Category Archives: Life Science

Long-Eared Jerboa

photo of a long eared jerboa

Mysterious mammal caught on film, the link has videos too:

The long-eared jerboa, a tiny nocturnal mammal that is dwarfed by its enormous ears, can be found in deserts in Mongolia and China.
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Until now, the creatures had proven extremely difficult to study, thanks to their minuscule size, nocturnal nature and the harsh desert environment that they inhabit.
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“These creatures hop just like a kangaroo; it is amazing to watch. Little hairs on their feet, almost like snow shoes, allow them to jump along the sand,” he explained.
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The expedition formed part of ZSL’s Edge programme, which focuses its efforts on conservation plans for animals that are both endangered and evolutionary distinctive. The long-eared jerboa is one of 10 species that the programme is looking at this year.

The Zoological Society of London Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered (EDGE) web site is a great source of all sorts of information. Including more on the Long-Earned Jerboa in the Gobi Desert. Great stuff, they have done a very nice job with their web site – even if they do force people to download the flash player for some material.

Genomics Course For College Freshman Supported by HHMI at 12 Universities

HHMI Selects 12 Institutions to Launch Nationwide Science Education Experiment

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) has selected 12 colleges and universities to participate in a nationwide genomics course that will involve first-year college students in authentic research. The new course is the first major initiative from HHMI’s Science Education Alliance, which seeks to enhance the teaching of science and inspire new generations of scientists.

In Fall 2008, first-year students at the six undergraduate institutions and six research-intensive institutions will take part in a year-long research course — the Phage Genomics Research Initiative – which is being developed by the Science Education Alliance (SEA). The SEA, headquartered at HHMI’s Janelia Farm Research Campus in Northern Virginia, will foster the development of a national network of scientists and educators who work collaboratively to develop and distribute new materials and methods to the education community.
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HHMI is committing a total of $4 million over the first four years of the program.
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Approximately 20 students at each institution will participate in the two-semester phage genomics research course, in which they will be taught to use sophisticated research techniques. Students will isolate bacterial viruses (phages) from their local soil, prepare the viral DNA for sequencing, and annotate and compare the sequenced genome. The goal is to immerse students in the process of doing science, and equip them with the critical thinking and communication skills necessary for successful research careers.

Related: $600 Million for Basic Biomedical Research – $60 Million in Grants for Universities – Improving Engineering Education – HHMI Takes Big Open Access Step

Robot Water Striders

Scientists crack how insect bounces on water:

Walking on water may seem like a miracle to humans. But it is a humdrum achievement for the little water strider, which is able to bounce up and down on water too. Scientists have already solved the mystery of how their six slender, stilt-like legs evenly distribute their scant body weight over a relatively large area so that the “skin” formed by the surface tension of the water supports them, so four millimetre across dimples form under each foot as they skim about.

But scientists remained puzzled by how they could jump up and down upon the surface of water. Now a team in South Korea is about to report that it has at last explained the water strider’s baffling ability to leap onto water without sinking, in a forthcoming issue of the journal Langmuir, an achievement that could help further develop robots that can move about on lakes and reservoirs to monitor water quality, spy or explore.

Related: Robo Insect Flight – World’s Lightest Flying Robot – Underwater Robots Collaborate – Roachbot: Cockroach Controlled Robot

Scientists Cure Mice Of Sickle Cell Using Stem Cell Technique

Scientists Cure Mice Of Sickle Cell Using Stem Cell Technique

Using a recently developed technique for turning skin cells into stem cells, scientists have cured mice of sickle cell anemia — the first direct proof that the easily obtained cells can reverse an inherited, potentially fatal disease.
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researchers also cautioned that aspects of the new approach will have to be changed before it can be tried in human patients. Most important, the technique depends on the use of gene-altered viruses that have the potential to trigger tumor growth. “The big issue is how to replace these viruses,” said Rudolf Jaenisch of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Mass., who led the new work with co-worker Jacob Hanna and Tim M. Townes of the University of Alabama Schools of Medicine and Dentistry in Birmingham.
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The researchers converted those skin cells into iPS cells by infecting them with viruses engineered to change the cells’ gene activity so they would resemble embryonic cells. Using DNA splicing techniques in those cells, the researchers then snipped out the small mutated stretches of DNA that cause sickle cell disease and filled those gaps with bits of DNA bearing the proper genetic code.

Next, the researchers treated the corrected iPS cells with another kind of virus — this time one designed to induce a genetic change that encouraged the cells to mature into bone marrow cells.

Finally, each mouse that gave up a few skin cells at the beginning of the experiment was given an infusion with the corrected marrow cells created from its own skin cells. Those cells set up permanent residence in the animals’ bones and began producing blood cells — the major function of marrow cells — and releasing them by the millions into the circulatory system.

But now the blood cells being produced were free of the sickle cell mutation.

Antibacterial Chemical Disrupts Hormone Activities

Antibacterial Chemical Disrupts Hormone Activities:

A new UC Davis study shows that a common antibacterial chemical added to bath soaps can alter hormonal activity in rats and in human cells in the laboratory — and does so by a previously unreported mechanism.

The findings come as an increasing number of studies — of both lab animals and humans — are revealing that some synthetic chemicals in household products can cause health problems by interfering with normal hormone action. Called endocrine disruptors, or endocrine disrupting substances (EDS), such chemicals have been linked in animal studies to a variety of problems, including cancer, reproductive failure and developmental anomalies.

The researchers found two key effects: In human cells in the laboratory, triclocarban increased gene expression that is normally regulated by testosterone. And when male rats were fed triclocarban, testosterone-dependent organs such as the prostate gland grew abnormally large. Also, the authors said their discovery that triclocarban increased hormone effects was new. All previous studies of endocrine disruptors had found that they generally act by blocking or decreasing hormone effects.

In their disclosure statement, the authors report that six of them have taken steps to patent their findings through the University of California.

Research paper Triclocarban enhances testosterone action: A new type of endocrine disruptor?.

Related: Killing Germs May Be Hazardous to Your Health – Antibacterial Soaps are Bad – Antibacterial Products May Do More Harm Than Good – Flushed Drugs Pollute Water

Ebola Outbreak in Uganda

Ebola is a truly scary virus. Read more on Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever at the CDC and WHO:

Ebola haemorrhagic fever (EHF) is one of the most virulent viral diseases known to humankind, causing death in 50-90% of all clinically ill cases. Several different species of Ebola virus have been identified. The Ebola virus is transmitted by direct contact with the blood, body fluids and tissues of infected persons. Transmission of the Ebola virus has also occurred by handling ill or dead infected chimpanzees.

Panic spreads as Uganda reports 101 Ebola cases:

Uganda has 101 suspected cases of Ebola fever and hundreds more people being closely monitored, officials said on Friday, as fear grew in Uganda and neighboring countries that the deadly virus might spread. Twenty two people have so far died of the fever
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The outbreak, which started in August, has sparked panic amongst officials, health workers and the public, with the medical union calling on staff to refuse looking after patients unless they are issued proper protective gear. The affected region borders Democratic Republic of the Congo, whose Ebola river gave the virus its name after some of the first cases were recorded in its valley in 1976. The independent Daily Monitor said Congo had sealed its border with the district. Congolese officials denied this.
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The last Ebola outbreak in Uganda was in 2000, when 425 people caught it and more than half died. Meanwhile, north of the Ebola-hit district, a separate epidemic of bubonic plague has infected 160 people and killed 19 since July, Health Ministry spokesman Paul Kabwa said.

I happen to be reading The Hot Zone right now. It is a non-fiction book which explores several Ebola virus outbreaks from 1967 to 1993 including one at surburban Washington, DC laboratory in 1989.

Related: What’s it like to work an Ebola outbreak – Reducing the Impact of a Flu Pandemic – What Are Viruses? – Lethal Secrets of 1918 Flu Virus

Nanotube-producing Bacteria Show Manufacturing Promise

Genus Shewanella

Nanotube-producing Bacteria Show Manufacturing Promise:

The photoactive arsenic-sulfide nanotubes produced by the bacteria behave as metals with electrical and photoconductive properties. The researchers report that these properties may also provide novel functionality for the next generation of semiconductors in nano- and opto-electronic devices.

In a process that is not yet fully understood, the Shewanella bacterium secretes polysacarides that seem to produce the template for the arsenic sulfide nanotubes, Myung explained. The practical significance of this technique would be much greater if a bacterial species were identified that could produce nanotubes of cadmium sulfide or other superior semiconductor materials, he added.

“This is just a first step that points the way to future investigation,” he said. “Each species of Shewanella might have individual implications for manufacturing properties.”

Related: Self-assembling Nanotechnology in Chip Manufacturing – Bacteria Engineered to Sprout Conducting Nanowires – Using Bacteria to Carry Nanoparticles Into Cells – Nanotechnology Breakthroughs for Computer Chips – Nanotechnology Research

Study Shows Why the Flu Likes Winter

Study Shows Why the Flu Likes Winter:

The answer, they say, has to do with the virus itself. It is more stable and stays in the air longer when air is cold and dry, the exact conditions for much of the flu season.

“Influenza virus is more likely to be transmitted during winter on the way to the subway than in a warm room,” said Peter Palese, a flu researcher who is professor and chairman of the microbiology department at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and the lead author of the flu study. Dr. Palese published details of his findings in the Oct. 19 issue of PLoS Pathogens.

Reading a paper published in 1919 in the Journal of the American Medical Association on the flu epidemic at Camp Cody in New Mexico, he came upon a key passage: “It is interesting to note that very soon after the epidemic of influenza reached this camp, our laboratory guinea pigs began to die.”
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Dr. Palese bought some guinea pigs and exposed them to the flu virus. Just as the paper suggested, they got the flu and spread it among themselves. So Dr. Palese and his colleagues began their experiments. By varying air temperature and humidity in the guinea pigs’ quarters, they discovered that transmission was excellent at 41 degrees. It declined as the temperature rose until, by 86 degrees, the virus was not transmitted at all.

The virus was transmitted best at a low humidity, 20 percent, and not transmitted at all when the humidity reached 80 percent. The animals also released viruses nearly two days longer at 41 degrees than at a typical room temperature of 68 degrees.

Very interesting and you can read the actual paper since it is open access: Influenza Virus Transmission Is Dependent on Relative Humidity and Temperature.

Related: I Support the Public Library of Science – New and Old Ways to Make Flu Vaccines – Open Access and PLoS – Drug-resistant Flu Virus

More on the Problems with Bisphenol-A

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: Bisphenol-A, that plasticizer, gets a media reaming

But few reports that The Tracker has seen match, in fury and conviction, the lambasting that a team of Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporters, Susanne Rust, Meg Kissinger, and Cary Spivak, have given to these things, especially bisphenol-A, in the last two weeks. They say they reviewed 250 papers, interviewed more than 100 scientists, industry reps, and government regulators, read thousands of pages of additional documents. They give it a one-two punch, with that second one the roundhouse. They are going for a knockout.

The stories make The Tracker, a person with a tendency to say “on the other hand…”, a little nervous. There aren’t many maybes in here, not much calibration. The reporters appear fully convinced bisphenol-A is a menace. I’ve heard reports on the stuff too, and it does give one the jim jams. But one seldom sees, as here and without equivocation, declarations that a recent government review was flatly biased in its selection of which studies to give most weight, the gov’t used outdated methods, it looked mainly at chemical industry-funded studies, it ignored academic and presumably unbiased work.

The original articles: Are your products safe? You can’t tell. Labels often fail to list compounds that can disrupt biological development – WARNING: The chemical bisphenol A has been known to pose severe health risks to laboratory animals. AND THE CHEMICAL IS IN YOU.

In the first analysis of its kind by a newspaper, the Journal Sentinel reviewed 258 scientific studies of the chemical bisphenol A, a compound detected in the urine of 93% of Americans recently tested. An overwhelming majority of these studies show that the chemical is harmful – causing breast cancer, testicular cancer, diabetes, hyperactivity, obesity, low sperm counts, miscarriage and a host of other reproductive failures in laboratory animals.

Studies paid for by the chemical industry are much less likely to find damaging effects or disease. U.S. regulators so far have sided with industry by minimizing concern about the compound’s safety.

I believe in there are real risks that should be addressed. And I am not convinced the regulators are doing a good job, see my previous post in April, 2007 on Bisphenol A.

Related: Flushed Drugs Pollute Water – FDA May Make Decision That Will Speed Antibiotic Drug Resistance – The A to Z Guide to Political Interference in Science – Researcher Provides Undisclosed Data to FDA – Scientists Denounce Global Warming Report ‘Edits’