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Biology News - December 2006

FDA Set to Approve Cloned Animals for Food

December 30th 2006 18:15
The FDA has decided that cloned animals are nearly indistinguishable from conventional animals and can be sold as food. They will have a comment period open to the public starting 28 Dec 2006 and ending in March 2007. Many people have already weighed in on the matter, including some senators, who notice that the public is not enthusiastic about the technology.

Source: Nature
MSnbc



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Rheumatoid Arthritis and Ethanol

December 30th 2006 13:06
Jonsson, et al., found that ethanol's anti-inflammatory properties inhibit rheumatoid arthritis in mice. Ethanol consumed excessively can have a serious effect on health, but at the levels studied, the mice experienced no adverse reactions. The researchers believe the results are directly applicable to humans.

Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0608620104
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Chickenpox Vaccine Rash

December 30th 2006 09:37
Quinlivan, et al., have isolated the alleles responsible for a rash associated with the chickenpox vaccine.

Only 5% of children receiving the vaccine develop the rash, but it can sometimes be fatal. The researchers believe that by removing virus genotypes with certain alleles, the rash can be prevented.

Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0605688104
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Evolution of Menopause

December 30th 2006 04:57
Dustin Penn and Ken Smith studied family size and parental longevity to determine why human females undergo menopause. Most other mammals do not experience menopause. The researchers theorize that the physical toll that pregnancy, childbirth, and nursing takes on the body caused humans to evolve a limit on childbearing years.

Source: Scientific American
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Polar Bear Might Be Listed As Threatened

December 29th 2006 18:06
Polar Bear Swimming
Polar Bear Swimming -- Image courtesy of stock.xchng
The U. S. Department of the Interior announced a plan to evaluate the status of the polar bear (Ursus maritimus) to determine if the animal should be listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

Fewer than 25,000 polar bears are believed to remain in the wild. While numbers in Alaska have not decreased significantly in the last few decades, Canada has seen a 22% loss in bear population in some places. Conservationists worry that the US bear population will be affected similarly if nothing is done.

Receding sea ice has much to do with the decline, but the announcement stated that a comment on climate change was beyond the scope of the proposed study.

Source: Nature
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Plant Growth Regulator Interferes with Hepatitis C

December 27th 2006 06:39
Rakic, et al., experimented with several compounds originally developed as plant growth regulators to see if they could interfere with the replication of the hepatitis C virus. One compound, origamicin, showed antiviral activity through inhibiting host proteins.

Hepatitis C is a virus that attacks the liver. Spread through infected blood, the virus shows no symptoms in 80% of infected people.

Source: Chemistry & Biology
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Origin of Plant Species

December 27th 2006 01:39
Reyes-Prieto, et al., discuss their findings relative to the origin of plant species in Current Biology. They offer evidence supporting the theory that one time, a billion and a half years ago, an alga took in a cyanobacteria to form a symbiosis and eventually a single species. Most of the plant life on earth is descended from that single alga and cyanobacteria pair.

Source: Current Biology
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Queen Ants Give Sons An Edge

December 23rd 2006 06:10
Queen ants in multi-queen colonies give their sons an edge by raising the boys first, before even the female worker ants. Yamauchi, et al., observed a Cardiocondyla species of ant to determine how the males gained their advantage over sons of other queens. By raising the sons first, the queens made sure they were strong enough to reduce the numbers of males raised by other queens, thus ensuring the younger females would turn to them for reproduction. Thanks, Mom.

Source: Current Biology, Issue 16, 19 Dec 2006

More information: AntWeb
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Apolipoprotein E and Aging

December 23rd 2006 01:40
Beffert, et al., have published their findings on Apolipoprotein E (ApoE) and its role in normal aging and neurodegenerative diseases (such as Alzheimer's) in Current Biology. The paper, titled "ApoE Receptor 2 Controls Neuronal Survival in the Adult Brain", is free in full online.

Source: Current Biology, Vol 16, 19 Dec 2006
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Moths: Simple Ears, Complex Hearing

December 21st 2006 07:37
Moths, prey animals that they are, listen for the sound of bats' echolocating signals. Their ears are among the simplest known to science, yet their response to the ultrasonic bat echoes are anything but simple. The moth's ear listens at the low end of bat frequencies--until a bat approaches. At that point, the moth's ear changes to listen for higher frequencies, the frequencies bats use when they close in on prey.

Windmill, et al., offer a mathematical model for predicting the change in a moth's ear in this issue of Current Biology.

Source: Current Biology, 19 Dec 2006
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Nitrogen-Fixing Bacteria Live at Ocean Vents

December 18th 2006 21:28
A bacteria found at sea vents on the ocean floor produces usable nitrogen at temperatures of 198 degrees Fahrenheit (92 degrees Celsius), hotter than any before known. Nitrogen is necessary for life, but most creatures lack the ability to pull it out of the air and break it down for use. Nitrogen-fixers do this work for the rest of us.

Source: Nature
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Humans Track Scents Like Hounds

December 18th 2006 17:08
A study by Sobel, et al., confirms that humans have the ability to track scents in the same way hounds do, but we haven't practiced as much as dogs. Humans have fewer scent receptors than most animals, leading scientists to theorize that humans lack the ability to track. When tested, two-thirds of students were able to follow a chocolate trail through a field by scent alone. Students who practiced it for several days, improved their tracking skills.

Dogs still have the advantage of being able to pick up fainter smells and being able to recognize individuals by their scent.

Source: Nature
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Bird Calls Vary Depending on Location

December 15th 2006 08:42
Great Tits
Great Tit (Parus major) courtesy of stock.xchng
Hans Slabbekoorn and Ardie den Boer-Visser studied the bird calls of great tits (Parus major), a species especially well-adapted to living around humans. They found that urban tits call with shorter songs and at higher pitches than rural members of the same species.

Click here to listen to the differences between urban and rural bird calls.

Source: Current Biology
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Mitosis -- Those Pesky Details

December 15th 2006 05:39
In an article titled "A Homotetrameric Kinesin-5, KLP61F, Bundles Microtubules and Antagonizes Ncd in Motility Assays", Tao et al. discuss the spinning motors that keep everything going just right.

Source: Current Biology, Vol 16, Issue 23
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Second Species of Clouded Leopard Discovered

December 15th 2006 03:11
Clouded leopards (Neofelis nebulosa), an endangered species living in southern and southeast Asia, have a wide range. Because of this wide range, the clouded leopard has at least four subspecies, meaning there is a significant difference between the animals, but not so much that they can be called a separate species. A recent study by Kitchener, Beaumont, and Richardson indicate that there are two distinct species of clouded leopard, one on the Asian mainland and one in Indonesia (called Neofelis diardi).

Source: Current Biology
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Bilateral Asymmetry in Nervous Systems

December 15th 2006 01:01
Richard J. Poole and Oliver Hobert address the question of bilateral asymmetry in nervous systems. Nervous systems are symmetrical in the big picture, but asymmetrical when examined closely. They show when and where this asymmetry develops in an organism's lifecycle using C. elegans as a model.

The article is free online.

Source: Current Biology
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Animal Phylogeny Primer

December 14th 2006 22:56
Current Biology has a primer on animal phylogeny available. The full article is free.

Animal phylogeny studies how closely or distantly various species of animals are related. The evolutionary tree is one result of that study.
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Funding in Science

December 9th 2006 05:30
Science magazine has an illuminating editorial on the state of funding in science.
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Time Travel Is Possible -- Proven

December 9th 2006 04:30
All these years, I've been trying to prove time travel using physics. Apparently, I should have been looking to biology.

"A recent study has shown that illusory inversion of temporal order can be induced by the ‘intentional binding’ of an action with its consequence, and that this is associated with increased activation in a brain area implicated in conflict monitoring."

Source: Current Biology

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Two Photon Confocal Fluorescence Microscopy Is Useful

December 9th 2006 03:30
Nicholas V. Swindale has demonstrated the usefulness of two-photon confocal fluorescence microscopy by discovering "an extraordinarily precise organization in the visual cortex".

Source: Current Biology
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No-Entry Marine Protected Areas Maintain Populations

December 9th 2006 02:30
Nicholas K. Dulvy reports that coral reef sharks in protected, but open, marine sanctuaries decline due to poaching.

Source: Current Biology
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Nematodes Sniff Out Their Host

December 6th 2006 06:54
Well, nematodes don't exactly sniff out hosts, since they don't have cute button noses. A paper in the current issue of Current Biology discusses how nematodes target their hosts through an array of chemicals in their environment.

Chemoattraction in Pristionchus Nematodes and Implications for Insect Recognition by Ray L. Hong and Ralf J. Sommer. Current Biology, Vol 16, 05 Dec 2006.
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RNA Interference Technique Inhibits Prion Disease

December 2nd 2006 05:30
Turning off a prion gene in mice using an RNA Interference technique prevents those mice from developing a prion disease. At this time, it's not viable in humans, but researchers hope to apply their findings to humans in the future.

Examples of prion diseases are scrapie and mad cow disease.

Nature
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Mature Forests Accumulate Carbon in Soils

December 2nd 2006 04:30
A team of scientists has shown that forests accumulate carbon in their soils even once they mature. This is opposite to the general belief that forests do most of their carbon-sequestering as they grow.

Science
Nature
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Levitating Small Animals Using Ultrasound

December 2nd 2006 03:30
Scientists at the Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xian (China) have used ultrasound to levitate small animals, such as insects, fish, and tadpoles. Why? Nobody seems to know. Nevertheless, the experiment is interesting from a purely informational point of view.

Nature
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People Odors

December 2nd 2006 02:30
Individual people have individual odors, according to a study published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface. Researchers collected smelly samples from 197 adults and compared volatile compounds. They found that while quantities of some compounds vary depending on day to day, others don't, and these unchanging compounds make up a different recipe for each person.

Nature
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Ultrasound May Replace Biopsies for Detecting Tumors

December 2nd 2006 01:30
Ultrasound has been found to detect tumors as reliably as biopsies in certain tissues. Large-scale trials are planned to confirm the findings.

A biopsy involves cutting into the patient's body. Ultrasound uses sound to provide a visual representation of the inside of tissues.

Nature
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