Fabricating foals
August 16, 2009
On August 4, a foal named Mira was born. But Mira is no ordinary horse — her mother Rebaqua died almost a year ago. To preserve the legacy of the champion barrel racer, veterinarian Sylvia Bedford-Guaus of the Cornell Hospital for Animals scraped immature oocytes from Rebaqua’s ovaries within hours of her death. Nine oocytes were recovered and shipped to another veterinarian, Katrin Hinrichs, at the Equine Embryo Laboratory at Texas A&M University, who incubated the oocytes, inducing five to reach maturity. The lucky five were then given to veterinarian Young-Ho Choi to fertilize with frozen-thawed sperm from another barrel-racing champion, Frenchmans Guy. After seven days in culture, two fertilized eggs developed into embryos and were sent to veterinarian David Hartman at the Hartman Equine Reproduction Center in Whitesboro, Texas. Hartman transferred the embryos to a surrogate mare, who was later purchased by Rebaqua’s owner, Kristin Contro. The mare was shipped to New York to meet her new owner and give birth to Mira, an equine miracle.
So now, a year after her death and four veterinarians later, Rebaqua has a daughter. How much did this all cost, and is it really worth it? Contro obviously thought it was. What about you?
A new hangover cure?
July 31, 2009
Maybe. A new study published in Journal of Food Science reports that the amino acids and minerals found in asparagus may help fight the oxidative stress associated with liver damage after drinking alcohol, and two key enzymes in alcohol metabolism were upregulated by more than 2-fold when treated extracts from the leaves and shoots. Hey, whatever works, right?
Manipulative kitty-cats
July 14, 2009
It’s a bit of a stretch but an interesting theory nonetheless: house cats simultaneously produce a meow and a purr in order to get their owners to feed them. According to the authors of a new study in Current Biology, a straight meow would annoy the owner and result in the banishment of the cat altogether, while just a purr signifies contentment, which would not succeed in getting any food. Instead, embedding the cry for help within a contented purr is the most effective way to get fed. Like I said, a bit of a stretch, but I wouldn’t necessarily put it past the creative arm of evolution.
Monkey markets
June 30, 2009
Market economies are self-regulating, and we are usually satisfied with its ability to keep prices on essentials, such as gas and groceries, to a minimum. It is often assumed, however, that this kind of system was uniquely human — something we “invented” as our growing materialism demanded. But non-human animals also participate in the exchange of goods, and now there is evidence that the value of these goods fluctuates in response to supply and demand.
Ronald Noë and his colleagues at the University of Strasbourg, France created an artificial market in a group of vervet monkeys by providing food in a plastic box that only one member of the group could open. Sure enough, that individual received more grooming time — an exchangeable asset in the vervet community — from the other group members. When they introduced a second box that a different group member was trained to open, the first monkey’s stock value plummeted — that is, she did not receive as much grooming from her comrades. (Their findings are published in PNAS, DOI:10.1073/pnas.0812280106, and written up in NewScientist.)
This raises the question of what level of cognitive processing is required for the development of such market dynamics, and what other animal communities possess such striking similar economies to our own.
Fishy birth control
June 25, 2009
In yet another example of shifting ecosystems devastating fisheries, lampreys — jawless fish that evolve over 400 million years ago — are wreaking havoc on the Great Lakes, devouring trout, salmon, sturgeon, and other game fish. But researchers at the University of California San Diego may have found a solution: contraception. It wasn’t exactly what they were looking for when they used computer programming to model the lamprey estrogen receptor, but it’s exactly what they got.
They discovered that the extra functional group on the lamprey’s estrogen has a unusual interaction with the amino acid methionine, found only in lamprey estrogen receptors. The uniqueness of this chemical interaction suggests that compounds exist or can be engineered that interfere only with the estrogen signaling of lampreys, and not of all the game fish populations conservationists would like to restore. If that’s the case, perhaps scientists could prevent lampreys from rapidly reproducing and killing off the fishermen’s catch.
My question is: even if they are able to create a contraceptive that targets lampreys and lampreys only, should we use it? Who are we to prevent nature from running its course?
Beaked dinosaur – the missing link?
June 21, 2009
An intriguing beaked dinosaur fossil from the Jurassic period found in China and reported recently in Nature gives new insight into the evolution of the three-fingered feet of birds. The fossil had no teeth, short arms, and appeared to be a vegetarian. But most interestingly, its innermost finger was significantly shorter than its dinosaur relatives, while the second finger was enlarged. These findings suggest that the innermost and outermost fingers were likely lost on the way to becoming a three-fingered organism, which contradicts the traditional theory that the two outermost fingers were lost. It may not be the monkey man most creationists are looking for, but it’s a pretty exciting find in the world of paleontology.
Here’s a video that is only distantly related, but I found it so entertaining that I had to share it. It’s a cartoon about archaeopteryx, an extinct species commonly considered to be the earliest bird fossil discovered. (Reminds me a little bit of the School House Rock video “How a Bill Becomes a Law” we were all subjected to in elementary school.) Enjoy!
Photo credit: James Clark
Micro-learning
June 18, 2009
They may not be salivating to the sound of a bell, but apparently two classically simple organisms, Escherichia coli and Saccharomyces cerevisiae, do anticipate changes in their environments and respond accordingly, according to a new study published online yesterday in Nature. E. coli consistently experience to maltose shortly after lactose in their journey down the digestive tract. When the scientists exposed E. coli to lactose, the genetic pathway of maltose digestion was partially activated, indicating that the bacteria were, somehow, preparing for what was coming. Even more impressively, S. cerevisiae was able to anticipate the stages of fermentation, in which sugar and acidity levels change, alcohol content rises, and the temperature is amped up. When the yeast felt the heat, genes for dealing with the stressors of the next stage of the process were activated.
The researchers were further able to show that these responses were indeed adaptive as the organism’s fitness was enhanced by this anticipation. And just like Pavlov’s dogs, E. coli strains that were repeatedly exposed to lactose but not maltose for 500 generations stopped activating the maltose genes. Thus, the authors say, “the natural temporal order of stimuli is embedded in the wiring of the regulatory network.” Could that be the case? Is the evolution of gene networks over evolutionary time really analogous to the evolution of the neural networks in our brains over the course of our lives? And could this “environmental anticipation…be ubiquitous in biology” as the authors suggest?
A paternal presence pre-birth
June 15, 2009
The dramatic size dichotomy between male and female gametes (known as anisogamy) is a testament to the initial difference in parental investment between the sexes. Indeed, it has long been assumed that any non-genetic factors influencing our development came packaged in the spacious cytoplasm of the egg. With the sperm’s insatiable need for speed, evolution has shed all unnecessary bulk from the gametes’ data-filled head, leaving only the barebones DNA helix that makes you your father’s child.
But a recent study published yesterday in the online edition of Nature challenges this long-standing belief that sperm are nothing more than packets of genetic code. Scientists at Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah School of Medicine found that mature, human sperm have extensive epigenetic markings, particularly at loci that are important in development.
Maybe we have a little more than we realized to be thanking our fathers for this Father’s Day.
Scaring bedbugs to death
June 4, 2009
A new study in this month’s Journal of Medical Entomology discovered that by combining bedbug alarm pheromones with a desiccant dust used to kill them, exterminators may be able to trick the pests into moving around and through the deadly dust, resulting in a much more efficient execution.
Bedbugs are a growing problem in the United States, as many populations have begun to develop a resistance to the typical pyrethroid insecticides used to kill them. Just to throw out a few stats I learned last year while researching another article, bedbug incidents increased about 70 percent between 2000 and 2005, according to the National Pest Management Association, and New York City recorded a 1,900 percent increase in bedbug complaints since 2004.
This new study suggests that an old insect control agent with a new twist could be the solution. While it may seem a bit sadistic to use the bedbugs’ own pheromones against them, this could be the beginning of a whole new strategy in pest control. What other insect chemicals can we exploit for the purpose of protecting ourselves, our homes, and our gardens?
Mass migration exodus?
June 2, 2009
According to a recent review in Endangered Species Research, many of the world’s large, migratory ungulates are traveling shorter distances or no longer migrating at all. A second review to be published in next month’s in Endangered Species Research discusses how certain features characteristic of migratory species may make them particularly vulnerable to the changes associated with the changing climate. For example, migrants often travel to high latitude habitats, which are extremely sensitive to climate change. In addition, a presentation I attended last year at Indiana University’s National Teach-In on global warming mentioned the dwindling wetland areas that many shorebird species use as stopover points during their annual migrations. Thus, it seems both terrestrial and aerial migratory animals may be more affected by the global climate change than sedentary species. This begs the question, are additional conservation efforts needed for these species? Do we need to think about protecting migration routes, as opposed to simply having wildlife preserves at either end?
