Happy April Fools Day!
1 AprHappy 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?
New Species of Alaskan Water Flea Discovered And It’s ADORABLE!!!
26 MarNew 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}
26 Mar
Immature sperm in the spermatocyte stage of the crane fly, Nephrotoma suturalis. (60x)
Image by Rudolf Oldenbourg.
Microscopy Monday {No.2}
19 Mar
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.
Taking a Break
8 MarUnemployment is stressful, especially when you have a cloud of student debt hanging over your head. And especially when you love your field. I haven’t played with blood cells and bacteria in months, and I truly miss it. Every job application I fill out simultaneously fills me with more hope and stress, and it gets pretty exhausting after a while.
I decided to take a break. Not just a break from job searching, but a break from anxiety. I was fed up with the constant worry and doubt, and just needed a break, if only for a day. One day of not worrying about finances and job applications and future job interviews and cleaning the apartment and relationships and to-do lists and any other thing that could cause me stress. So I settled in to my favorite coffee shop, surrounded with newspaper, coffee, chocolate croissants, yarn, a book, and a computer full of music.
My book of choice was a borrowed copy of “Headless Males Make Great Lovers,” by Marty Crump. It’s an charming book full describing peculiar animal mating rituals and habits, cleverly written and filled with the kind of enthusiasm I usually reserve for blood antibody systems. So while attempting to crochet what will one day hopefully resemble a scarf, I took breaks to read about elephant seal harems and headless praying mantis sex. I haven’t gotten very far, but I absolutely love it. My attempt at a scarf is less entertaining, and looks like the work of a demented, drunken octopus. Mostly because I just let my mind wander and forget to count the stitches.
I suppose I’m taking the honey badger approach, where I just don’t care about the damn number of stitches. It’s just a silly scarf. The whole point of a scarf is to keep your neck and face warm, so who cares about the number of stitches or if the edges are straight? Today is my break from reality, so here I sit, contently crocheting away while humming The Cigarette Duet, which has been stuck in my head for days.
I certainly feel better, calmer, and ready to take on the world again, armed with biology books and happiness ^_^
Behold: The Beauty of The Naked Mole Rat
8 MarRobert Gonzalez of io9 wrote a charming article about naked mole rats, which are awesome little creatures that are basically the Betty White of the underworld.
Enjoy!
10 Reasons Naked Mole Rats Will Inherit the Earth
by ROBERT T. GONZALEZ
Too long have cockroaches been regarded as the heirs to the planet, in the event of a huge cataclysm that drives humans to extinction. Today, we present for your consideration an alternative: the naked mole rat.
The naked mole rat (or NMR, as we like to call it) is an unusual species. It’s a poorly understood species. And it is also a downright unsightly species — to the point that it is almost cute in its unattractiveness. But make no mistake: naked mole rats are extraordinary animals, and these little saber-toothed-sausages are in it for the long haul.
10. Naked mole rats are the ideal underground organism
Let’s start with the basics, shall we? You may have noticed that many of the locations on our list of places to ride out the apocalypse are tunnels, bunkers, and subterranean vaults. Notice a pattern?
Come the end of the world, the safest place will likely be underground. Thanks to a variety of physiological neurological adaptations (which you’ll learn more about below), the naked mole rat has evolved to be one very successful subterranean creature, and, by extension, one of the most ideal post-apocalyptic organisms imaginable.
9. Naked mole rats are masterful bomb-shelter builders
Case in point: naked mole rats know how to build a good bunker. In fact, these rodents travel exclusively below ground. Individual NMR colonies can range in size anywhere from 20 to 300 individuals, but these populations thrive in vast, intricately organized burrow systems that can cover an area equivalent to twenty football fields. There are specialized subterranean chambers specifically dedicated to rearing offspring, storing food, and eliminating bodily waste — there are even major “highway systems” — complete with on-ramps and off-ramps — that allow for more than one animal to travel quickly over vast underground distances.
8. Naked mole rats can run backwards as fast as they do forwards
This might sound like little more than a neat trick, but it’s actually a very practical skill — imagine being able to retreat from a threat while still being able to defend yourself. Naked mole rats can do that. And here’s what’s really cool: this enviable skill is made possible by rows of sensory hairs along their bodies and tails that allow them to “see” while back-pedaling; and said sensory hairs belie another advantageous adaptation:
7. Naked mole rats are “extreme sensory specialists”
That’s what researchers Kenneth Catania and Michael S. Remple call the hairless little rodents in this 2002 PNAS paper, which examines the rodents’ extraordinary brain organization. Their findings suggest that over the course of their evolution, the brains of naked mole rats have been completely overhauled in a way that makes them perfectly suited for subterranean life. For example, note the researchers, the somatosensory cortex in a naked mole rat encompasses virtually the entire region of the brain that is usually devoted to vision. This allows the NMR to dedicate more brain power to a variety of other perceptive abilities. This nightmarish depiction (also borrowed from the researchers’ paper), reflects the percentage of the cortex devoted to a variety of different sensory organs. Good luck finding the eyes.
6. A naked mole rat’s teeth function like a biological swiss army knife
The first thing you’ll probably notice about the image above is that almost a third of the rodent’s somatosensory brain power is devoted to its incisors. As we mentioned earlier, naked mole rats are impressive diggers, but to devote a third of your somatosensory system to digging — and digging only — would be an immense waste of cognitive power. Fortunately, these incisors do more than excavate tunnels. Slow-motion analysis has revealed that mole rats can actually move their lower pair of incisors independently of one another (not unlike a pair of chopsticks). This allows NMRs to interact with one another in a social context, carry and manipulate food and other objects, move and care for their young, and — obviously — feed.
5. Naked Mole Rats are eusocial
The naked mole rat is one of only two known eusocial mammals on Earth (the other, incidentally, is another species of mole rat); in other words: naked mole rats live in colonies, like ants. Each colony is presided over by a single queen who breeds with a few select males. Eusocial creatures are notoriously gifted at operating as a functional unit that is greater than the sum of its parts, foraging for resources, and looking after their own — three great qualities for a species striving to survive in a post-apocalyptic scenario.
4. Naked mole rats know how to use tools
The naked mole rat’s teeth may be ideal for digging, but all that rooting around is bound to stir up some unpleasant, breathable particles. To help keep their respiratory systems clear, NMR’s have actually been observed placing wood chips or tuber husks behind their incisors and in front of their lips. Researchers hypothesize that this makeshift face mask helps prevent choking, or the inhalation of foreign material. The NMR’s purposeful use of the wood chip during activities that stir fine particulate debris demonstrates its capacity for tool use — a true testament to the species’ intelligence and adaptability.
3. Naked mole rats laugh in the face of cancer
Cancer has never been observed in a naked mole rat, a fact that researchers think may have something to do with a tumor suppressor gene that codes for a protein named p16Ink4a. The p16 protein, like p27 in humans, works by keeping groups of cells (like pre-cancerous growths) in check, and prevents them from proliferating. The difference is that while humans rely predominantly on p27, naked mole rats rely on both. Cell biologist Vera Gorbunova, who identified p16’s function in NMRs, described it as “an additional checkpoint” in the body’s defense against cancer, which sounds like it would be a pretty handy biological asset in a (potentially nuclear-induced) post-apocalyptic scenario. [Picture by Ron Austing]
2. Naked mole rats are the longest-living rodents on Earth
Naked mole rats have been known to live as long as 28 years — decades longer than is typical of other rodents. The key to NMR-longevity has puzzled scientists for years, but one hypothesis states that it has to do with their ability to shut down their already slow metabolisms when the going gets tough — during times of low food availability, or (who knows?) the aftermath of a massive impact event. Researcher Stan Braude, who studies NMRs at Washington University,describes this adaptation particularly well:
“[One way] to think of it is, their gross life span might be 28 years, but their metabolism is going in these short bursts, so maybe the net damage is only 3 or 4 years of net use… They’re living their life in pulses.”
1. The skin of a naked mole rat cannot detect pain — even from an acid burn
Naked mole rats lack a neurotransmitter called substance P that in every other mammal helps relay pain signals from the skin to the central nervous system. They also have mutations in a gene that codes for a protein responsible forregulating their ability to sense the pain of an acid burn. Scientists think that NMRs have evolved these mechanisms of pain tolerance to withstand the highly acidic environments of their underground habitats — but the ability to carry on in the face of pain could prove an invaluable asset when the rest of the world is busy falling to pieces.
Click here to check out the original article. Top image via The Fallout Wiki and DeviantART/justicetoall; eusocial mole rats via; pain-free NMR via; all other image sources cited in-post
Genetic Coffee
7 MarI love it when science validates my coffee addiction ^_^
Exercise and Caffeine Change Your DNA in the Same Way, Study Suggests
via Science Daily, March 6th, 2012
You might think that the DNA you inherited is one thing that you absolutely can’t do anything about, but in one sense you’d be wrong. Researchers reporting in the March issue of Cell Metabolism, a Cell Press publication, have found that when healthy but inactive men and women exercise for a matter of minutes, it produces a rather immediate change to their DNA. Perhaps even more tantalizing, the study suggests that the caffeine in your morning coffee might also influence muscle in essentially the same way.
The underlying genetic code in human muscle isn’t changed with exercise, but the DNA molecules within those muscles are chemically and structurally altered in very important ways. Those modifications to the DNA at precise locations appear to be early events in the genetic reprogramming of muscle for strength and, ultimately, in the structural and metabolic benefits of exercise.
“Our muscles are really plastic,” says Juleen Zierath of Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. “We often say “You are what you eat.” Well, muscle adapts to what you do. If you don’t use it, you lose it, and this is one of the mechanisms that allows that to happen.”
The DNA changes in question are known as epigenetic modifications and involve the gain or loss of chemical marks on DNA over and above the familiar sequence of As, Gs, Ts, and Cs. The new study shows that the DNA within skeletal muscle taken from people after a burst of exercise bears fewer chemical marks (specifically methyl groups) than it did before exercise. Those changes take place in stretches of DNA that are involved in turning “on” genes important for muscles’ adaptation to exercise.
When the researchers made muscles contract in lab dishes, they saw a similar loss of DNA methyl groups. Exposure of isolated muscle to caffeine had the same effect.
Zierath explained that caffeine does mimic the muscle contraction that comes with exercise in other ways, too. She doesn’t necessarily recommend anyone drink a cup of joe in place of exercise. It’s nevertheless tempting to think that athletes who enjoy a coffee with their workout might just be on to something.
Broadly speaking, the findings offer more evidence that our genomes are much more dynamic than they are often given credit for. Epigenetic modifications that turn genes on and back off again can be incredibly flexible events. They allow the DNA in our cells to adjust as the environment shifts.
“Exercise is medicine,” Zierath says, and it seems the means to alter our genomes for better health may be only a jog away. And for those who can’t exercise, the new findings might point the way to medicines (caffeinated ones, perhaps?) with similar benefits.
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Further evidence on why coffee is amazing. Exercise is ok too. Just not as awesome as coffee. A related article can be found at Nature, which is also pretty awesome ^_^
Itty Bitty DNA Sequencer
2 MarA tiny DNA sequencer the size of a flash drive? For only $900? Yes please.
The MiniON has been used successfully to read the genome of the lambda bacteriophage, which is about 48500 base pairs in length. Pretty impressive, little guy. I love the thought of having lab equipment I can carry around in my purse at all times. You never know when a science moment will occur, and you want to be ready! Like some super awesome superhero of science!
Tree Lobsters
29 FebSix-Legged Giant Finds Secret Hideaway, Hides For 80 Years
By Robert Krulwich (of NPR)
No, this isn’t a make-believe place. It’s real.
They call it “Ball’s Pyramid.” It’s what’s left of an old volcano that emerged from the sea about 7 million years ago. A British naval officer named Ball was the first European to see it in 1788. It sits off Australia, in the South Pacific. It is extremely narrow, 1,844 feet high, and it sits alone.
What’s more, for years this place had a secret. About halfway up, at 225 feet above sea level, hanging on the rock surface, there is a small, spindly little bush, and under that bush, a few years ago, two climbers, working in the dark, found something totally improbable hiding in the soil below. How it got there, we still don’t know.
(A satellite view of Ball’s Pyramid in the Tasman Sea off the eastern coast of Australia.)
Here’s the story: About 13 miles from this spindle of rock, there’s a bigger island, called Lord Howe Island.
On Howe, there used to be an insect, famous for being big. It’s a stick insect, a critter that masquerades as a piece of wood, and the Lord Howe Island version was so large — as big as a human hand — that the Europeans labeled it a “tree lobster” because of its size and hard, lobsterlike exoskeleton. It was 12 centimeters long and the heaviest flightless stick insect in the world. Local fishermen used to put them on fishing hooks and use them as bait.
Then one day in 1918, a supply ship, the S.S. Makambo from Britain, ran aground at Lord Howe Island and had to be evacuated. One passenger drowned. The rest were put ashore. It took nine days to repair the Makambo, and during that time, some black rats managed to get from the ship to the island, where they instantly discovered a delicious new rat food: giant stick insects. Two years later, the rats were everywhere and the tree lobsters were gone.
Totally gone. After 1920, there wasn’t a single sighting. By 1960, the Lord Howe stick insect, Dryococelus australis, was presumed extinct.
There was a rumor, though.
Some climbers scaling Ball’s Pyramid in the 1960s said they’d seen a few stick insect corpses lying on the rocks that looked “recently dead.” But the species is nocturnal, and nobody wanted to scale the spire hunting for bugs in the dark.
Climbing The Pyramid
Fast forward to 2001, when two Australian scientists, David Priddel and Nicholas Carlile, with two assistants, decided to take a closer look. From the water, they’d seen a few patches of vegetation that just might support walking sticks. So, they boated over (“Swimming would have been much easier,” Carlile said, “but there are too many sharks.”), they crawled up the vertical rock face to about 500 feet, where they found a few crickets, nothing special. But on their way down, on a precarious, unstable rock surface, they saw a single melaleuca bush peeping out of a crack and, underneath, what looked like fresh droppings of some large insect.
Where, they wondered, did that poop come from?
The only thing to do was to go back up after dark, with flashlights and cameras, to see if the pooper would be out taking a nighttime walk. Nick Carlile and a local ranger, Dean Hiscox, agreed to make the climb. And with flashlights, they scaled the wall till they reached the plant, and there, spread out on the bushy surface, were two enormous, shiny, black-looking bodies. And below those two, slithering into the muck, were more, and more … 24 in all. All gathered near this one plant.
They were alive and, to Nick Carlile’s eye, enormous. Looking at them, he said, “It felt like stepping back into the Jurassic age, when insects ruled the world.”
They were Dryococelus australis. A search the next morning, and two years later, concluded these are the only ones on Ball’s Pyramid, the last ones. They live there, and, as best we know, nowhere else.
How they got there is a mystery. Maybe they hitchhiked on birds, or traveled with fishermen, and how they survived for so long on just a single patch of plants, nobody knows either. The important thing, the scientists thought, was to get a few of these insects protected and into a breeding program.
That wasn’t so easy. The Australian government didn’t know if the animals on Ball’s Pyramid could or should be moved. There were meetings, studies, two years passed, and finally officials agreed to allow four animals to be retrieved. Just four.
When the team went back to collect them, it turned out there had been a rock slide on the mountain, and at first they feared that the whole population had been wiped out. But when they got back up to the site, on Valentine’s Day 2003, the animals were still there, sitting on and around their bush.
The plan was to take one pair and give it a man who was very familiar with mainland walking stick insects, a private breeder living in Sydney. He got his pair, but within two weeks, they died.
Adam And Eve And Patrick
That left the other two. They were named “Adam” and “Eve,” taken to the Melbourne Zoo and placed with Patrick Honan, of the zoo’s invertebrate conservation breeding group. At first, everything went well. Eve began laying little pea-shaped eggs, exactly as hoped. But then she got sick. According to biologist Jane Goodall, writing for Discover Magazine:
“Eve became very, very sick. Patrick … worked every night for a month desperately trying to cure her. … Eventually, based on gut instinct, Patrick concocted a mixture that included calcium and nectar and fed it to his patient, drop by drop, as she lay curled up in his hand.”
Her recovery was almost instant. Patrick told the Australian Broadcasting Company, “She went from being on her back curled up in my hand, almost as good as dead, to being up and walking around within a couple of hours.”
Eve’s eggs were harvested, incubated (though it turns out only the first 30 were fertile) and became the foundation of the zoo’s new population of walking sticks.
When Jane Goodall visited in 2008, Patrick showed her rows and rows of incubating eggs: 11,376 at that time, with about 700 adults in the captive population. Howe Island walking sticks seem to pair off — an unusual insect behavior — and Goodall says Patrick “showed me photos of how they sleep at night, in pairs, the male with three of his legs protectively over the female beside him.”
Now comes the question that bedevils all such conservation rescue stories. Once a rare animal is safe at the zoo, when can we release it back to the wild?
On Howe Island, their former habitat, the great-great-great-grandkids of those original black rats are still out and about, presumably hungry and still a problem. Step one, therefore, would be to mount an intensive (and expensive) rat annihilation program. Residents would, no doubt, be happy to go rat-free, but not every Howe Islander wants to make the neighborhood safe for gigantic, hard-shell crawling insects. So the Melbourne Museum is mulling over a public relations campaign to make these insects more … well, adorable, or noble, or whatever it takes.
They recently made a video, with strumming guitars, featuring a brand new baby emerging from its egg. The newborn is emerald green, squirmy and so long, it just keeps coming and coming from an impossibly small container. Will this soften the hearts of Howe Islanders? I dunno. It’s so … so … big.
But, hey, why don’t you look for yourself?
What happens next? The story is simple: A bunch of black rats almost wiped out a bunch of gigantic bugs on a little island far, far away from most of us. A few dedicated scientists, passionate about biological diversity, risked their lives to keep the bugs going. For the bugs to get their homes and their future back doesn’t depend on scientists anymore. They’ve done their job. Now it’s up to the folks on Howe Island.
Will ordinary Janes and Joes, going about their days, agree to spend a little extra effort and money to preserve an animal that isn’t what most of us would call beautiful? Its main attraction is that it has lived on the planet for a long time, and we have the power to keep it around. I don’t know if it will work, but in the end, that’s the walking stick’s best argument:
I’m still here. Don’t let me go.
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This beautiful article was written by Robert Krulwich, a science blogger for NPR. I’ll admit that I teared up a little when reading it, especially towards the end. Look at that little guy! Just look at him! D’awwww!!!! He’s cute so that I want to wrap him up in a tree lobster-sized baby blanket and take him home with me. The fact that they pair off into adoring committed couples just adds to the sheer mind-blowing cuteness.
People of Howe Island: How can you possibly say no? You better welcome these glorious buggers with open arms! Or else I will just take them all. They can live in my apartment, and we shall have epic tea parties complete with monocles and fancy hats and dainty tea cups. And you won’t be invited.
Your bitter tears of regret born from realizing your pointless, tree lobsterless existence would probably ruin the tea.
Cuter Than E.coli 
