Biologists join the race to create synthetic life: Researchers will gather in London this week to outline plans to promote one of the most audacious, and controversial, scientific ideas of the 21st century - synthetic biology. The new discipline, established by scientists such as human genome pioneer Craig Venter, involves stripping microbes down to their basic genetic constituents so they can be reassembled and manipulated to create new life forms [Guardian]
Researchers find rare giant turtle in Vietnam: Researchers from the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo have discovered a rare giant turtle in northern Vietnam — a find that carries great scientific and cultural significance. Swinhoe’s soft-shell turtle was previously thought to be extinct in the wild. Three other turtles of the species are in captivity, said experts from the Zoo’s Asian turtle program. [msnbc]
Birds smart enough to stand guard, say scientists at University of Bristol: Birds “stand sentry” to help other members of their group forage for food, and sing a special song to give warning of danger, researchers say. [Times]
April 21st, 2008 at 10:58 am
This article is filed under Biology, Blog.
View from the lab: our debt to worms: If the worm didn’t turn, much of the Earth would be uninhabitable, writes Prof Steve Jones. [Telegraph]
Young fire ants curl up and (pretend) die: Opossums do it, some snakes do it and even big bison do it. Now a new study now shows fire ants do it, too. When threatened by danger, the young insects will play dead to fake out an attacker. [MSNBC]
A Mutual Affair: I’d like to introduce you to one of my favorite animals: the shrimp goby. These pretty little fish lead lives of enviable indolence. As their name suggests, they live with shrimp (often, a pair). The shrimp build and maintain a burrow, which the goby and shrimp live in together. [NYT]
April 15th, 2008 at 9:01 am
This article is filed under Biology, Blog.
What’s Making That Awful Racket? Surprisingly, It May Be Fish: Naturalists as far back as Aristotle have known that fish make sounds. But when Jacques Cousteau titled his 1956 documentary “The Silent World,” it seemed that he captured the public’s imagination about underwater life while leaving our ears deaf to fish barks, chatter, groans, drones and cries. “His diving tanks masked all the sounds in the water,” Dr. Rountree said. “In fact, the oceans are a noisy place.” [NYT]
At the Edge of Life’s Code: Using machine learning, Chris Wiggins hopes to develop models that can predict how all of an organism’s genes behave under any circumstance - and thereby explain precisely why some cells become sick or cancerous. [Scientific American]
Moth that can travel at 55mph: Moths that fly high above our heads throughout the night are not at the mercy of the wind but use a sophisticated internal compass which can help them travel up to 400 miles in a single flight, according to a study. [Telegraph]
The dolphins that woo their mates with weeds: Amazon river dolphins use lumps of waterweed or large rocks to impress their mates, much as humans might use flowers or chocolates. [Guardian]
April 8th, 2008 at 11:09 am
This article is filed under Biology, Blog.
Efforts of Dancing Bees Are Often Wasted on Distracted Audience: Much has been made about the waggle dance, a fox trot of sorts that foraging honeybees do to tell their hive mates when they have found a good food source. The dance — a zigzagging figure eight maneuver performed in the hive — provides cues as to the direction and distance of the trove of flowers so the other bees can locate it. There is only one problem: Many bees seem to ignore the information. Instead, researchers in Argentina have found, the bees rely on their own memories of where to find food. [NYT]
Moose’s sharp hearing is attributed to antlers: They are some of the most extravagant headgear in the animal kingdom, but a moose’s antlers are not just for show. Scientists believe they act as elaborate hearing aids that help males to find calling females. [Guardian]
Scientists find that the nose knows a lot: Not only dogs and ants, but also albatrosses and fish use a sense of smell to find faraway food. [CSM]
March 25th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
This article is filed under Biology, Blog.
HOW GECKOS LAND ON THEIR FEET: Unlike cats, geckos owe their landing prowess primarily to their tails - which can also keep them from falling in the first place. [MSNBC]
New bird discovered in Indonesia: A small greenish bird that has been playing hide-and-seek with ornithologists on a remote Indonesian island since 1996 was declared a newly discovered species on Friday and promptly recommended for endangered lists. [MSNBC]
Mighty Electric Fields Found Inside Cells: The smallest voltmeter in the world has produced a shocking revelation: Lurking deep inside an ordinary cell are electric fields strong enough to cause a bolt of lightning. [Discover]
March 18th, 2008 at 11:45 am
This article is filed under Biology, Blog.
Alligators move lungs to catch prey: ALLIGATORS use their lungs as movable internal flotation devices, enabling them to dive, veer and barrell roll through water after prey. [Australian]
Song-Learning Birds Shed Light on Our Ability to Speak: A new study may have been for (and about) the birds, but it also hints at how humans may have developed the ability to speak, potentially paving the way to one day to identifying the causes of speech deficiencies. [Scientific American]
A Sand Dollar Riddle: The defense mechanism of sand dollars against predators is literally to split themselves in two, new research indicates. [NYT]
March 14th, 2008 at 9:40 am
This article is filed under Biology, Blog.
Love cheats, nepotism and corruption: royal scandal in the anthills of egalitarian society: Ants may be held up as ideals of social co-operation but they can be as sneaky as humans beings and their colonies are rife with corruption – with those from the royal line the worst offenders. [Times]
The Claim: Identical Twins Have Identical DNA: It is a basic tenet of human biology, taught in grade schools everywhere: Identical twins come from the same fertilized egg and, thus, share identical genetic profiles. But according to new research, though identical twins share very similar genes, identical they are not. [NYT]
March 12th, 2008 at 9:04 am
This article is filed under Biology, Blog.
Scientists find hibernating fish in Antarctic. Scientists have found an Antarctic fish that hibernates to conserve energy during the long southern winters. [MSNBC]
A type of gene mutation long known to extend the lives of worms, flies and mice also turns up in long-lived humans.
Researchers found that among Ashkenazi Jews, those who survived past age 95 were much more likely than their peers to possess one of two similar mutations in the gene for insulinlike growth factor 1 receptor (IGF1R). [Scientific American]
The hummingbird is an animal that by all rights shouldn’t be able to fly. Its wing movements are not at all like that of other birds. But not only can they fly, they’re so good at it that they’re the only species which can fly backward. They’re also one of the few—but not the only—that can hover. And in the past week alone, two new studies on hovering animals have been made public. One is on bats and the others on the bluegill sunfish. [Popsci]
About five years ago, a team of Stanford University scientists set out to determine how the developing brain establishes its final set of synapses, connections through which cells of the nervous system communicate with one another and with nonneural cells. But when they tried to pinpoint the genes involved, something unexpected happened: they stumbled on C1q, a gene for a protein important in the body’s immune system. “We were like ‘Wait a minute—this an immune system molecule. What’s this doing in the brain?’” recalls lead researcher Ben Barres, a neurobiologist. “It stunned us.” Up until then, most scientists had believed that the healthy brain was “immune privileged” or free of immune cells. [Scientific American]
March 5th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
This article is filed under Biology, Blog.
Male fish can amp up their electric fields to woo females and intimidate rivals, research now reveals. A number of fish can generate electric fields. Relatively few such electric fish pack strong enough jolts to defend themselves or stun prey — most just use their electrical discharges to help navigate the water or communicate in the dark. [MSNBC]
Tiny twitches of their whiskers allow rats to “see” in the dark, helping them to find their way home or back to a particularly savory garbage pile. Now, after years of trying, US researchers said they have caught the whole thing on video, allowing them finally to understand what the rat whiskers are telling the brain. [Australian]
New research shows that mosquitofish have a surprising talent: they can count. Given the option of joining protective shoals of between two and four, female mosquitofish consistently chose the bigger shoal, according to Italian scientists at the University of Padua. They could “count” up to four and also distinguish between larger shoals if the size ratio was two to one. [Guardian]
February 29th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
This article is filed under Biology, Blog.
Aquarium keepers around the world are scrambling to get their hands on a new species of fish, discovered in an abandoned uranium mine in the Northern Territory. A breeding program is now underway to protect the rare native freshwater fish Hypseleotris barrawayi, otherwise known as the Barraway’s carp gudgeon. [Australian]
Scientists are to release the first volume of an Encyclopedia of Life, a project that will compile everything known about all living organisms, from the aardvark to the zebu. When complete, the project will detail all 1.8million known plant and animal species. Each will have its own web page in an online archive that will include photographs, genetic information and distribution maps. [Australian]
Virgin birth, known to biologists as parthenogenesis (from the Greek, “parthen” meaning virgin or maiden and “genesis,” beginning), has been seen in other species over the years. Some lizards occasionally produce offspring in this way. So do several species of fish, including a female hammerhead shark at the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha that produced offspring without a male last year. [NYT]
February 26th, 2008 at 11:45 am
This article is filed under Biology, Blog.
