Next antibacterial line of defense? Russian frogs

Before the advent of refrigeration, Russians had a neat trick for keeping their milk from spoiling. They’d drop a live frog in the milk bucket.

The Russians weren’t sure how this amphibian dairy treatment worked, but they were convinced it did.

Since then, researchers have discovered that the goo some frogs secrete through their skin has antibacterial and antifungal properties.

One group of scientists led by a Russian chemist is trying to break down this frog goo at a molecular level. The researchers have found compounds they hope will lead to new medicines.

  12:01 pm  |   December 21 2012   |  185 notes  

aurora-storm asked: I hate to be one of "those people", but women are sorely under-represented in the sciences. The original x-ray crystallography (and other data) that Watson and Crick used was actually the work of Rosalind Franklin. They just happened to be the ones to get a hold of her work and capitalize on it.

This is absolutely true. Franklin was short-changed when the crystal structure of DNA was announced. I actually have a post about the gender gap in science in the pipeline - hope you enjoy it!

  4:35 pm  |   December 20 2012   |  56 notes  

From Watson and Crick to today, our view of DNA - and a bit of fact checking

The above image on the left is from Watson and Crick’s famous 1953 paper, in which they first published their proposed structure of DNA. Watson and Crick used x-ray crystallography to image the DNA. It’s a technique that involves shooting x-rays at a crystal of your target molecule and then analyzing the diffraction pattern that results. Today, technology has improved so much so that a team from Italy gave us the right image, with unprecedented detail of the famous double helix using electron microscopy. I didn’t place the above images side by side for no reason. The progression from the left to the right represents the progression of the cutting edge of science imaging over the past 60+ years. We’ve come a long way, huh?

I must, however, include a note of caution. You probably heard about this story several weeks ago when it was first announced. The accomplishment is indeed amazing, but you might not know you weren’t quite given the whole truth. The authors of the paper claimed that they imaged a single thread of DNA strung between two silicon pillars. PZ Myers took one look at the image and called shenanigans. Since the width of the DNA and the distance between spirals is roughly equal, why is the image on the right so thick? Myers dug a bit deeper and found out that the image isn’t in fact a single strand but instead a cord of at least six strands of DNA, since a single strand is too unstable to be imaged in the current setup. Over at the Guardian, science blogger Stephen Curry rips into the reporting of the scientific finding.

The conclusion? The Italian team made an awesome advancement, but their findings were overhyped by sloppy science writing.

  4:01 pm  |   December 20 2012   |  93 notes  

Frost flowers aren’t just beautiful - they’re home (if you’re a bacteria)!

Researchers from the University of Washington were probably stunned when they showed up at North Pole and were greeted by a veritable meadow of flowers - frost flowers. As Robert Krulwich explains, frost flowers look amazing but their formation is well understood:

On Sept. 2, 2009, the day Jeff’s colleague Matthias Wietz took these pictures, the air was extremely cold and extremely dry, colder than the ocean surface. When the air gets that different from the sea, the dryness pulls moisture off little bumps in the ice, bits of ice vaporize, the air gets humid — but only for a while. The cold makes water vapor heavy. The air wants to release that excess weight, so crystal by crystal, air turns back into ice, creating delicate, feathery tendrils that reach sometimes two, three inches high, like giant snowflakes. The sea, literally, blossoms.

Due to the way they form, frost flowers also suck salt from the surrounding water - in fact, they become three times more salty than the sea. So the researchers asked themselves, can anything survive in a frost flower, given the extreme cold and saltiness? The answer was a resounding yes - the research team found literally millions of bacteria in each frost flower, living in just a few milliliters worth of water. The scientists are are busy trying to figure out what those bacteria are doing. I, however, and content to sit back and enjoy their beauty.

(Source: NPR)

  3:18 pm  |   December 20 2012   |  266 notes  

What was the biggest science discovery of 2012?

Was it the discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN? Was it the landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars? Was it something you may not have even heard of, like the synthesis of XNA (which I’m totally going to go read about, by the way)? Wired Science walks you through some of the best science stories of the year. Check them out, and then be sure to weigh in with your favorite!

  12:01 pm  |   December 20 2012   |  93 notes  

The year’s best microscopy photos

The closer you look, the more amazing nature appears. These amazing microscopy pictures prove just that. Be sure to click through and check out the whole gallery.

Top - Red algae Scagelia

Bottom left - A common East coast U.S. fern, Polypodium virginianum, showing a cluster of spore-filled sporangia and specialized protective hairs called paraphyses.

Bottom right - Beta-tubulin expression of a Drosophila third instar larval brain, with attached eye imaginal discs.

(Source: Wired)

  2:00 pm  |   December 19 2012   |  190 notes  

Spider builds its own spider decoys in web

Think the above picture is a spider? Well look a little harder - it’s actually a decoy made out of debris and assembled by the Cyclosa spider. Wired has more: 

A spider that builds elaborate, fake spiders and hangs them in its web has been discovered in the Peruvian Amazon.

Believed to be a new species in the genus Cyclosa, the arachnid crafts the larger spider from leaves, debris and dead insects. Though Cyclosa includes other sculpting arachnids, this is the first one observed to build a replica with multiple, spidery legs.

Scientists suspect the fake spiders serve as decoys, part of a defense mechanism meant to confuse or distract predators. “It seems like a really well evolved and very specialized behavior,” said Phil Torres, who described the find in a blog entry written for Rainforest Expeditions. Torres, a biologist and science educator, divides his time between Southern California and Peru, where he’s involved in research and education projects.

“Considering that spiders can already make really impressive geometric designs with their webs, it’s no surprise that they can take that leap to make an impressive design with debris and other things,” he said.

  12:01 pm  |   December 19 2012   |  667 notes  

Japanese astronaut to get a robot companion aboard the ISS

You know the only thing lonelier than Sgt. Pepper’s Hearts Club Band, and the Heartbreak Hotel, and the number one? Being alone and also not on Earth. Space, for all its wonder, for all its provocations, for all its adventure, is an isolating place — which is why behavioral screening is part of the astronaut selection process, and also why some the most intriguing scientific experiments being conducted aboard the ISS are psychological in scope.

For Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata, though, space-borne loneliness may be assuaged by a different kind of experiment. A team of researchers at Tokyo University — along with the robot creator Tomotaka Takahashi and the ad agency Dentsu — have been since 2011 spearheading a project to give Wakata some companionship during his upcoming stint on the International Space Station. That project? A small humanoid robot that will be sent to live with Wakata on the orbiting laboratory. The android will be 13.4 inches tall and 2.2 pounds. It will arrive at the ISS next summer, a few months ahead of Wakata’s own arrival. Its name is still to be determined — by a public contest — but it will look, per a sketch released yesterday, something [like the above].

Spacey! Yet for all the anime-ed cheekiness of the android’s design, it was built to fulfill a fairly important purpose: to reduce the stress that astronauts naturally encounter as they’re orbiting the Earth. ”The robot would provide stress-relieving facial expressions and words (to the astronauts),” a representative from JAXA, Japan’s space agency, told the Wall Street Journal when the project was announced last year. And it would do that in part by scanning astronauts’ faces to detect any signs of stress, and — slightly more creepily — by taking pictures of them. 

  4:01 pm  |   December 18 2012   |  37 notes  

David Chambon likes to do the dew

He took these amazing photos of insects covered in dew. His work almost makes me want to wake up early to see the morning dew…

…but not quite.

(Source: plus.google.com)

  2:00 pm  |   December 18 2012   |  1,912 notes  

Virus creates pacemaker in living heart using the heart’s own cells

This is a pretty amazing advance. Traditionally, when a patient’s heart is malfunctioning, an electrical pacemaker is inserted to maintain a stable heart beat, but the technology has some associated risks and limitations.  While it has only been tested so far in animals, the potential for a genetically modified virus to create a pacemaker out of the heart’s own cells is obviously very exciting. This BBC article has more:

The heartbeat is controlled by electrical signals and if these go awry the consequences can be fatal.

Scientists injected a genetically-modified virus into guinea pigs to turn part of their heart into a new, working pacemaker.

The study was published in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

A human heart is made up of billions of cells, but researchers say fewer than 10,000 are responsible for controlling the heartbeat.

Age and disease can lead to problems such as the heart pumping too fast or too slow - and it can even stop completely, in what is known as a cardiac arrest.

  12:01 pm  |   December 18 2012   |  578 notes