Science and SF Tidbits: October 18, 2012: Hard SF, Silky Electronics, and Exoplanets

Recent interesting science fiction and bioscience bits:

• Locus Online Perspectives » Stanley Schmidt: Art of Speculation »
How would you define "hard" science fiction? Analog editor and SF author Stanley Schmidt thinks most fans are getting it all wrong. From his interview with Locus:

‘‘ What I mean by ‘hard science fiction’ is actually pretty simple: there’s some element of speculative science or technology in it, which is so integral to the story that you can’t take it out without making the whole story collapse. [...] The second requirement is that there should be some attempt to make the science or technology speculation plausible.”

I agree with him. The focus on engineering and technology often causes stories with solid speculative biology and chemistry to be overlooked as "hard" SF.

• A musical interlude for Battlestar Galactica fans: Sound of Cylons

Hello Gaius my old friend ....



• Excellent Idea of the Day: Sci-Fi in Class : Discovery News »
Do you think high school level science textbooks should include science fiction references or examples? A recent study suggests that science fiction can stimulate students' interest in science.
Join the discussion on Google+.

• Jumping DNA rides aboard a virus, which targets a giant virus, which infects an amoeba, which infected a woman’s eye | Not Exactly Rocket Science | Discover Magazine »
Examination of the microbes in an infected eye turned up a zoo:

"It was carrying two species of bacteria, and a giant virus that no one had seen before—they called it Lentille virus. Inside that, they found a virophage—an virus that can only reproduce in cells infected by other viruses—which they called Sputnik 2. And in both Lentille virus and Sputnik 2, they found even smaller genetic parasites – tiny chunks of DNA that can hop around the genomes of the virus, and stow away inside the virophage. They called these transpovirons."

• ALPHA CENTAURI HAS A PLANET! | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine »
Exciting discovery: The Alpha Centauri star system has at least one Earth-sized planet! As the nearest star system to our own, it's a frequent destination for SF space travelers, from Lost in Space to Avatar.  The bad news: it's so close to it's star, it's definitely not another Earth:

"... the planet is baking hot, far too hot to sustain any kind of life as we know it, or even liquid water."

• Spider Silk Could Weave Biodegradable Computer Chips | Wired Science | Wired.com »
Materials science turns to nature: Spider silk is very thin, stronger than steel, extremely flexible and can transmit light almost as well as glass fiber optic cables. Even better, the human body doesn't have a problem with implanted fibers and the components are biodegradable.  That means that there is the potential to use silk produced by spiders or silkworms to develop implantable biomonitoring devices that do not need to be surgically removed. And perhaps far in the future there will be electronic devices that can be composed, rather than producing toxic waste.

Top Image: Artist’s impression of the planet around Alpha Centauri B. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada/Nick Risinger (skysurvey.org) Released by ESO under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. More artist's images and diagrams can be found at ESO.gov.

Engineering Aquamen? It's harder than you might think.

Stephen Cass at Science Not Fiction recently tackled the question "could genetic mutation or manipulation create a superhuman?". The answer, not too surprisingly, is maybe - it all depends on what kind of superpower you have in mind. Flying? Probably not. A fluorescent glow? Almost certainly.

One of the examples of genetic engineering that Stephen writes about piqued my interest: a team of scientists at the MRC in Cambridge were able to modify human hemoglobin so that its biochemical properties were more like crocodile hemoglobin. Could that give a human Aquaman-like powers?

First a little background. Hemoglobin is the protein in our red blood cells that carries oxygen. One of its properties is that it binds oxygen more strongly when carbon dioxide levels in the blood are are low (such as in the blood vessels in the lungs). Higher levels of carbon dioxide - produced as waste when oxygen is used by cells to generate energy - reduce the affinity, promoting the release of oxygen from the hemoglobin. The exact biochemistry of the protein varies from species to species, depending on the animal's physiological needs and the environment it lives in.

Crocodile hemoglobin, for example, is more sensitive than the human version to dissolved carbon dioxide in the blood. The result is that a greater proportion of the hemoglobin bound oxygen can be released when the crocs are holding their breath, which allows them to stay under water for as long as an hour. It turns out that changing just a few amino acids in the human hemoglobin sequence changes its biochemistry to that of the crocodilian version. This recombinant "scuba" hemoglobin was developed as an improvement to artificial blood products, and was only produced in bacterial cells. But imagine introducing such a modified hemoglobin sequence into a human - it would potentially allow the carrier to hold their breath for an hour, just like crocs.

But unless such engineered Aquaman wannabes want to spend their time in warm shallow water lurking for their prey evildoers, they would need a number of other modifications to reach their superhero potential. Besides stay under water a long time¹, Aquaman is also supposed to be able to dive very deep in the ocean and swim very fast. Neither ability is going to be provided by modifying hemoglobin.

The problem is that both the intense cold and high pressure in the ocean depths can easily kill any ordinary human. Animals that do routinely dive to great depths - like sperm whales - built anatomically to survive the pressure changes: they lack sinuses, have special structures in their ears and reinforced airways. There is no way to create similar changes in human anatomy without multiple genetic alterations. Whales also have a nice layer of blubber that acts as insulation. The blubber also makes the whale's body more buoyant and streamlined, which are important for rapid swimming.

Possibly a human could be modified to live like a whale, but he would end up looking pretty whale-like. In other words, he'd look like the big guy in the picture below, rather than the slim muscular dude wearing little more than tights.
The idea that genetic engineering could easily be used to reconfigure the human body to give it extraordinary abilities (for a human anyway), while retaining a normal human shape is a pet peeve of mine. If you are talking about biological beings, rather than magical ones, function does affect form.

1. I know Aquaman is supposed to be able to extract oxygen from the water in some kind of gill-less fashion. I'm not even sure where to begin to tackle that one.

Image (top): Cover of Aquaman 17 at comics.org
Image (middle): Structure of hemoglobin of the antarctic fish Pagothenia bernacchii. DOI 10.2210/pdb1hbh/pdb .
Image (bottom): Aquaman fights a whale guy in a panel from JLA #223 at The Aquaman Shrine.
Tags:Aquaman, biology, genetic engineering

Biology in Science Fiction Roundup: November 1 Edition

Here are a few biology in science fiction-related links from the past couple of weeks.

Written Word

Jennifer Rohn of Mind the Gap has another post about the best way to write about science in your fiction. Her lab-lit novel Experimental Heart was released today.

Jo Walton writes at Tor.com about "Telepathy and Tribulation: John Wyndham's The Chrysalids"

Wyndham really was a terrific storyteller. He manages to evoke his oppressive world of “Watch Thou For The Mutant” and burning the blasphemous crops is evoked in impressively few words. I have no idea what I’d think if I was reading this for the first time now. As a child I identified totally with David and his telepathic mutation. I felt that Sophie, Rosalind and Petra were solidly characterised, whereas now I see them as barely more than plot tokens. Wyndham’s attitude to women is exceedingly peculiar. It goes way beyond the times he lived in. But the book does pass the Bechdel test, which is pretty good for a first person male novel—the narrator overhears two women have a conversation about a mutant (female) baby.

Television

The complete series of the dinosaur-time portal show Primeval will be released on DVD on November 4.

The Science Not Fiction blog continues its series on the Eleventh Hour by looking at the the latest episode that features children with Heller's Syndrome.

Movies

Cash @ Science and Super Models explains "Everything I Need to Know About Science I Learned From Watching "The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra"

Amazon.com has a portal for Repo! The Genetic Opera (affiliate link), with video clips and an interview with director Darren Lynn Bousman. Apparently there is more to it than gore, singing and Paris Hilton.

Amazon: The movie depicts a bleak dystopian future – do you think that something like this reality is possible in our lifetime?
Bousman: Yes, I do. A big portion of this movie is about perfecting our bodies, and what measures we would go to to reach perfection. Isn't that what is happening now. We all our guilty. Rather that mean tanning, or going to the gym. We all want to look good. We all want to feel good. But how far would you go? Would you get breast implants? Botox? How about a new heart? A better looking FACE? And in the end, what would you be willing to pay?

SciFi Scanner has a slide show that looks at "how The Fly has morphed over the years"

Bloody-Disgusting has posters for the film Infected.

Cool Bioscience

Japanese scientist Makoto Nakamura is developing a printer that sprays cells rather than ink droplets. His ultimate goal is to be able to print 3-dimensional organs like the heart. (via Discoblog)

SES: Science, Education & Society explains the difference between "genetic" and "heritable".

The European Space Agency's Huygens probe has found new evidence that life could have arisen on Saturn's moon Titan.

Scientists are recreating the circuits that regulate amoeba behavior in an attempt to understand primitive "intelligence":

Di Ventra's team thinks there is an intrinsic memory storage device within the amoeba. As with the human brain, that device can strengthen and store memories for some time. But if the memory isn't used, it gradually fades away. Now they have identified a potential storage device. Now they have identified a potential storage device. The amoeba's interior contains a watery sol – a solid suspended in liquid – within a thick viscous gel. The sol flows through the gel like water through a sponge, creating a network of low-viscosity channels. Those channels are strengthened as long as the amoeba continues to respond to a static environment, but if that environment changes the channels gradually break down and a new network appears as the amoeba adapts. For a short while, though, the amoeba retains a “memory” of those earlier conditions. Di Ventra's team took advantage of the development this year of memristors – electrical resistors that retain a memory of earlier voltages or currents applied and vary their resistance accordingly – to design a simple circuit that models the amoeba's gel-sol system.

The ASU School of Life Sciences Podcast Series has some episodes of scifi interest:

• Collective Intelligence, Science Fiction or Science Fact?
• Giant Insects: Not Just in B Movies
• Clinicians and Cyborgs
• Iridescence: Nature and emergent technology
• Biosensors and Biocomputers

John Horgan debated Ray Kurzweil at the Singularity Summit in San Jose:

I reiterated my old argument that the lack of progress in treating cancer and mental illness reflects the primitive state of biology, genetics, neuroscience and hence the improbability of Kurzweil’s claims. Ray reiterated his old argument that neuroscience and other fields will soon reap the benefits of exponential progress in information technologies. I added that the Singularity is hurting the credibility of science at a time when science is already under attack. Ray shrugged off this complaint, because of course his vision rests on reasonable projections of current scitech trends, not on faith.

Tags:science fiction, biology

Bioscience News Roundup: 01-14-07

Some interesting bits of bioscience in the news (I apologize if some of them are old, I've been cleaning out my collected links):

Science News reports on making "life from scratch", with a focus on the work at the J. Craig Venter Institute (via BoingBoing) From the article:

"We eventually want to make an organism called Mycoplasma laboratorium," Smith says. The more familiar name for this hypothetical cell is Synthia.

Glass says that the team is on the verge of making such a cell within the next few months. In the Aug. 3, 2007 Science, the researchers announced that they had transplanted the entire genome of one species of Mycoplasma into a related species. The recipient cells began using the foreign genome as if it was their own, showing that the receiving cells can "boot up" the newly inserted DNA (SN: 6/30/07, p. 403). All that remains is to finish piecing together a minimal, synthetic genome and then to insert it into a Mycoplasma bacterium by the same technique.

Beyond serving as a hobby-kit cell for unraveling basic cell biology, Synthia might serve as a platform for developing novel biotechnologies.

"Learning how to rebuild something will give us control over a cell that we don't now have," Glass says. Craig Venter, the scientist-cum-biotech tycoon who led the private effort to map the human genome and now heads the Venter Institute, has said he hopes that a minimal genome will serve as a base upon which to add custom functions, such as genes for converting feedstock into hydrogen for fuel.

They should probably read io9's post about the "Dos and Don'ts of Biology Hacking"

Wired Science also looks at microbes reengineered "to do humanity's dirty work"

University of Minnesota researchers have created a beating heart in the laboratory. You can even watch a video of the process. (via Pharyngula).

Twisted Bacteria reports on the work of Chinese scientists to improve microbial strains by giving them a ride in space.

Wired Science has a report on cool new bioscience-related technology presented at the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference. Neo-Organs and anti-fat ray sound like something out of Futurama.

American Scientist has an interesting article about the possible origins of larvae that are very different from the adult forms.

Biologist Williamson has proposed that larvae are juvenile forms acquired through hybridization—the fusing of two genomes, one of which is now expressed early in an animal's life, the other late. This hypothesis, which goes against traditional thinking that branches on the evolutionary tree cannot fuse to form chimeric species, is one of several possible solutions to open questions about the evolution of larvae. Although an experiment did not yield convincing DNA evidence, the hypothesis is consistent with certain patterns seen in the distribution of genes across species. Along with other evidence of cross-species hybridization, it implies a pattern of evolution that looks more like a network than like Darwin's tree of life.

There is an interesting Ask MetaFilter discussion about whether you can use DNA analysis to determine the time of conception. I'm pretty sure I've seen that used as a plot device. On Enterprise maybe?

Ron at Beam Me Up writes about recent research on space agriculture. Does our future hold space bug entrées?

Did you know the first structure visible from space was made by wombats? Discover Magazine reviews the book Built by Animals: The Natural History of Animal Architecture, and links to images of some of the structures.

In legal news, Wired Science reports on the United Nation's report that recommends treating human clones as our equals.

Finally, in the category of "pseudoscience", The Mental Floss blog lists 5 creatures that probably don't exist, yet received government protection anyway.

Tags:science fiction, biology

Biology in Science Fiction Roundup: January 12 Edition

Biology in Science Fiction bits from around the web:

• ListVerse lists the Top 10 Errors in Science Fiction Movies, from oversimplistic planets, to humanoid aliens and alien-human breeding (via SF Signal).
• In celebration of their own birth, SyFyPortal lists the Ten Strangest Pregnancies on Science-Fiction Television.
• Bioethics Bytes writes about the bioethics themes in Michael Crichton's 2002 novel Prey.
• At Slice of SciFi Emilio D'alise editorializes about the objectionable "violation of science" in Sci-fi movies (via SF Signal):

  Watching The Thing revert to human, and back again, also sets me to ponder on the transmutation of flesh to rock, back to flesh, and back to rock. Again, extra mass, lots of energy, and cells changing their chemical composition in milliseconds. Watching The Flame burn “hotter than the sun” makes me wonder if we could tap him to create wormholes . . . before I remember there is no such thing as a free lunch. Where’s all that fuel coming from?

  My wonder and awe is considerably reduced when, after showing hook-like hairs sprouting from his skin, thus allowing Spiderman to cling to any surface, he covers them by putting on gloves; gloves that also cover the area of his wrists oozing “spider-web”. I could go on, but some may call me “picky”. Others may call me “kill-joy”. Those with a good vocabulary might accuse me of being pedantic. Others will then have to go look that up.

• Indian news site Tehelka has an article about Indian science fiction (via BoingBoing and Beam Me Up)
  

  DNA-ALTERING experiments, moody robots, strange mutations from failed cloning projects, wonder machines and nano-gadgetry, and, of course, aliens playing peek-a-boo with humans — science fiction writing in Indian languages has this all and more.

• Science and Supermodels looks at the Science of Bionic Woman.
  
• At Science Fiction and Fantasy Novelists Mike Brotherton lists his top ten science-based sci-fi movies. Most have a physical science bent, but Predator made the list for "an alien that sees in a different part of the electromagnetic spectrum, and having that actually play a role in the plot."
• io9 looks at mutant and monsterous Queens of England in science fiction and great zombies of science fiction (no the lists don't overlap). They also take a poke at the bad science in the movie Sunshine when one of the characters is expose to vacuum.
• Geekstir presents the Zombie Food Pyramid. It looks like Atkins taken to the extreme. (via Slashfood)
• Dvice lists 10 technologies that can give you superpowers, including gecko-inspired Spidey-suits and injected spider genes to produce silk in mammals.
• In an interview with SF Crowsnest, Lois McMaster Bujold explains how a "six-week biology study tour of East Africa" influenced her first novel, Shards of Honor.
• Last, but not least:Elizabeth Bear has a message for science fiction writers who are fans of evolutionary psychology:
  

  . . . hunter-gatherer societies are in general far more egalitarian and less hierarchal than agrarian ones. This whole romanticized view of tribal life to justify completely bogus evolutionary psychology designed to reinforce whatever the romanticizer's preconceptions of the idealized primeval human state are thing gets up my nose so fucking bad I can't stand it.

  There's an interesting discussion in the comments about eating insects, foraging and "primitive" diet.
  

Tags:science fiction, biology

Bioscience News Roundup: 7-18-07

Some interesting bioscience stories from the last week:

What would happen to birds and the bees after a nuclear apocalypse? Studies of the wildlife around Chernobyl can give us a clue. An article in The Economist takes a look at a report on the bird life near the nuclear power plant that spread radioactive material around the countryside in a 1986 explosion.

When due allowance was made for habitat differences, they found that species which relied on a class of chemicals called carotenoids to tint their feathers fared worse when there was more radioactivity around. Intriguingly, that did not apply to birds that used melanin, another pigment, in their plumage, nor to those that employed iridescence—which is a result of the structure of feathers, rather than their chemistry.

Carotenoids serve at least two biological roles. They are pigments - the orange in carrots and oranges, the red in peppers and tomatoes, and the pink in flamingo feathers and salmon - and are antioxidants that protect DNA from damage. In this case it appears that birds that use their carotenoids to make pretty red and yellow feathers end up leaving their DNA vulnerable to radiation damage. While life survived the disaster, the variety of life has changed. There is more about the rebound of Chernobyl wildlife at Accidental Blogger. (via Gene Expression)

The Wired Science blog reports on another science article in The Economist about modeling life on the computer. David Harel of the Weizmann Institute, for example, has been working on a computer simulation of the nematode C. elegans. But will it be a true representation of the original animal?

Indeed, he proposes to evaluate the result using an updated version of the Turing test. This was devised by Alan Turing, an early computer scientist, to identify whether a machine is capable of thought. The original test proposes that a person be presented with a suitable interface—say, a keyboard and a screen—through which to communicate. If the operator cannot tell the difference between talking to another person through this interface and talking to a computer, then the computer can be argued to be thinking. Dr Harel's version is a little more challenging. He wants to test whether scientists well versed in the ways of C. elegans could tell his computerised version from the real thing. So far, the distinction is obvious, but it may not always remain so.

That and more was discussed at a recent conference organized by Microsoft Research in Cambridge, England. Their website has more on their work on computational biology, computational ecology, and nature-inspired computation.

A post on Metafilter rounds up a bunch of links on the "double muscle" mutations in the protein myostatin. Humans, dogs, cattle, and mice that carry two mutated copies of the gene have hulk-like muscles.

Eye on DNA links to a Futures in Biotech podcast that interviews Dr. Svante Paabo about possible reconstruction of a complete Neanderthal genome.

Many women - perhaps more than half - have four different photopigments in their retinas rather than the standard three carried by most men. Cognitive Daily reprints a 2005 post on a study that shows women with four photopigments appear to perceive color differently from men and women with only three photopigments .

Mind Hacks links to a freely available article in Nature Clinical Practice Neurology about the potential for RNA interference (RNAi) technology to be used as therapy for neurodegenerative diseases. If you aren't sure what RNAi is, read the background information at Mind Hacks first.

The new podcast from the American Chemical Society, Science Elements, includes a regular report on the latest in biochemistry. The June 27/July 3 episode reports on extracting a novel mucin glycoprotein from the masses nuisance jellyfish that clog seawater intake pipes and contaminate beaches. The mucusy protein has potentially many uses - from cosmetics to new antibiotics. If you don't want to read the technical article in the Journal of Natural Products, the New York Times has an article about the report.

In other natural materials news, scientists have made a glue that combines portions of gecko and mussel adhesive. The result - called "geckel" - is a reversible adhesive (think sticky note) that still strongly binds under water. It has many potential uses, from water resistant bandages to consumer and military products. It will be the cover story on the July 19th issue of Nature.

The Beam Me Up blog links to a new MIT study that identifies the mechanism behind fear. The article in Nature Neuroscience reports that interfering with the appropriate enzyme in the hippocampus region of the brain actually results in the extinction of fear learned in a particular context. As Science Blog notes, this research might eventually be used to treat post traumatic stress disorder and panic attacks.

For even more biology-related posts, check out this weeks blog carnivals: Gene Genie at Med Journal Watch and Tangled Bank at The Voltage Gate.

Tags:genetics, biotechnology, neuroscience

Bioscience News Roundup: 7-11-07

Some of the interesting biology and biotechnology news stories from the past couple of weeks:

Scientists at MIT were able to reverse mental retardation caused by fragile X syndrome by blocking an enzyme involved in cellular development. As Scientific American (and lots of others ) point out, this is reminiscent of Daniel Keys' Flowers for Algernon in which surgery is used to boost the intelligence of the mouse Algernon and janitor Charlie Gordon. Hopefully the long term results are better in real life than in fiction.

Technology Review talks to Ari Patrinos, president of Synthetic Genomics, about engineering microbes to harvest oil. Craig Venter, founder of Synthetic Genomics, reported a major step in that direction; transferring an entire genome from one microbe to another. As Technology Review reports:

For Venter's team, the genome transplant is a step toward engineering microbial machines to efficiently produce fuel. The researchers are currently trying to stitch together a synthetic version of the genome of Mycoplasma genitalium, a bacterium found in the human genital tract, which Venter's group has been studying for more than a decade. By rearranging or deleting specific chunks of the synthetic genome and inserting it into a bacterial host, scientists should be able to figure out which genes are critical for the organism to function--in essence, the minimal genome. This minimal genome could then be modified to carry fuel-producing genes, and the entire string of DNA could be transplanted into a bacterial carrier.

You can listen to an interview with Venter on the June 29 Science Friday.

According to Technology Review, the Rothberg Institute will be initiating what it calls the Methuselah Project: sequencing the DNA of 100 people who are 100 years old, or older. They will only be looking at the DNA sequences that encode proteins. They apparently believe any genetic changes that increase lifespan will most likely affect protein sequences rather than the stretches of DNA that regulate when and in which cells those proteins are expressed.

TED Talks has video of a lecture by professor of surgery and chemical engineering Alan Russell on Why can't we grow new body parts?

The New Scientist Short Sharp Science blog reports on the recent report of a test of a memory erasing drug, Propranolol, on people who had experienced traumatic events.

Margaret Talbot writes for the New Yorker about using brain scans to uncover lies. It sounds like the technology currently lies on the boundary of pseudoscience.

The June 22 issue of Slate looks at "recombination of man and beast" - animals carrying human DNA - based on a report from the British Academy of Medical Sciences (pdf).

Last month, ethicists from Stanford University and the University of Wisconsin detailed a proposal by a Stanford scientist to substitute human brain stem cells for dying neurons in fetal mice. "The result would be a mouse brain, the neurons of which were mainly human in origin," they reported. The payoff, if the fetuses survived, would be "a laboratory animal that could be used for experiments on living, in vivo, human neurons." Imagine that: a humanoid brain network you can treat like a lab animal, because it is a lab animal.

Meanwhile the Roman Catholic Church has opined that human-animal hybrids should be considered to be human. (via Womens Bioethics Blog)

"The bishops, who believe that life begins at conception, said that they opposed the creation of any embryo solely for research, but they were also anxious to limit the destruction of such life once it had been brought into existence. In their submission to the committee, they said: 'At the very least, embryos with a preponderance of human genes should be assumed to be embryonic human beings, and should be treated accordingly.'"

On June 26, the New York Times devoted the science section to stories about evolution. The stories (you'll need a free account or bugmenot):

• From a Few Genes, Life's Myriad Shapes
• Life as we Know It (a time line of developments in evolutionary theory)
• Evolution Is . . . (quotes about evolution)
• Fast-Reproducing Microbes Provide a Window on Natural Selection
• Humans Have Spread Globally, and Evolved Locally
  
• Darwin Still Rules, but Some Biologists Dream of a Paradigm Shift
  
• In Parasite Survival, Ploys to Get Help From a Host

Michelle Wirth takes at takes a look at human pheromones for Scientific American Observations. She points out some of the problems with a recent study by Claire Wyart and colleagues that tested whether women responded to a chemical - androstadienone - in male sweat.

The inhabitat blog reports on wall insulation grown from a culture of mushrooms (via Beyond the Beyond)

Neurofuture reports on a collaboration between University of Calgary researchers and artists Dr. Morley Hollenberg, Alan Dunning and Paul Woodrow called the Shapes of Thought.

Participants were monitored by EEG, and EKG sensors and asked to recall traumatic events from their past. Participants agreed to undergo hypnosis and aid in the recollection and reliving of events in which they were deeply afflected by anger, fear, joy or other primary emotions.

The EEG data was translated into three dimensional images in real time.

Finally, Mind Hacks reports that the text book Neuropsychopharmacology: The Fifth Generation is now available online for free. It ". . . covers the cutting edge of pretty much everything we know about how drugs affect the mind and brain."

Tags:neuroscience, synthetic biology, evolution, longevity, memory, pheromones, genetic engineering

Cool Bioscience Weekly Roundup

A few of the bioscience stories from the past week that I found interesting:

Astrobiology Magazine takes a look at recent speculation that plant life on Earth-like planets outside our solar system might be black.

Scienceroll has an interview with "Max Chatnoir" about his creation of Genomic Island and the genetic revolution in Second Life.

Matt Castle at Damn Interesting looks at the original "cryobiology" experiments that started in the 1950s by bringing frozen hamsters back to life.

The potential demonstrated by frozen-hamster research has yet to be fully realised, but perhaps one day Dr. Audrey Smith's groundbreaking efforts will lay the foundation for powerful new medical procedures. Indeed, a hot over-sized spoon might one day miraculously transform frozen human cadavers back into living, breathing, productive zombies to slave away in the mechanized underworld of the future. Until that long-hoped-for day arrives, perhaps– like James Lovelock– we can console ourselves with the idea that this pioneering work has helped broaden the meaning of life.

Reporter David Ewing Duncan gives a first-hand report to MIT Technology Review about chemicals and other treatments that claim to give your brain a boost. His conclusion:

Before long we might be drinking beverages laced with modafinil and other mild stimulants that have fewer side effects than coffee. It's likely that we'll also be slipping zappers onto the brims of our hats and flipping them on when we get spacey. But neither of these brain boosters is close to helping me, say, understand advanced quantum mechanics or write a symphony like Mozart. I'll have to muddle along being me for a bit longer.

Also in Technology Review, Emily Singer describes how scientists hope to use DNA sequencing and genetic engineering on variety of plants such as button mushrooms and eucalyptus trees to improve production of biofuels.

Wired talks about the genetic engineering of mushrooms for the production of pharmaceuticals.

New Scientist reports that biologist Keller Autumn and his colleagues at Lewis & Clark University have figured out how geckos stick to walls. What works for geckos hasn't worked for heavier machines.

"Scaling things up creates big problems," said Autumn. "We know it's a challenge none of the virtual gecko adhesives are capable of doing."

Nevertheless, he believes that with the development of strong carbon nanotubes and silicon nanowires that could used instead of gecko hairs, a comparable adhesive could become a viable option within the next 10 years.

In other nanotechnology news, bacteria have been harnessed as microscopic propellers.

Science Daily looks at the the "electric duets" used in the aquatic courtship of electric fish.

David Kerns, guest poster at Cognitive Daily, takes a look at what makes a movement seem "artificial." He looks at it from the movie special effects CGI angle, but the same issue arises when you think about human-alien interaction. How much of our perception would be governed by our unconscious expectations?

Body language is a critical form of communication for human beings. We can pick up a lot of meaning from physical movements, even when we only see a very limited amount of information about that movement. For example, most special effects animation is created by putting sensors on several parts of the human body to determine how body parts interact when the body is in motion. A human figure made up of just ten dots located in the different major body regions is enough to convey a wide range of emotions and complex physical movements. How does this work?

Did you know that 90% of the cells within us are microbes? Discover Magazine takes a look at the marvelous ecosystem that is the human body. In the same vein, MIT Technology Review takes a more in-depth look at "our microbial menagerie" and how they are important to our health.

Vaughan at Mind Hacks writes about the use of genetics to determine which psychiatric drugs "will be the most effective and least problematic."

Sandra Porter of Discovering Biology in a Digital World guides you through an animation of the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR).

R. Ford Denison writes about a recent publication that looks at whether plants can recognize "kin".

At the Loom, Carl Zimmer explains how the resistance our ancestors evolved to a virus in the Pleistocene might make us susceptible to HIV today.

Finally, Philip Ball at nature.com reports on "open source" vs. patented parts in synthetic biology.

Tags: biotechnology, genetic engineering

Cool Bioscience Roundup

Well, I'm back from a short holiday and way behind in blogging. Without much ado, here is a roundup of some interesting bioscience news from the past couple of weeks.

Carl Zimmer writes about human genome pioneer Craig Venter's patent application for synthetic life forms.

Venter is taking a very different approach to synthetic biology than many others in the community. He's locking down patents. ETC is right in suggesting Venter might become "Microbesoft"--controlling operating system for anyone who wants to build an organism from scratch. Other researchers, such as Keasling, are promoting a different way of doing synthetic biology--what they call open source biology. Scientists and their students are amassing an open inventory of parts that anyone can use to design organisms of their own. And it's open source biology, these researchers argue, that will provide the best protection against any evil uses of synthetic biology. Instead of being hidden behind patents, the information about these parts would be available to everyone, and collectively solutions could be found. As this debate starts to unfold, I think open source biology will keep it from becoming nothing but deja vu.

GrrrlScientist writes about a man who was discovered to have dark green blood when he went into surgery. His was due to a rare reaction to his migrane medication, rather than the copper-based hemoglobin of the denizens of the planet Vulcan.

Discover Magazine reports on a recent set of experiments that demonstrated the ability to insert encoded data into the bacterial genome.

The first step was to convert each of the characters in “E = mc² 1905!” into binary code, the standard computer language consisting of zeros and ones. The next step was to insert that information into the bacterium’s own data-storing code, its DNA. The basic units of DNA are four nucleotide bases: adenine (abbreviated as A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), and thymine (T), which are linked by a phosphate-sugar backbone. Using their own encryption method, Ohashi and his collaborators made the two codes compatible by converting the four units of binary code into two nucleotides. For example, a sequence of four zeros equaled AA, the series 0001 indicated CA, 0010 specified GA, and so on.

They estimate 200,000 characters, or 1/5 of the New Testament could be inserted into a single, replicating bacterium.

The Associated Press reports on the annual University of Maryland School of Medicine conference on the deaths of historic figures. This year the attendees speculated as to whether Abraham Lincoln would have survived using today's medicine and what the impact of his survival would have been. (via Improbable Research)

Linda MacDonald Glenn at the Women's Bioethics Project writes about the work of Israeli scientists imprinting memories on neurons cultured outside the brain.

The results, Ben-Jacob says, set the stage for the creation of a neuromemory chip that could be paired with computer hardware to create cyborglike machines capable of such tasks as detecting dangerous toxins in the air, allowing the blind to see or helping someone who is paralyzed regain some if not all muscle use.

Scientists at UC Riverside have identified and sequenced the genes encoding black widow spider's dragline silk

With the ingredients and their genetic blueprint now known, it may be possible to synthetically produce the proteins by inserting the genetic sequences into host organisms such as bacteria, plants or animals, she said. Once the pure proteins are harvested, a manufacturing challenge will be spinning them into silk fibers that have the same remarkable properties as spider spun silk. But several advances have recently been made in artificial spinning methods.
[ . . .]
Spider silks have some of the best mechanical properties of any known natural fibers, thus they are being considered in the improvement of a variety of products including surgical microsutures and specialty ropes. Dragline silk – just one type of the seven different silks that an individual spider produces – are used by spiders as the structural foundation of their webs and to support their body weight as they move about. The dragline silk of black widows is one of the strongest and toughest spider silks identified thus far.

Scientists at the University of Colorado have developed a sensor that can be clipped to plant leaves that sends a wireless signal when the plants need water.

Stoner likened the plant communication aspect of the invention to a scene in the 1986 comedy musical film, "Little Shop of Horrors," when a giant carnivorous plant tells humans to "feed me." "This technology allows plants to say, 'water me,' " he said.

George Dvorsky reports on a new study that shows that human interaction can improve the cognitive abilities of chimpanzees. I wonder if interaction with supersmart aliens would improve our intelligence?

There's a great Metafilter post on the use of slime molds to control biosensors and robots, and the use of fungus that feeds on radiation to protect astronauts.

Finally, Astrobiology Magazine reports that a team studying methanogens - microorganisms that produce methane - has demonstrated their ability to grow on the types of soil found on Mars.

Tags: biology, biotechnology, genetic engineering, biochips, natural materials, microorganisms, intelligence

Spiderman vs. Spiders

LiveScience takes a look at How Spider-Man Compares to the Real Thing. It turns out that

Spider silk could stop a Boeing 747 in flight, is stronger than bullet-proof Kevlar and more elastic than nylon, biologists say.

There are also species of spiders that spin silk from their feet, rather than their abdomen.

No word on whether real spiders can woo attractive redheads, though.

Image: Garden Spider @ U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
Tags:science fiction, biology