osborn and her colleagues have since found over a dozen acorn worms in the same family. They all have external ovaries and the distinctive wings. One species has hermaphrodite forms, another first for acorn worms.

Worms aren’t known for their parenting skills but in a further surprise, at least one species uses the wings to shelter its offspring. Osborn found a single female, of a species closely related to A. aurantiacus, that was sheltering well-developed eggs and a few larvae under its wings.

She suggests that the acorn worms’ strange lifestyles are adaptations to life on the sea floor, where food and mates are scarce. In a place like that, it makes sense to move around in search of new feeding grounds, to make use of any and all sperm that comes your way, and to keep your young close until they’re ready to take care of themselves.

Journal reference: Journal of Morphology, DOI: 10.1002/jmor.20013

Extract Your Own DNA

As a promotion for their upcoming show “Cracking The Genetic Code,” NOVA released this short video showing you how to extract your own DNA using common household items. I’ve done this before with dozens of little kids, using the Gene In A Bottle kit, available from Bio-Rad. It’s a great fundraiser, simple to do, and very safe. They absolutely love it, and it’s a great science activity the family can do at home. Just don’t let those devious teenagers try to go off and clone themselves.

“Cracking The Genetic Code” airs next Wednesday, March 28th, on PBS. Don’t miss it!

Hugs

 It’s a scientific fact that hugs are what keeps us alive.

More cute drawings can be found at I Love Doodle

Microscopy Monday {No.2}

Cells from the trabecular meshwork of a pig’s eye. The trabecular meshwork assists in draining the aqueous humor, the fluid between the lens and the cornea, (20x)

Image by Carmen Laethem, Aerie Pharmaceuticals.

Drunken Fruit Flies

The Internet has been abuzz the past few days with news of fruit flies turning to booze when denied sex. Here’s a delightful piece posted on NPR a few days ago covering the subject. It should be noted that fruit flies are insanely awesome and one of the most commonly used specimens in scientific research, especially genetic research.

When Fruit Flies Strike Out, They Like To Booze It Up

By Scott Hensley of NPR

Have pity on these poor fruit flies.

Researchers made a bunch of male fruit flies into boozehounds by pushing them on females unreceptive to their advances.

After a few days of striking out, the male losers, referred to as the “rejected-isolated” group in a study published online by Science, drowned their sorrows in alcohol.

They preferred food spiked with ethanol to their regular meal, and they were more likely to go for the alcohol than the males who’d had sex.

It’s a sad experiment. And one that many of us have been subjected to in real life.

But this work conducted at the University of California, San Francisco, revealed more than that an age-old melodrama could be played out by fruit flies. The researchers showed that a chemical called neuropeptide F in the flies’ brains played a key role in determining their behavior.

The less neuropeptide F was present in their little fly brains, the more likely they were to seek a drink. Being denied sex lowered neuropeptide F and increased their self-medication.

But there’s a solution, and the researchers write dryly about it:

[T]he effects of sexual deprivation can be reversed by copulation, which is consistent with sexual deprivation being the major contributor to ethanol preference.

So having sex boosted neuropeptide F, decreasing the flies’ interest in alcohol.

Very interesting for flies, you might say. So what?

Well, it turns we humans aren’t sooooo different.

Humans’ brains have got the same sort of chemical, called neuropeptide Y in our case, and it also looks like an important ingredient when it comes to our internal reward systems.

In humans, neuropeptide Y may be important in regulating stress and anxiety. When the chemical is out of whack, it may contribute to addictive behavior.

The experiments in flies show how social experiences may shape chemical dependence through changes in the level of neuropeptides.

Don’t expect a drug or treatment for people based on neuropeptides anytime soon. It’s not easy to get a molecule like that inside someone’s brain, even if the science someday suggests that might be truly helpful.

Still, there have been some early experiments with neuropeptide Y, including one using it in a nasal spray as a potential treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.

Electrophoresis Love

Electrophoresis is beautiful!
❤ ❤ ❤

Cupcakes for Zombies

This definitely delighted my inner zombie. Freaking skull cupcake molds, so you can make delicious brain cupcakes! Finally, a way to participate in the Fore tribe tradition of eating human brains without that pesky risk of kuru.
They taste like frosting and neurons!
*squeeee!*

You can purchase them here for $11.95 a set ^__^

Felted Organs

I found this little gem via Street Anatomy. Multi-talented Etsy artist Once Again Sam is an author, jewelry designer, and felt crafter who created felt anatomical organs. My personal favorite is the heart, though the brain does look pretty damn cuddly.

Skin Cell Gun Rocks My Damn Socks Off

Watch it. Watch it now! It’s incredible, and will hopefully save countless lives.

A Shiver of Catsharks

Science has found a new species of shark! And not just any shark, but a catshark, which is undoubtedly the cutest word ever. I want one. Actually, I want a whole bunch of them. Which, since they are a type of shark, could be referred to as a shiver of catsharks.

Here is the original article, via Wired Science:

New Shark Species Discovered in Galapagos Islands

By Adam Mann

Scientists conducting deep-sea dives around the Galapagos Islands have identified a new species of shark. Part of a family known as a catsharks, the new species is about 1.3 feet long, roughly the same size as a typical housecat.

Catsharks (also sometimes known as dogfishes) are one of the largest families of sharks. The new species — named Bythaelurus giddingsi — was identified from seven specimens during two submersible treks in 1995 and 1998. Researchers have suggested the Galapagos Catshark as the common name of the new species.

The seven specimens were taken to the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, where scientists compared them to other known catsharks. B. giddingsi individuals are chocolate-brown and have pale, leopard-like spots randomly distributed on their body. This distinguishes them from other closely related species, which are typically dusky or possess a straight line of spots.

The arrangement of spots on each Galapagos Catshark appears to be unique, with most individual sharks having an identifying spot on one side that is smaller, larger, or differently shaped than the opposite-side spot.

The description of the new species appears March 5 in Zootaxa.

Sharks in many places around the world face extinction from human activity, such as commercial and recreational fishing. Researchers estimate that 100 million sharks are killed each year.

As top-level predators, sharks are necessary to keep ecosystems in balance. Because the Galapagos Catshark is only found in one place, researchers fear it may be more susceptible to extinction pressures.

Microscopy Monday {No.1}

I’ve decided to start a tradition of Microscopy Monday, in an attempt to kick off the week with something amazing and beautiful. I hope you enjoy.

Mature neurons from a rat hippocampus that are being attacked by Alzheimer’s-related neurotoxins (100x)

Image by Pascale Lacor, Northwestern University.