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Category: Biology

New evidence shows cancer is not as heritable as once thought

New evidence shows cancer is not as heritable as once thought

University of Alberta: While cancer is a genetic disease, the genetic component is just one piece of the puzzle — and researchers need to consider environmental and metabolic factors as well, according to a research review by a leading expert at the University of Alberta. Nearly all the theories about the causes of cancer that have emerged over the past several centuries can be sorted into three larger groups, said David Wishart, professor in the departments of biological sciences and…

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Jupiter’s moon Europa may have water where life could exist, scientists suggest

Jupiter’s moon Europa may have water where life could exist, scientists suggest

The Guardian reports: Subterranean pools of salty water may be commonplace on Jupiter’s moon, Europa, according to researchers who believe the sites could be promising spots to search for signs of life beyond Earth. Evidence for the shallow pools, not far beneath the frozen surface of the Jovian moon, emerged when scientists noticed that giant parallel ridges stretching for hundreds of miles on Europa were strikingly similar to surface features discovered on the Greenland ice sheet. If the extensive ice…

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Could gut microbes regulate appetite and body temperature?

Could gut microbes regulate appetite and body temperature?

Science reports: With more microbes than cells in our body, it’s not surprising that bacteria and other invisible “guests” influence our metabolism, immune system, and even our behavior. Now, researchers studying mice have worked out how bacteria in the mammalian gut can ping the brain to regulate an animal’s appetite and body temperature—and it involves the same molecular pathway the immune system uses to detect bacterial pathogens. “It’s quite an important finding,” says Antoine Adamantidis, a neuroscientist at the University…

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DeepMind software that can predict the 3D shape of proteins is already changing biology

DeepMind software that can predict the 3D shape of proteins is already changing biology

Nature reports: For more than a decade, molecular biologist Martin Beck and his colleagues have been trying to piece together one of the world’s hardest jigsaw puzzles: a detailed model of the largest molecular machine in human cells. This behemoth, called the nuclear pore complex, controls the flow of molecules in and out of the nucleus of the cell, where the genome sits. Hundreds of these complexes exist in every cell. Each is made up of more than 1,000 proteins…

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Evidence is building that insects, octopus and other invertebrates feel emotions

Evidence is building that insects, octopus and other invertebrates feel emotions

ABC News (AU) reports: Up until the mid-1980s, human babies didn’t feel pain. Of course that’s not actually true, but due to research conducted in the 18th and early 19th centuries, it was an attitude that still lingered among a small minority of scientists and medical professionals. So much so that some infant surgery was still conducted without, or with very little, anaesthesia in the US into the ’80s. Today, the question of physical and emotional experience has moved beyond…

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Scientists sequence the complete human genome for the first time

Scientists sequence the complete human genome for the first time

CNN reports: In 2003, the Human Genome Project made history when it sequenced 92% of the human genome. But for nearly two decades since, scientists have struggled to decipher the remaining 8%. Now, a team of nearly 100 scientists from the Telomere-to-Telomere (T2T) Consortium has unveiled the complete human genome — the first time it’s been sequenced in its entirety, the researchers say. “Having this complete information will allow us to better understand how we form as an individual organism…

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Before neurons evolved, mechanics may have governed animal behavior

Before neurons evolved, mechanics may have governed animal behavior

Jordana Cepelewicz writes: The biophysicist Manu Prakash vividly remembers the moment, late one night in a colleague’s laboratory a dozen years ago, when he peered into a microscope and met his new obsession. The animal beneath the lenses wasn’t much to look at, resembling an amoeba more than anything else: a flattened multicellular blob, only 20 microns thick and a few millimeters across, with neither head nor tail. It moved on thousands of cilia that blanketed its underside to form…

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Even worms feel pain

Even worms feel pain

David P. Barash writes: Who feels more pain, a person or a cat? A cat or a cockroach? It’s widely assumed animal intelligence and the capacity to feel pain are positively correlated, with brainier animals more likely to feel pain, and vice versa. But what if our intuition is wrong and the opposite is true? Perhaps animals that are less intelligent feel not only as much pain but even more. Thinking about pain is psychologically challenging. It can be, well,…

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Animals that sense impending catastrophes

Animals that sense impending catastrophes

Norman Miller writes: In 2004, a tsunami triggered by a 9.1 magnitude undersea quake off Indonesia decimated coastal communities around the Indian Ocean, killing at least 225,000 people across a dozen countries. The huge death toll was in part caused by the fact that many communities received no warning. Local manmade early warning systems, such as tidal and earthquake sensors, failed to raise any clear alert. Many sensors were out of action due to maintenance issues, while many coastal areas…

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Altruism in birds? Magpies have outwitted scientists by helping each other remove tracking devices

Altruism in birds? Magpies have outwitted scientists by helping each other remove tracking devices

Shutterstock By Dominique Potvin, University of the Sunshine Coast When we attached tiny, backpack-like tracking devices to five Australian magpies for a pilot study, we didn’t expect to discover an entirely new social behaviour rarely seen in birds. Our goal was to learn more about the movement and social dynamics of these highly intelligent birds, and to test these new, durable and reusable devices. Instead, the birds outsmarted us. As our new research paper explains, the magpies began showing evidence…

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A billion years before sex, ancient cells were equipped for it

A billion years before sex, ancient cells were equipped for it

Jake Buehler writes: Most complex organisms engage in a strange bit of genomic math at some point in their lives: To multiply, they subtract and then add. That is, to reproduce through the process of meiosis they create specialized sex cells, or gametes, with half the usual number of chromosomes; they then merge pairs of those gametes to create new individuals with a full, unique genome. Sexual reproduction is nearly ubiquitous among eukaryotes — organisms from kelp to koalas that…

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Some parallels between birdsong and human speech

Some parallels between birdsong and human speech

Betsy Mason writes: In our quest to find what makes humans unique, we often compare ourselves with our closest relatives: the great apes. But when it comes to understanding the quintessentially human capacity for language, scientists are finding that the most tantalizing clues lay farther afield. Human language is made possible by an impressive aptitude for vocal learning. Infants hear sounds and words, form memories of them, and later try to produce those sounds, improving as they grow up. Most…

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Secrets of early animal evolution revealed by chromosome ‘tectonics’

Secrets of early animal evolution revealed by chromosome ‘tectonics’

Viviane Callier writes: Chromosomes, the bundles of DNA that star in the mitotic ballet of cell division, play a leading role in complex life. But the question of how chromosomes came to exist and evolve has long been discouragingly hard to answer. This is due partly to the lack of chromosome-level genomic information and partly to the suspicion that eons of evolutionary change have washed away any clues about that ancient history. Now, in a paper appearing today in Science…

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The inner lives of farmed animals

The inner lives of farmed animals

Lori Marino writes: We’ve all heard them and used them – the common references to farmed animals that appeal to the worst part of human nature: ‘pearls before swine’, ‘what a pig’, ‘like lambs to the slaughter’, ‘bird brain’. These phrases represent our species’ view of farmed animals as not particularly bright, uncaring about their treatment or fate, and generally bland and monolithic in their identities. My team of researchers asked: ‘What is there to really know about them?’ Our…

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Scientists find hints of a hidden mass extinction 30 million years ago

Scientists find hints of a hidden mass extinction 30 million years ago

Inside Science reports: Nearly two-thirds of mammal species in Africa and the Arabian Peninsula may have died off about 30 million years ago, a mass extinction that escaped detection for decades until now, a new study finds. During a time span known as the Eocene-Oligocene transition between 40 million and 34 million years ago, Earth’s climate shifted dramatically, with the planet growing cooler, ice sheets expanding and sea levels dropping worldwide. During the Eocene, Antarctica was covered by lush forests,…

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How the speed of climate change is unbalancing the insect world

How the speed of climate change is unbalancing the insect world

Oliver Milman writes: The climate crisis is set to profoundly alter the world around us. Humans will not be the only species to suffer from the calamity. Huge waves of die-offs will be triggered across the animal kingdom as coral reefs turn ghostly white and tropical rainforests collapse. For a period, some researchers suspected that insects may be less affected, or at least more adaptable, than mammals, birds and other groups of creatures. With their large, elastic populations and their…

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