biology
revere | October 16, 2006This story ("Scientists close to neutralizing all flu types") continues to circulate and frankly, I don't understand why.
British scientists believe they are close to finding a way to stop all flu viruses --including the deadly H5N1 virus, known as the bird flu.
Researchers at Warwick University say they have found a way to turn the flu virus against itself.
Although the research is still in its preliminary stage, the results are a source of optimism for the medical community concerned about the global spread of bird flu.
"We're very close. The lab data are as good as they can be. It works…
grrlscientist | October 15, 2006
The newly described YariguÃes Brush-Finch,
Atlapetes latinuchus yariguierum.
Photo: Blanca Huertas, Natural History Museum.
A previously unknown subspecies of bird was discovered on an isolated South American mountain range. This coloful bird is approximately the size of a stick of butter. It has a fiery rust-red cap, lemon-yellow throat and a sooty-yellow belly streaked with bright yellow that contrast with a black beak, eye patch, wings, legs and tail (pictured). The bird's coloration distinguishes it from its closest relative, the Yellow-breasted Brush-Finch, because its back is black…
evolgen | October 15, 2006Little Lord Sweater Vest teaches photosynthesis at the Ohio State University. Seriously. Watch below:
(Via Deadspin.)
tfk | October 13, 2006Natural history and systematics as we know those sciences were born in Europe a few hundred years ago, and the European fauna is probably the best described in the world. Professional and amateur collectors have combed every part of the continent, searching for new species, and for odd forms of existing species.
And yet, despite all that effort, we are still finding new species. In the latest Zootaxa, researchers describe the first newly discovered species of European rodent in a century.
Mus cypriacus was identified as a distinct species based on molecular studies, and morphological…
grrlscientist | October 13, 2006In this world, there are tortoises and there are hares. Birding is hardly a hare's game unless you're racking up a Big Day. Birds are generally as put off by the combination of reckless speed and arrogant sloth as old Aesop was. No, if you want to enjoy bird watching to the fullest, take the Tortoise Trail. This path has never been more rewarding than today, as one of my favorite bird photographers, Pam Shack, delivers a magnificent and melodious I and the Bird #34.
Regardless of the velocity at which your birding takes place, I and the Bird should be just your speed. Be sure to share your…
moleculeoftheday | October 12, 2006Ethidium is a dye that's used in molecular biology to allow DNA to be visualized. Regular DNA isn't colored; it absorbs ultraviolet but not visible light, so you need to use tricks like making the DNA radioactive (which makes it pretty easy to spot), or using dyes that selectively bind to DNA. Ethidium does this by slipping in between the base pairs of DNA, or "intercalating."
One ubiquitous method of visualizing DNA is called gel electrophoresis. You have no doubt seen this on some CSI-type show. The basic idea is this: you put DNA inside a water-based gel. DNA is negatively charged, so to…
evolgen | October 12, 2006Ralf Neumann has interpreted my fascination with -omics as distaste for neologisms:
A blogger named "RPM" reacted even more drastically to the methylome-paper on his weblog "evolgen" (http://scienceblogs.com/evolgen) in a post entitled "Yet Another '-ome'". "We can thank Andrew Feinberg for introducing the term methylome, which he defines as 'a neologism that describes the complete set of DNA methylation modifications of a cell'. Check out this definition of neologism: 'A meaningless word used by a psychotic.' Exactly. Enough with the -ome already." It seems as if more and more researchers…
revere | October 11, 2006Here's a cautionary tale. Many readers know that H5N1 infection is capable of causing a sudden over activity of the immune system, manifested in a so-called cytokine storm. Over active immune systems have been implicated in many other diseases, as well, although the type of "over activity" isn't the same. Autoimmune diseases, like rheumatoid arthritis or lupus erythematosus are caused by the body making antibodies to its own tissues. As in cytokine storm, an immune system that normally functions to protect us, makes us sick. To damp down the inappropriate activity, drugs like steroids are…
tfk | October 10, 2006My article at Seedmagazine.com discusses the role of good government in promoting both economic development and in protecting natural resources, a claim some people find counterintuitive.
But examples abound. A week ago, a deal was announced for the U.S. to Cut Guatemala’s Debt for Not Cutting Trees:
the government of Guatemala has agreed, in exchange for the debt forgiveness, to invest $24.4 million over the next 15 years in conservation work in four nature regions.
This is the largest amount of debt that has been forgiven by the United States under the Tropical Forest Conservation Act,…
moleculeoftheday | October 9, 2006Indole-3-butyric acid is a member of a class of hormones known as auxins, which are responsible for all sorts of plant growth regulation. You may have seen it on the shelves at a garden store, sold as "rooting hormone" - among other things, it can help a cutting of a plant set down roots more readily.
moleculeoftheday | October 5, 2006Stevioside is an intense sweetener found in stevia, an herb that's known pretty much for expressing this sort of molecule:
Stevioside, shown above, is a glycoside (that is, a glucose derivative) of a terpene. Unlike a lot of other sweeteners, stevioside is actually a sugar derivative (for others, see here, here, and here). I'm not sure if the sugar in steviosides actually gets metabolised, but it doesn't really matter, since it's a few hundred-fold sweeter than sucrose (so you'd eat a lot less).
I've tried stevia extract and thought it tasted unpleasantly like licorice. The pure molecule…
terrasig | October 4, 2006My colleague, Coturnix, just raised the question of whether the awarding of this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Roger D. Kornberg of Stanford University is really an award for biology.
A surprise to some of us "youngsters," Kornberg was recongized as the sole winner for elucidating the basic mechanism of eukaryotic transcription. Not a surprise that the winner was Kornberg, son of the Arthur Kornberg, who shared the 1959 Nobel in Physiology or Medicine with Severo Ochoa for elucidating the process of DNA replication; but, rather, that Kornberg was the sole winner. I'll leave that to…
tfk | October 4, 2006Chilean sea bass is a success story for food marketers, and one of a long string of horror stories from the world's fisheries. Once known as the Patagonian toothfish, a little rebranding turned the fish into one of the most sought after fish on the market. The slow-growing fish (it takes 10 years before it becomes reproductive) couldn't withstand the intense fishing that followed. It went from an unknown and commercially useless fish to a threatened species in a few years. Today, many chefs have agreed to pass the fish by, preferring species that aren't illegal to import.
As…
revere | October 4, 2006Some drugs that seem to have remarkable abilities to affect a wide range of biological systems in useful ways. The classic case is aspirin, used for pain relief, anti-inflammatory effects, anti-clotting abilities, and much else. Now another drug seems to be in this category, the family of statin drugs.
The statins are a group of drugs that are comptetitive inhibitors of an enzyme, 3 hydroxy 3 methylglutaryl coenzyme A reductase (HMG-CoA reductase). They are commonly used to treat high cholesterol, but they have a wide variety of other pharmacologic effects, including anti-inflammatory and…
evolgen | October 3, 2006
I've said it once, I'll say it a thousand times: humans are apes; apes, old world monkeys, and new world monkey are primates; and humans are primates. It doesn't get much simpler than that.
So you can guess how I reacted when I saw this advertisement as I was perusing the latest issue of Nature. Here is what they're pimping, an "Omics Gateway". You know how much I love -omics. Nature Publishing Group (NPG) tells us, "The Omics Gateway provides life scientists a convenient portal into publications relevant to large-scale biology from journals throughout NPG." It's a veritable omeome.
But they…
tfk | October 3, 20062 American ‘Worm People’ Win Nobel for RNA Work.
I don't remember us discussing RNAi in my biology classes in college, and that wasn't so long ago. The field has bloomed in recent years though, and just about every issue of Science and Nature reports new findings based on the use of interference RNA to block the action of some specific gene.
The process seems to have evolved as an anti-viral strategy, in which special chunks of double-stranded RNA (which is usually single-stranded) can block the production of certain proteins. The Prize winners, Fire and Mello, showed how this process works…
purepedantry | October 3, 2006So there is this plant called dodder that parasitizes other plants, but until recently it was not known how it found the other plants. Recent research suggests that it does so by a form of smell.
Dodder is in fact a plant, but when it generates seedlings they will actually wave around towards other plants. If they find an appropriate one they will latch on to them and burrow roots into them to steal nutrients. It does this because while it is a plant and does have chlorophyll, it does not produce enough energy from photosynthesis to survive. Here is the skinny on dodder:
Dodder…
scientificactivist | October 2, 2006The 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was announced this morning, with one half going to Andrew Fire and the other half to Craig Mello, both for the discovery of RNA interference (RNAi). The discovery of RNAi added a new layer to our understanding of how cells regulate gene expression and protect themselves from unwanted invaders, and, even more significantly, equipped biomedical scientists with a powerful new tool for studying protein function. Using RNAi, scientists are now able to dissect the genome of an organism, knocking down mRNA (and hopefully protein) expression, gene by…
terrasig | October 2, 2006Best as I can tell, our resident MD/PhD student, Jake Young at Pure Pedantry, was first to post on this morning's announcement.
The Nobel Prize website has a very nice press release on why the discovery of RNA interference is so central to our understanding of biology and is likely to result in therapeutic drugs in the very near future:
This year's Nobel Laureates have discovered a fundamental mechanism for controlling the flow of genetic information. Our genome operates by sending instructions for the manufacture of proteins from DNA in the nucleus of the cell to the protein synthesizing…
purepedantry | October 2, 2006Andrew Fire and Craig Mello have won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery of RNA interference:
Americans Andrew Z. Fire and Craig C. Mello won the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine Monday for discovering a powerful way to turn off the effect of specific genes, opening a new avenue for disease treatment.
''RNA interference'' is already being widely used in basic science as a method to study the function of genes and it is being studied as a treatment for infections such as the AIDS and hepatitis viruses and for other conditions, including heart disease and cancer.
Fire, 47, of…