Biology | Futurismic

First ’synthetic tree’ created

Paul Raven @ 15-09-2008

“I think that I shall never see / a poem as lovely as a tree.

Indeed, if they were all this small / we’d never see no trees at all… “

Proving a long-held theory that transpiration in trees is a physical process rather than a biological one, the world’s first synthetic tree isn’t much to look at… hell, you’d need a microscope to really make out the detail.

What use is a synthetic tree, anyhow? Well, it:

… should also be a useful platform for the study the properties of metastable liquids and a starting point from which to design new technologies for the management of water in chemical processes, heat transfer, and environmental engineering.

Water management, eh? Euphemistically speaking, I think that may be a fairly big business in a few decades. [image by SweetOne]

Viruses that infect other viruses could help cure viruses

Paul Raven @ 11-08-2008

virus hazard tape Via Jeremy Tolbert and various other sources, the headline pretty much says it all. The discovery of virophages - a “newly discovered type of virus that spreads at the expense of other viruses” - offers a potential new alternative to antibiotics in fighting viral infections. [image by Nils Geylen]

New research on aging hints we might be able to prevent it

Edward Willett @ 24-07-2008

It appears the prevailing theory as to why we age could be wrong–and that would be good news for anti-aging research (Via PhysOrg):

Age may not be rust after all. Specific genetic instructions drive aging in worms, report researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Their discovery contradicts the prevailing theory that aging is a buildup of tissue damage akin to rust, and implies science might eventually halt or even reverse the ravages of age.

The “rust” the prevailing theory uses to explain aging is essentially the accumulated wear and tear caused by “toxins, free-radical molecules, DNA-damaging radiation, disease and stress.” But the results of the Stanford research, led by Stuart Kim, professor of developmental biology and of genetics, don’t fit that theory. Instead, they found that that hundreds of age-related genes in C. elegans nematode worms were switched on and off by a single transcription factor–a kind of signalling molecule–called elt-3, which becomes more abundant with age. Two other transcription factors that regulate elt-3 also changed with age. As a result, normal development becomes unbalanced in older organisms, something the researchers call “developmental drift.” And now that this mechanism has been found in one organism, scientists can look for it in others–including humans.

The idea that this developmental drift is behind aging rather than “rust” would explain why there are many animals that live far longer than humans:

Some tortoises lay eggs at the age of 100…There are whales that live to be 200, and clams that make it past 400. Those species use the same building blocks for their DNA, proteins and fats as humans, mice and nematode worms. The chemistry of the wear-and-tear process, including damage from oxygen free-radicals, should be the same in all cells, which makes it hard to explain why species have dramatically different life spans.

***

If aging is not a cost of unavoidable chemistry but is instead driven by changes in regulatory genes, the aging process may not be inevitable. It is at least theoretically possible to slow down or stop developmental drift.

The research has been published in the July 24 issue of Cell; you can download the original paper in PDF format.

Having just celebrated another birthday and thus entered my 50th year on this planet, I can only say, “Faster, please!”

(Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

Martian chronicle: Working the interplanetary night shift

Tom Marcinko @ 14-07-2008

Mars Think your schedule is crazy? Spare a thought for the 150 Phoenix Mars lander scientists:

“Living on a Martian day is like traveling two time zones every three days over and over,” said [Laura] Barger, who is an instructor of medicine in Harvard’s Division of Sleep Medicine. “Everyone has a circadian clock. . . . When it isn’t able to synchronize with a Martian day, you get sleep disorders, decreased alertness and decremented performance.”

NASA is experimenting with soft-light boxes and an adjusted sleep schedule to help the Mars explorers stay alert. And it’s funding the two-year, $350,000 Harvard study in the hopes that results might help doctors, police, firefighers, and other earthlings who work skewed shifts.

[Mars image: jasonb42882]

Becoming Batman: Kinesiology weighs in

Tom Marcinko @ 14-07-2008

Brazilian Batman It’s, well, possible, but not sustainable, says University of Victoria, British Columbia movement researcher, neuroscientist, and martial arts practitioner E. Paul Zehr, author of the forthcoming Becoming Batman: The Possibility of a Superhero (Johns Hopkins University Press [!]). The most plausible thing about Bruce Wayne, the comics-savvy Zehr told Scientific American:

You could train somebody to be a tremendous athlete and to have a significant martial arts background, and also to use some of the gear that he has, which requires a lot of physical prowess. Most of what you see there is feasible to the extent that somebody could be trained to that extreme. We’re seeing that kind of thing in less than a month in the Olympics.

Least plausible:

Most of the time, in the comics and in the movies, even when he wins, he usually winds up taking a pretty good beating. There’s a real failure to show the cumulative effect of that.

If you’re thinking of superheroing, stay off the steroids.

There is one comic where he did go on steroids. He went a little crazy and he went off them again.

[Image: S�rgio Savaman Savarese]

Evolution observed in laboratory bacteria

Tomas Martin @ 11-06-2008

Image of E Coli in the lab For the first time, a major evolutionary change has been observed in laboratory conditions, giving even greater weighting to evolutionary theory. The bacteria used, a strain of E. Coli, was first introduced into the Michigan State University lab twenty years ago by evolutionary biologist Richard Lenski. Some 44,000 generations later, the bacteria are still reproducing.

Somewhere around the 31,500th generation, the E. Coli developed a trait not present in the original strain: they began to be able to metabolise citrate, the inability of which is one of the main ways scientists distinguish E. Coli from other bacteria. Importantly, the paper says that evolution occurs as a sum of the previous steps of mutation and that as this history varies between groups of creatures, evolution is a random and unpredictable act.

“It’s the most profound change we have seen during the experiment. This was clearly something quite different for them, and it’s outside what was normally considered the bounds of E. coli as a species, which makes it especially interesting,” says Lenski.

One of the main criticisms of evolutionary theory has been that it is a theory that hasn’t been observed in the real world. Creationists are going to have a hard time explaining this result away, one suspects.

[via Daily Kos, image by scaliber001]

Farewell, third molars - five vestigial organs that humans no longer need

Paul Raven @ 23-05-2008

Four Wisdom Teeth New Scientist has a top-five run-down of vestigial organs that humans (arguably) no longer need.

(I imagine a number of readers will share in my vehement agreement that wisdom teeth (more properly known as third molars) are on the list … my unreasoning dislike of dentistry has been mentioned here before, and the consequences of an overcrowded jaw were a major contributing factor to that reaction.) [image by Lone Primate]

So, now we know which stuff we don’t need, how do we go about removing it from the human system? Permanently?

In the Future, All Art Will Be Grown in Vats

Brian Wanamaker @ 07-05-2008

It’s commonly said that “life imitates art,” but in this case life is art, to a disturbing degree: a curator was forced to “kill” an art exhibit, a living jacket on life support which threatened to grow beyond its boundaries. [m. christian]

The Biosingularity beckons!

Paul Raven @ 17-04-2008

New improvements in genome sequencing technology mean it’s cheaper and faster than ever before, and the trend looks set to continue - a researcher suggests that the US$1000 genome is only six years away.

I wonder if this is a Moore’s Law style exponential curve … and if so, should we start theorising about a Biosingularity?

A Chemical Brain To Control Nanobots

Tomas Martin @ 14-03-2008

Nanotechnology is perhaps the most rapidly advancing new technology out there right now. All kinds of nanomachines based on biochemical mechanisms, tiny structures of metal or other techniques are being created and studied in universities and laboratories around the world.

Scientists have now created a device two billionths of a metre in size that could work as a chemical ‘brain’ for a group of nanomachines. Potentially this could lead to their use in medical techniques such as nano-surgery on tumours.

“If [in the future] you want to remotely operate on a tumour you might want to send some molecular machines there,” explained Dr Anirban Bandyopadhyay of the International Center for Young Scientists, Tsukuba, Japan. “But you cannot just put them into the blood and [expect them] to go to the right place.”

Dr Bandyopadhyay believes his device may offer a solution. One day they may be able to guide the nanobots through the body and control their functions, he said.

“That kind of device simply did not exist; this is the first time we have created a nano-brain,” he told BBC News.

[story and image via BBC Science/Nature. Thanks to Kian Momtahan for the link!]

Ten-fold longevity expansion

Paul Raven @ 22-01-2008

A group of scientists have managed to extend the lifespan of baker’s yeast by ten times, using genetic tweaks and a special diet. They believe that they will be able transfer the same processes into small mammals like mice, and that ultimately this may be a viable pathway for longevity treatments in humans:

Longo’s group next plans to further investigate life span extension in mice and also is studying a human population in Ecuador with mutations analogous to those described in yeast.

“People with two copies of the mutations have very small stature and other defects,” he said. “We are now identifying the relatives with only one copy of the mutation, who are apparently normal. We hope that they will show a reduced incidence of diseases and an extended life span.”

Longo cautioned that, as in the Ecuador case, longevity mutations tend to come with severe growth deficits and other health problems. Finding drugs to extend the human life span without side effects will not be easy, he said.

An easier goal, Longo added, would be to use the knowledge gained about life span “in a fairly limited way, to reprogram disease prevention.”

It’s interesting to see that there inevitable consequences to longevity - everything comes at a price, even in biology. But what about the social consequences?

Sure, if I could even double my lifespan, think of how many more books I’d be able to read, or stories I’d be able to write. But I’d need to work for twice as many years to support myself … and if the majority of people were living twice as long, there’d be some rather serious logistical issues with basic resources.

But then again, maybe that would provide the impetus for us to think more efficiently, and/or escape the gravity well and colonise local space? [Image from Image*After]

One thing’s for certain - if my longevity was increased significantly, I’d have a lot more time for sitting around and speculating wildly on the consequences of things …

Other uses for sperm …

Paul Raven @ 03-01-2008

… besides the one obvious use that has been known about for some time, of course. [Image from Wikipedia]

First off, it appears that certain proteins in the semen of fruit flies have the power to do more than just fertilize eggs: they affect the physiological behaviour of the female, making her produce more eggs and become less interested in sex with other males. Possessive husbands the world over can probably see a commercial application for that bit of research.

But here’s another: human sperm can move at a rate of seven inches per hour, which doesn’t sound too fast until you consider how tiny they are. The “flagellum” tail of a sperm is an incredibly efficient biological propulsion system at the microscopic scale, which is one of the reasons researchers are looking to recreate the same systems as powerplants for medical nanobots. [Via SlashDot]

Humans are evolving faster than ever

Paul Raven @ 11-12-2007

Thanks to the magic of the wire services, this story is all over the web like a rash - you can read the abstract of the paper that’s caused the hoo-haa on the blog of John Hawks, one its authors.

But the nutshell quote is this one:

“The massive growth of human populations has led to far more genetic mutations, and every mutation that is advantageous to people has a chance of being selected and driven toward fixation. We are more different genetically from people living 5,000 years ago than they were different from Neanderthals.”

As an early commenter points out on the inevitable MetaFilter thread, faster evolution doesn’t mean we’re improving as a species, because evolution selects for ‘reproductive fitness’ rather than any quality that we might describe as being ‘better’ from a rational point of view.

But it’s an interesting story nonetheless; I’d always thought evolution was a glacially slow process. I guess we’ll have to wait and see what the implications are … not to mention the spin that the ‘Young Earth’ folk will try to put on it. [Image by KevinDooley]

Are alien lifeforms already on Earth?

Paul Raven @ 21-11-2007

Is the emergence of life a localised one-shot fluke, or does it happen all over the place? It’s not a question we can answer with certainty yet, but that’s probably why it’s such a fascinating thing to ponder. Scientists in the latter camp suggest that life may have arisen here on Earth more than once, and according to Scientific American they are engaged in a search for examples of Terran microbial lifeforms which aren’t (or rather weren’t) based on the building blocks of the biology that we’re more accustomed to - which might add evidence in favour of the emergence of extra-terrestrial life. [Via Slashdot] [Image from Wikipedia]

Of course, some of the creatures that have existed on Earth that were based on the familiar biological patterns can still seem pretty alien, if only in the B-movie/pulp magazine manner - 2.5 meter long monster sea scorpion, anyone?

Photosynthesis2.0 - leaves re-engineered

Paul Raven @ 12-11-2007

Our posts about genetic engineering always accrue some interesting comments, so let’s see what Futurismic readers think of this: researchers at the University of Illinois have engineered a new form of plant that produces more leaves and fruit without any need for fertilizers, by tweaking the enzymes used in the photosynthesis reaction.

Don’t get too panicked, though - the plant only exists in a computer simulation so far. And that’s the interesting question, as far as I can see - will we be more trusting of re-engineered life-forms if they’ve been tested exhaustively in virtual form before being created in the real world? [Link via Our Technological Future] [Image by 4x4jeepchick]

Bad news for cats: scientists make a better mouse

Edward Willett @ 02-11-2007

If Jerry had been one of these, Tom would never have had a chance: Case Western Reserve University researchers have bred a line of genetically modified "mighty mice" that can run five to six kilometres on a treadmill for up to six hours, at a speed of 20 meters per minutes, without stopping. Not only that, they live and breed longer than mighty mice, and though they eat more, they remain fitter and trimmer than their unmodified cousins. And as if that wasn’t enough to concern cats, the new mice are also markedly more aggressive. (Via Science Daily.)

But don’t go getting any ideas about creating your own line of super soldiers for world domination. Richard W. Hanson, lead author of the newly published paper about the achievement, is quick to squelch any such science fictional thoughts:

"The technique used to create the animal model reported in our study is not appropriate for application to humans. The ethical implications are such that this approach should not be used in humans, or is it technically possible at this time to efficiently introduce genes into human skeletal muscle, in order to mimic the effect seen in our mice" said Hanson. "Any attempt to tamper with the metabolic processes in human muscle will surely do more harm than good. We believe that this mouse model will provide important insights into the impact of prolonged exercise on the development of cancer in the animal, the effect of diet and exercise on longevity and will increase our knowledge of the factors that regulate energy metabolism in skeletal muscle."

You can view a video of a wild mouse and a mighty mouse on a treadmill here. (Image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Scientists envision growing human eyeballs

Edward Willett @ 25-10-2007

Researchers at the University of Warwick have stumbled on a genetic switch in tadpoles that causes them to grow three eyes–and could conceivably help scientists to someday grow replacement human eyeballs, or at least specific bits of eye tissue, from stem cells. As neuroscientist Nicholas Dale, co-leader of the study, puts it, "If you knew all the genes, and how to turn them on, that you needed to make an eye, you could start with very early embryonic cells and turn on all the right genes and grow an eye in a dish." (Via LiveScience.)

Now there’s an appropriate mental image for the Hallowe’en season… (Image: Masse, K., Bhamra, S., Eason, R., Dale, N. and Jones, E./Nature.)

Fleshjet? Bio-printing making progress

Paul Raven @ 15-10-2007

Bioprinting - the re-purposing of inkjet technology for constructing biological tissues - is something we’ve remarked on before here at Futurismic. But it seems deserving of another mention, as a new method called "pressure assisted spinning" promises to handle the living cells more gently by using air pressure instead of mechanical force, enabling the construction of tissue scaffolds ready to act as a medium for growing new bones and organs - or for use as bandages. [Image by Suwan Jayasinghe; copied from NewScientist article]

Want to use biofuel? There’s oceans of possibilities.

Tomas Martin @ 20-09-2007

Could this green slime be a goldmine?

{image by Juvetson via Flickr Creative Commons}

A British biologist has suggested that there may be an overlooked candidate to make biodiesel. Corn, soy and Palm oil are three of the main crops converted into the alternative fuel but all have significant problems with environmental impact as well as raising the price of the foods themselves.

John Munford proposed this week that much of the algae growing on the surface of the ocean could be harvested to produce biodiesel. Utah University has been studying fresh water algae, which can produce as much as 10,000 barrels of oil per acre. Munford says that seaborne algae has the advantage over this kind of pond scum by being self-maintained by existing ecosystems. An area similar to the North Sea could produce all the biodiesel currently used in transport across the world.

[via The Economist]

UK government green-lights hybrid embryo research

Paul Raven @ 06-09-2007

In a rare move of clear-eyed sanity, the British government has given scientists provisional permission to create non-viable human/animal hybrid embryos - for research purposes. Apparently surveys discovered that - once the actual limits and realities of the science were explained - most people were “at ease” with the idea. Perhaps once it’s seen to be safe, attitudes elsewhere may loosen up as well.

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