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April 19 2011
Gertie the Hen “Sex-Changes” into Bertie the Rooster
Normally, chicken-keepers don’t sweat it when their hens go through short egg-laying dry-spells. But when an egg-less hen grows a wattle in a matter of weeks and starts crowing at the rising sun, it may be time to worry. That’s what went through a British couple’s minds this past year, when their pet hen Gertie began looking and acting like a rooster.
It all started last November, when Jim and Jeanette Howard of Huntingdon, England, noticed that Gertie stopped laying eggs. “Then a few days later I heard her try to crow,” Jeanette Howard told the BBC. “She wasn’t very good at it at first, but she’s progressed nicely.” Gertie then got heavier and developed a wattle under her chin in the next few weeks. And as her feathers grew back during her molt, they were a darker brown than before. Sporting a scarlet cockscomb and a rooster-like strut, Gertie is now outwardly indistinguishable from a cockerel.So how did this happen? There are still many unanswered questions about Gertie’s apparent sex-change, but according to Poultry ...
March 04 2011
The Genetic Gamesmanship of a Seven-Sexed Creature
What could be better than two types of sexes? For one organism, the answer isn’t three, but seven! And to top it off, these seven sexes aren’t evenly distributed in a population, although researchers have now developed a mathematical model that can accurately estimate the probabilities in this crap-shoot game of sexual determination.
Meet Tetrahymena thermophila, which in addition to its seven different sexes—conveniently named I, II, III, IV, V, VI, and VII—has such a complex sex life that it requires an extra nucleus. This fuzzy, single-celled critter has a larger macronucleus that takes care of most cellular functions and a smaller micronucleus dedicated to genetic conjugation.
The other odd thing about this one-celled wonder is that the population of the seven sexes are skewed, leading Unversity of Houston researcher Rebecca Zufall and her colleagues to ask: What gives?To answer that question, they created mathematical models of T. thermophila populations, and discovered that different versions of the same gene, or alleles, gave advantages to different sexes. Unlike humans, in which an individual’s sex is fully determined by its genes, the genotypes of these creatures provide only probabilities of developing ...
February 22 2011
Scientists Look for DNA on Envelopes That Amelia Earhart Licked
Researchers hope to collect spit from someone who died more than 70 years ago: the aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart. By extracting the famous flyer’s DNA from old envelopes, researchers hope to finally put to rest one of the 20th century’s greatest mysteries.
Earhart disappeared–along with her navigator, Fred Noonan–in 1937, when she was trying to become the first female to fly around the globe. Communication with her plane was lost as she flew near Howland Island in the Pacific Ocean. The U.S. government searched in vain for the two adventurers’ remains, and on January 5, 1939, Earhart was officially pronounced dead. But speculation never stopped on whether the duo died in a crash at sea, or whether they survived for some time on a deserted island.
Just two years ago researchers from the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery found bone fragments on Nikumaroro Island that could be part of Amelia Earhart’s finger. The finding is controversial because a dead sea turtle was also found nearby, raising suggestions that the purported piece of Earhart actually belongs to a turtle. According to National Geographic:
Right now, “anyone ...
February 15 2011
For Fruit Flies, There’s Such a Thing as “Too Sexy”
Beauty doesn’t only fade within a lifetime–it also fades genetically over the course of several generations, according to new research. Scientists studying populations of sexually attractive male fruit flies have found that there’s a limit to their evolutionary success–and that there may actually be a disadvantage to being too sexy.
For the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers genetically modified male fruit flies, causing them to give off excessive amounts of attractive pheromones. The scientists then introduced a flock of these foxy fellows to a normal fruit fly population. They discovered that the female flies mated with these modified flies more often initially, and the proportion of super-sexy males increased for a while–but the proportions returned to normal after seven generations.
As The New York Times reports:
“Even though we were able to make males more attractive, there must have been a fitness cost,” said Katrina McGuigan, a biologist at the University of Queensland and one of the study’s authors. “While sexual selection is really powerful, there are consequences to nonsexual traits.”
It’s not yet clear what genetic disadvantage these fruit fly ladykillers ...
January 18 2011
I Like Your Genes… Let’s Be Friends!
Whether we’re making them or receiving them, first impressions can have big consequences. Our initial gut feelings transform strangers into potential friends, acquaintances into future partners. And according to some scientists, that initial whiff of personality is tied to genetics.
Looking at data on friendships and genetics from both the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and the Framingham Heart Study, scientists noticed two trends: people with a genetic variant linked to alcoholism tended to flock together, while those with a genetic variant tied to metabolism and openness to new ideas tended to stay away from each other.
TIME quotes lead researcher James Fowler of the University of California-San Diego:
“This might be the first step towards understanding the biology of ‘chemistry,’ the feeling you have of … whether you like or dislike a person [almost immediately],” Fowler says, noting that this can affect both romantic connections and friendships. “We might choose friends not [only] because of social features we consciously notice but because of biological and even genetic features that we unconsciously notice.” In turn, the friends we have could then affect the potential partners we meet.
Although the researchers analyzed six genetic markers, only two of ...
November 30 2010
Guilt-Free Procrastination: This Online Game Could Cure Genetic Diseases
Have a brain for puzzles? What about ones that help advance science?
A new online game called Phylo is harnessing the power of idle brains on the Internet–asking any and all to help align genomic sequences. Human brain power is used instead of computer power because, as the researchers explain in the press release, humans are still better at some things than computers are:
“There are some calculations that the human brain does more efficiently than any computer can, such as recognizing a face,” explained lead researcher Dr. Jérôme Waldispuhl of the School of Computer Science. “Recognizing and sorting the patterns in the human genetic code falls in that category. Our new online game enables players to have fun while contributing to genetic research–players can even choose which genetic disease they want to help decode.”
When game players find the best arrangements of colorful little boxes, they’re really making the best matches they can between the genome sequences of different animals–like a human and a monkey, or a dog and a bat. The researchers, from the structural biology group at McGill University, loaded the sequences of genes related to diseases like breast cancer into the program, adding in the genetic data for many different species. You can then slide the colored boxes (stand-ins for the nucleotides in DNA) around to minimize the number of mismatches and gaps and maximize the number of matched nucleotides. The matches show which parts of the genes have been preserved across different species and are therefore important, according to the Phylo about page:
These similarities may be consequences of functional, structural, or evolutionary relationships between the sequences. From such an alignment, biologists may infer shared evolutionary origins, identify functionally important sites, and illustrate mutation events. More importantly, biologists can trace the source of certain genetic diseases.
What I noticed in playing the game is that the scoring doesn’t seem to fit the game’s objective–the highest points are sometimes awarded for just squishing all the code together, not necessarily for making the most nucleotide matches. I also think the penalty for opening a gap (a stand-in for a genetic mutation) is too weighty. But all in all it’s quite addictive, until you get stuck on a sequence–you can’t move on to the next level until you equal the computer’s score, which, at least in my experience, can be tricky at times, and you can run out of time if you get stuck. Play the tutorial for more information and detailed directions.
In the end, you compare the gene sequences for up to eight different species, trying to make the best matches and beat the computer. Everyone’s alignments are analyzed by the game, and will contribute to the global database as an “optimization” of the computer’s sequence alignments. The creators even plan to create a Facebook application to play the game (which they optimistically say could rival Farmville in popularity), but right now it’s hosted at the group’s website. Give it a try and let us know what you think in the comments.
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Not Exactly Rocket Science: Foldit – tapping the wisdom of computer gamers to solve tough scientific puzzles
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Tetris could prevent post-traumatic stress disorder flashbacks (but quiz games make them worse)
DISCOVER: This is Your Brain on Video Games
Image: Phylo
October 20 2010
“Dance Your PhD” Winner Knows the Molecular Moves
Have you ever seen an amino acid really get down? If not, now is your chance. The winning video produced for Science’s Dance Your PhD contest features an amino acid that knows how to shake its molecules. The contest asks brave researchers to explain their PhDs in the language of dance.
This year’s winner is Maureen McKeague, a chemistry Ph.D. student at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. She’ll collect a $1,000 prize ($500 for being a finalist, $500 for winning) from Science. With no further ado, here’s the video:
Did you get all that? If a little more explanation would help, here’s how ScienceNOW sums it up:
The lab is exploring a chemical technique called SELEX–systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment–which generates short segments of DNA and RNA called aptamers. These nucleic acids can be designed to stick to almost any target molecule. For McKeague’s Ph.D. research, the target molecule–played by undergraduate student and Scottish folk dancer Charlotte Bradley–is the amino acid homocysteine. High levels of this amino acid are an indicator of cardiovascular disease. McKeague’s aim is to use SELEX to create aptamers to cheaply and accurately measure homocysteine in blood samples.
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Discoblog: Dance, Fembot, Dance–Right Into the Uncanny Valley
Discoblog: Scientist Dance Styles: Glee Episode, Spanish Whodunnit, Internet Love Orgy
Discoblog: Very Serious Scientific Study Asks: Which Dance Moves Drive Girls Wild?
Discoblog: Babies Are Born to Bop, Boogie, and Groove
To Catch Hamburglars, McDonald’s Installs DNA-Spraying Security System
A McDonald’s in the Dutch city of Rotterdam has decided to crack down on burglaries with a high-tech security system previously used in the city’s jewelry stores. To catch anyone who makes off with the cash from the till (or a bag of Big Macs), the store’s managers installed a device that stealthily sprays synthetic DNA on the thief.
The system involves a small, strategically placed orange box that shoots out synthetic DNA when an employee pulls an unusual trigger: Removing a €10 bill from a special bill clip behind the counter not only activates the device, it also alerts the police that a robbery is in progress. The synthetic DNA spray is visible under ultraviolet light and contains markers that are unique to that location’s device, allowing police to match a suspect with the locale.
The security-conscious McDonald’s advertises the presence of its system with a sign on the door reading, “You Steal, You’re Marked.” The New York Times explains that the effect of the device is, well, subtle:
The police acknowledge that they have yet to make an arrest based on the DNA mist, which was developed in Britain by two brothers, one a policeman and the other a chemist. But they credit its presence — and signs posted prominently warning of its use — for what they call a precipitous decline in crime rates (though they could not provide actual figures to back that up).
There have been misfires–some McDonald’s employees have grabbed the special €10 bill when there was no crime in progress, causing the police to rush to the scene. And some customers have been “inadvertently” sprayed. Happily, those customers weren’t accused of living lives of crime.
The owner of the company that distributes the spray, the Rhine Group, rather depressingly attributed the technique’s success to the ignorance of the McDonald’s-eating masses. From The New York Times:
Much of the spray’s effectiveness, he said, comes from the mystique surrounding DNA. “No one really knows what it is,” he said. “No one really knows how it works.”
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Image: flickr / EAWB
October 13 2010
The Platypus Can Poison You 80 Different Ways
The platypus is a bit like a fruitcake. Shove a bunch of leftover genes in there, mix it up and send it to your relatives see what kind of animal you get.
That’s kind of the approach evolution used when designing this odd creature’s venom; scientists have just determined that the venom contains over 80 different toxins in 13 different classes. The poison can kill small animals, and can leave humans in pain for weeks. The venom is delivered through a barb on the male’s foot–it’s thought that the fellas use the poison during mating season to show dominance.
At least three of the toxins are unique to the platypus and the rest are strikingly similar to proteins from a variety of animals including snakes, lizards, starfish, and sea anemones. It seems that some of these toxins have evolved separately in different animal lineages to perform the same function, a process called convergent evolution. The study’s lead author, Wesley Warren, told Nature News:
Warren says that this probably happens when genes that perform normal chores, such as blood coagulation, become duplicated independently in different lineages, where they evolve the capacity to carry out other jobs. Animals end up using the same genes as building blocks for venom because only a subset of the proteins the genes encode have the structural and functional properties to become venoms, he adds.
Learning more about how these toxins attack our system and induce inflammation, nerve damage, muscle contraction, and blood coagulation, could teach us how to design drugs with these effects (like coagulation for hemopheliacs), or their opposite (like new pain relievers).
We first started unraveling the platypus genome in 2008, when it was sequenced and revealed a long list of this marvel of monotreme evolution. The platypus lays eggs, but it also lactates and has hair like mammals, though it has no nipples. It has ten sex chromosomes, which resemble those of birds, but uses genes from mammals and reptiles to fertilize and lay its eggs, which are produced from only one of two ovaries (the left one). It also has fewer smell receptors than other mammals, but this diminished olfaction isn’t that big of a deal, because it hunts by detecting its prey’s electric current.
Not only does the animal itself mystify biologists, but its name has also become a bone of contention among linguists, says Neatorama:
Pluralizing the creature has proven to be quite a problem not for just laymen, but even to scientists. There is still no universally accepted plural to the word. Most people believe the plural form should be “platypi,” but the real Greek plural would be “platypodes.” Scientists stay away from both of those terms and prefer to use “platypuses” or just “platypus” no matter how many in question.
Related content:
The Loom: Did Grandma Have A Pouch? (And Other Thoughts on the Opossum’s Genome)
Gene Expression: The long fuse of mammalian diversity
DISCOVER: Sex, Ys, and Platypuses
DISCOVER: #90: The Platypus Genome Is a Mash-Up of Reptiles, Birds, and Mammals
80beats: Komodo Dragons Kill by Combining Tearing Teeth With Vile Venom
Image: Flickr/dnatheist
Does a 200-Year-Old Gourd Contain the Blood of a Beheaded King?
Dried blood on a handkerchief, a $700,000 gourd and one dead king. A forensic murder mystery?
Nope, just another genetics paper. I mean, it is gourd season, what did you expect?
The dead king in question is Louis XVI (the last of the French kings), who was ceremoniously beheaded on January 21st, 1793. After the beheading, attendees rushed the stage and dipped their handkerchiefs in the royal blood.
Over two hundred years later, some of that blood may have been found–dried to the inside of a decorative gunpowder gourd. The story goes that one of the attendees rushed home and stuffed the bloody handkerchief into the gourd for safekeeping.
In a study published in the journal Forensic Science International: Genetics, researchers analyzed some of the dried blood scraped from the inside of the gourd to find out if it really could be the king’s blood. They checked the Y chromosome to see if the blood-donor was male, and checked for the presence of a blue-eye gene, HERC2. The blood was indeed from the correct time period and belonged to a blue-eyed male–so far, the evidence fits the blue-eyed king. More genetic information about the family will be needed to confirm the identity, the study’s lead author told Wired’s Dave Mosher:
“The next step is find a descendant either of the king or his mother,” said Davide Pettener, a population geneticist at the University of Bologna in Italy who helped with the analysis. “Otherwise we’ll have to try to get a sample of the dried heart of Louis XVI’s son.”
The son died of poisoning two years after Louis was killed and his heart is stored in a glass vase at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Denis, but it might be difficult to get permission to sample.
The family who owned the gourd wanted to see if the blood really did belong to Louis XVI, and approached Pettener’s colleague to analyze it. The gourd was allegedly given to Napoleon Bonaparte but for the last 100 years belonged to the family, the researchers told Wired:
The gourd, presently valued at about 500,000 euro ($700,000), is emblazoned with key figures of the French Revolution and bears an inscription that reads, as translated from French into English by the researchers, “Maximilien Bourdaloue on January 21st, dipped his handkerchief in the blood of the king after his beheading.”
Related content:
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Gene Expression: Inbreeding & the downfall of the Spanish Hapsburgs
Image: Davide Pettener/Elsevier
June 03 2010
The Tell-Tale Underwear: Genetics Co. Finds Out Who’s Been Cheating
Worried your man is cheating? Don’t rely on hunches, send his undies to the lab. Some suspicious people are paying upwards of $500 to air their dirty laundry, and a DNA-testing company is happily testing suspected spouses’ condoms, sheets, and tighty whities for genetic signs of infidelity.
Chromosomal Laboratories Inc., the same company that has offered paternal-testing giveaways on Father’s Day, is now in the unmentionables business. The company offers a smorgasbord of tests starting with a UV-light sweep and going as far as a microscopic search for sperm heads.
On the version of the company’s website designed for suspicious men, the biological sleuths describe a test for Prostate Specific Antigen and boast: “The technique is extremely powerful because it can confirm the presence of semen even in samples from sterile or vasectomized men.”
An order sheet (pdf), which “should not come in contact with any of the samples,” allows concerned lovers to mark the quantity of saliva, sperm, or DNA tests that the lab should perform. A similar site exists for women testing their husbands’ or boyfriends’ garments since the company can also screen for vaginal fluid, and a simple cheek swab can rule out the concerned partner’s own DNA that might contaminate the “sample.”
The Phoenix New Times broke the story, interviewing Melissa Beddow, an analyst for the company:
Beddow says stealing someone’s underwear and testing it for DNA isn’t an invasion of privacy because the tests aren’t used in court–although, in some cases, like divorce proceedings, Chromosomal Laboratory’s results can be admitted into evidence.
Related content:
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DISCOVER: Einstein’s Theory of Fidelity
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Image: flickr / Egan Snow
May 27 2010
Genetically Engineered Bugs Can Smell Blue Light
Do I smell a banana? Nope. It’s a blue light I’m smelling.
Fruit fly larvae made this mistake while participating in a study recently published in Frontiers in Neuroscience Behavior. By adding a light-sensitive protein to certain smell receptors in the larvae, German scientists allowed the genetically engineered bugs to essentially smell light.
The team, under the guidance of Klemens Störtkuhl at Ruhr University Bochum, is attempting to understand “olfactory coding”–how the brain transforms chemical signals into perceptible smells. Normally, a fly’s olfactory receptor neurons only send an electrical signal to its brain when the fly smells something, but by adding a protein the researchers caused a neuron to fire when the one-millimeter bug was basking in blue light.
The fly brain uses some of its 28 olfactory neurons to detect bad smells, and others for good ones. Protein puppeteers, the researchers could pick which neuron to add the light-sensing protein to. The good-smelling neurons respond to a smorgasbord of fly-friendly scents: like banana, marzipan, and glue (apparently rotting fruit gives off these scents). By attaching the light-sensitive protein to one of these neurons, researchers caused the typically light-fearing insects to crawl straight towards the blue glow.
According to a ScienceDaily article, given their successful mapping of these larvae olfactory neurons, the researchers next hope to make adult fruit flies go bananas.
Related content:
Discoblog: Neuroscientist Says We Perceive “Smounds”—Half Sound, Half Smell
80beats: A Life-Extending Coup: Flies That Can’t Smell Food Live 30 Percent Longer
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Smell a lady, shrug off flu – how female odours give male mice an immune boost
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Elephants smell the difference between human ethnic groups
DISCOVER: The Brain: The First Yardstick for Measuring Smells
Image: flickr / Jason Gulledge
May 18 2010
Welcome, UC Berkeley Freshmen! Now Hand Over Your DNA Samples
What Do a Newfoundland Dog and Tiger Woods Have in Common?
April 27 2010
Stem Cell-Powered Worm Doesn’t Age, Can Grow a New Head
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