And now, BIOLOGY In The News! Part III Plus Dillon Bustin!

And now,
BIOLOGY
In The News!
Part III
Plus
Dillon Bustin!
Sunday, Dec. 07, 2008
UK scientists explore pollution reducer
By Jim Warren - jwarren@herald-leader.com
Eliminating greenhouse gases and developing new, nonpetroleum-based fuels are two of America's biggest
environmental challenges. University of Kentucky
researchers think algae might offer an answer.
They propose to employ algae to scrub carbon dioxide
from the flue-gases of coal-fire power plants — of which
Kentucky has many — and use the algae to produce an oil
that could then be refined into fuel.
"The reason algae is so interesting is that it can directly convert CO2 into biomass
very quickly, more efficiently than anything else we know of," says Rodney
Andrews, director of UK's Center for Applied Energy Research."Then, you
basically squeeze the oil out of the algae and refine it as you would other natural
oils."
The energy center is working on the project along with the UK College of
Agriculture's Department of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering. The state of
Kentucky has provided more than $500,000 for the effort.
As a first step in the research, Czarena Crofcheck,
a biological engineer with the UK biosystems and
agriculture engineering department, is searching
for a strain of algae that would remove CO2 from
power plant gases with the greatest efficiency.
Finding the right strain could take a while.
Crofcheck notes that there are at least 50,000
species of algae.
And, as in many alternative energy projects, there are some problems to be
overcome. According to Andrews, capturing the carbon dioxide emitted
from a 500-megawatt power plant would require 5,000 to 6,000 acres of
ponds containing algae. To get around that, UK hopes to contain the algae
in vessels that would operate more efficiently at much smaller size.
Expense is another issue. As of now, it costs $18 to $30 a gallon to produce
algae oil, which then has to be refined into fuel.
But Andrews says producing fuel really is a secondary goal of the UK effort.
"The main idea is to get rid of the CO2 and then figure out what you do with the
algae," he said.
Monday, Apr. 05, 2010
Visitors to ukTech10
will see a smaller
scale version of the
algae scrubber
shown here that is
used to grow algae
for use in biofuels
and bioproducts by
using carbon dioxide
and heat from coalfired power plants.
Researcher Mark
Crocker of the
Biofuels Research
Group in the UK
Center for Applied
Energy Research
will be on hand.
4 to 7 p.m.
Thursday at
The
Penguin, on
Main Street
across from
Lexington
Center.
Admission is
free.
Nets and New Drug Make Inroads Against Malaria
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
Published: February 1, 2008
Widespread distribution of mosquito nets and a new medicine sharply
reduced malaria deaths in several African countries, World Health
Organization researchers reported Thursday. The report was one of the
most hopeful signs in the long battle against a disease that is estimated to
kill a million children a year in poor tropical countries. “We saw a very
drastic impact,” said Dr. Arata Kochi, chief of malaria for the W.H.O. “If
this is done everywhere, we can reduce the disease burden 80 to 85
percent in most African countries within five years.”
There have been earlier reports of success with nets and the new medicine,
artemisinin, a Chinese drug made from wormwood. But most have been based
on relatively small samples; this is the first study to compare national
programs. “This is extremely exciting,” said Dr. Michel Kazatchkine,
executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and
Malaria. “If we can scale up like this everywhere, we should be able to
eliminate malaria as a major public health threat in many countries.”
In Ethiopia, deaths of children from malaria dropped more than 50 percent.
In Rwanda, they dropped more than 60 percent in only two months.
From Wikipedia:
Sweet Wormwood was used by Chinese
herbalists in ancient times to treat fever, but
had fallen out of common use, but was
rediscovered in 1970 when the Chinese
Handbook of Prescriptions for Emergency
Treatments (340 AD) was found.
In 1971, scientists demonstrated that the plant
extracts had antimalarial activity in primate
models, and in 1972 the active ingredient,
artemisinin (formerly referred to as
arteannuin), was isolated and its chemical
structure described
Synthetic biology can help extend anti-malaria drug effectiveness
Published: Friday, March 6, 2009 – e! Science News
In addition to providing a simple and much less expensive means of
making artemisinin, the most powerful anti-malaria drug in use today,
synthetic biology can also help to extend the effectiveness of this drug.
Fermenting artemisinin via engineered microbes, such as yeast, can be
done at far lower costs than extracting the drug from Artemsisia annua, the
sweet wormwood tree, making microbial-based artemisinin a much
cheaper but equally effective treatment.
Restricting access to this technology to responsible manufacturers who will
bundle artemisinin as part of an anti-malarial drug "cocktail" rather than selling it
as a monotherapy should delay or even prevent malaria parasites from developing
resistance. Recently, there have been reports of malaria parasites in West Africa
showing some signs of resistance to artemisinin. "The problem has been that
some manufacturers have sold artemisinin as a monotherapy rather than as a cotherapy as is recommended by the World Health Organization," said Jay Keasling
"Any drug that is used as a monotherapy raises the possibility of microbes
developing resistance to it. Right now artemisinin is grown by farmers all over
the world and sold to anybody. Through the synthetic biology technique, access to
the cheapest artemisinin can be restricted to manufacturers who agree to sell it as
part of a co-therapy drug."
In 2002, Keasling and members of his research group, using the tools of
synthetic biology, set out to engineer a microbe that would perform most of
the chemistry needed to make artemisinin in order to substantially reduce
production costs. In 2003, they reported their first success. By transplanting
genes from yeast and from the sweet wormwood tree into E. coli bacteria
and then bypassing the E. coli's metabolic pathway and engineering a
new one based on the mevalonate pathway in yeast, they were able to induce
the bacteria to produce amorphadiene, a chemical precursor to artemisinin.
"Initially production was low, but we have used gene re-synthesis and other
techniques to improve the yield of amorphadiene in E. coli by a million fold
from where started," Keasling said.
In 2004, Keasling received a $42.6 million grant from the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation, through the Institute for OneWorld Health, a San Franciscobased nonprofit pharmaceutical company, to further develop his microbial
artemisinin technology
Keasling said that the same synthetic biology techniques used to make
the microbial-based artemisinin should be equally effective in the
drive to produce a next generation of biofuels – carbon-neutral
transportation fuels derived from plant biomass.
"Artemisinin is hydrocarbon and we built a microbial platform to produce
it. We can remove a few of the genes to take out artemisinin and put in a
different hydrocarbon to make biofuels."
As Keasling is fond of saying, "With the tools of synthetic biology, we
don't have to just accept what Nature has given us."
La Belle Riviere - Dillon Bustin
Back in the days the old books describe
Back in the days of the Indian tribes
They prayed to the river to forever flow
And the name that they give her was Ohio
They fished her clear waters they camped on her hills
bathed at the shallows they drank at the rills
Some Frenchmen they came scouting for game
Gazed at that river and asked of her name
The next to come in were the government men
With their bankers and lawyers their soldiers and then
They told the shanty folk well you needn’t fear
To let the river be dammed by our engineers
With a lock over here a dock over there
Bridges and trestles spanning the air
We’ll build a pump house above every town
Bring the fresh water in and let the sewage float down
Chorus
Chorus: La Belle Riviere the Great Shining Water
Casquinampogamou le Fleuve du Saint :Louis
No matter the name the meaning’s the same
She’s the beautiful river the Ohio
The next to come in were the Kentuckians
The Buckeyes the Hoosiers the Suckers and then
They bought off the Indians they cut down the trees
For their barns and their mills and their factories
Down by the cornfield she ran with the mud
Down by the slaughterhouse she flowed with the blood
Below the brewery she was covered with suds
In the spring of the year she could not help but to flood
Chorus
The last to come in have been the industry men
Investing their billions around every bend
Reactors they spill refineries stink
Yet it’s pleasant to swim in and healthful to drink
And I’m sitting here on the levee
Wondering at this long history
I’m wondering at this river of fame
And if she ever again will live up to her name
Chorus
April 4, 2009
Inquiry Is Opened Into Death of
Last Known Jaguar in U.S.
By JOHN DOUGHERTY NY Times
PHOENIX — The federal government has opened a criminal investigation
into the capture and death of the last known jaguar in the United States,
amid accusations that a biologist working for the state illegally baited a trap to
attract the cat. The 118-pound male jaguar, known as Macho B, was captured
on Feb. 18 in a leg-hold snare placed by the Arizona Game and Fish
Department in a rugged mountainous area southwest of Tucson. The animal,
which was described in field reports as healthy and robust, was tranquilized,
equipped with a radio-tracking collar and released from the trap.
The jaguar, which was estimated to be 16 years old, was recaptured with
tranquilizing darts on March 2 after wildlife personnel feared that it
might be in poor health. It was flown by helicopter to the Phoenix Zoo,
where a veterinarian said it had irreversible kidney failure. It was
euthanized the same day.
The department and its oversight body, the Arizona Game and Fish
Commission, “did not authorize or condone intentional initial capture of
this jaguar,” it said in a statement on Thursday. Arizona fish and game
officials have repeatedly maintained that the snare that first caught the
jaguar had been intended for a mountain lion or a black bear.
But a staff member said that her boss — Emil McCain, the biologist working
as a consultant for the department — in early February instructed her to
place female jaguar scat within six feet of the leg-hold trap. The scat had
been used several times to attract Macho B to come within camera range.
She said that Mr. McCain had given her the scat, which he obtained from the
Phoenix Zoo, and that a department employee had been present but said
nothing when he told her to put it next to the trap.
A spokesman for the federal agency, Jose Viramontes, said Friday that the
investigation would “look at all aspects leading up to the trapping of the animal
all the way through to the decision to euthanize it.”
Jaguars were present in much of the Southwest until the early
20th century. By then, they had been nearly exterminated after
100 years of hunting, including a federal eradication program.
Jaguars spotted occasionally in the United States are thought to be
from a relatively large population living in Sonora, Mexico.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
State's capture of jaguar Macho B was
intentional, federal investigators conclude
By Tony Davis and Tim Steller, Arizona Daily
Star
The capture of Macho B, the last known wild jaguar in the United States, was
intentional, according to a new investigative report by the Interior
Department's Office of Inspector General. The report says Arizona Game and
Fish Department employees meant to capture the jaguar Macho B on Feb. 18
last year, citing evidence gathered as part of an ongoing federal criminal
investigation.
The Inspector General investigators reviewed the material gathered by criminal
investigators of the Fish and Wildlife Service and concluded there is evidence of
criminal wrongdoing by an Arizona Game and Fish employee and an Arizona
Game and Fish subcontractor. The document doesn't name them. That conclusion
is important because the game and fish department originally called the capture
unintentional and because such "taking" of an endangered species may be a crime
under the endangered species act.
Saturday, Apr. 17, 2010
Slimy salamander snared in
Licking River
By KEVIN KELLY - The
Kentucky Enquirer
VISALIA, Ky. -- Jimmy
Blackaby was fishing with a
buddy near the Visalia bridge in
northern Kentucky when he
pulled something out of the
Licking River that he recalls
seeing only one other time.
"It was a funny bite," the Morning View resident said. "It pecked and pecked
and pecked and finally I just got tired of it pecking. When I set the hook, I
thought, well, it's a catfish. As you could imagine, whenever we pulled that
thing up, whoa, this ain't a catfish, man."
The nearly two-foot-long creature on the end of Blackaby's line was an eastern
hellbender, a rare and most would say unsightly salamander whose populations
are being studied in Kentucky. As Blackaby discovered, the eastern hellbender
fancies crayfish and secretes mucus when handled.
Sometimes called a "snot otter" or "grampus," it has a flat head and body,
elongated tail and stubby legs. Those features make the eastern hellbender well
suited to live under rocks in the clean, flowing water that it prefers since it
breathes through its skin.
"I look at them and see an animal that's superbly
adapted for where it lives," said Greg Lipps, a
herpetologist from Delta, Ohio.
Lipps is heading up an ongoing eastern hellbender
survey in Kentucky with the Department of Fish and
Wildlife Resources. There's never been a formal
survey like it before in the state, he said.
"There's been a lot of interest recently looking at
hellbender conservation because where surveys have
been done we've noticed very large declines," Lipps
said.
Kentucky does not have its own endangered species
list, he said, but Ohio's Division of Wildlife lists the
eastern hellbender as endangered.
For the survey, Lipps scoured historical records on
eastern hellbenders in Kentucky and found 52
documented occurrences through the years.
"The plan of attack has been to visit all of these places," Lipps
said. "And the survey technique is just extremely labor
intensive. I always like to tell people there's no rock too big for
a hellbender, only rocks you can't lift."
The eastern hellbenders, which are harmless to humans and
often confused with mud puppies, are measured and examined
for abnormalities and disease. A small microchip also is placed
under the skin of each in an effort to track them.
Of 27 sites surveyed in the Licking River and
Kentucky River watersheds, two have turned up
eastern hellbenders.
The survey aims to help fill in gaps throughout
the eastern hellbender's range where limited or
no data exists about how they're doing. The data
could lead the eastern hellbender closer to the
federal endangered species list.
"The other purpose is can we identify where
good hellbender populations are and what
potential threat there may be and what actions
can we take to conserve them," Lipps said.
Anglers who catch one are advised to
remove the hook and put it back in the
water. If the hook can't be removed, Lipps
suggests contacting the fish and wildlife
department.
Blackaby placed the eastern hellbender,
which swallowed the hook, in a fish basket
in the river and called the department about
his catch.
John MacGregor, a herpetologist with the
Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife
Resources, collected the animal and took it
to the Peter W. Pfeiffer Fish Hatchery north
of Frankfort.
"It stayed alive," Blackaby said. "It was in
good shape."
Around my barn - Dillon Bustin
When the hound begins to howl
And I’ve not heard a hooting owl
When the chickens begin to squawk
That’s the time I’ll take a walk
Down in the cornfield see the deer
Each one chewing on a yellow ear
And every squirrel that’s ever been born
Wants to make a living off the little corn
That I get to my barn, get to my barnyard
Refrain: around my barn, around my barnyard
Could be the wind in the trees
Could be a rabbit or a groundhog sneeze
Eating the peppers in my garden spot
He’d better hope that I am not
Around my barn, around my barnyard
All the milk that my milk cow makes
Gets drunk up by a long milk snake
You may not believe what I say is true
But he ain’t eating mice I’m telling you
Out in my barn, out in my barnyard
Could be a cloud across the moon
Could be a fox or a sly raccoon
Coming down to make a meal
He don’t know the way I feel
Lindy tells me treat them like brothers
I told her let them eat each other
It’s what they done before I come
What they’ll do before I’m done
About my barn, about my barnyard
With my barn, done with my barnyard
You ask me what’s dirty trick
Skinny old weasel in among the chicks
And when he’s done gnawing their legs
An old skunk come and he’ll suck the eggs
Well I never expected life to be
Simple or easy or completely free
But I did not think that I’d have to fight
To get one drink or a single bite
That are left in my barn, left in my barnyard
Of food from my barn, food from my barnyard
February 26 2009
Earliest modern gait found in ancient footprints
WASHINGTON (AP)
More than a million years ago an ancient
human ancestor walked across a sandy plain in
eastern Africa, leaving footprints that scientists
are now hailing as the earliest evidence of
modern upright walking. The footprints,
dated to between 1.51 million and 1.53
million years ago, were discovered at Ileret,
Kenya, researchers report in Friday's edition of
the journal Science.
With a large toe parallel to the other toes, the prints indicate a modern upright
stride, the researchers said. They are likely to have been made by the early
hominid Homo ergaster or early Homo erectus. Older footprints, dating to
3.6 million years ago found in Tanzania have been attributed to the less
advanced Australopithecus afarensis. Those prints indicate an upright posture
but with a shallower arch and a more ape-like, divergent big toe.
October 1, 2009
Oldest Skeleton of Human Ancestor Found
Jamie Shreeve, Science editor, National Geographic magazine
Move over, Lucy. And kiss the missing link goodbye.
Scientists today announced the discovery of the oldest fossil
skeleton of a human ancestor. The find reveals that our
forebears underwent a previously unknown stage of evolution
more than a million years before Lucy, the iconic early
human ancestor specimen that walked the Earth 3.2 million
years ago
The centerpiece of a treasure trove of new fossils, the skeleton—assigned to a
species called Ardipithecus ramidus—belonged to a small-brained, 110-pound
(50-kilogram) female nicknamed "Ardi."
The fossil puts to rest the notion, popular since Darwin's time, that a chimpanzeelike missing link—resembling something between humans and today's apes—
would eventually be found at the root of the human family tree. Indeed, the new
evidence suggests that the study of chimpanzee anatomy and behavior—long
used to infer the nature of the earliest human ancestors—is largely irrelevant to
understanding our beginnings.
Ardi instead shows an unexpected mix of
advanced characteristics and of primitive traits
seen in much older apes that were unlike chimps
or gorillas. As such, the skeleton offers a window
on what the last common ancestor of humans and
living apes might have been like.
"This find is far more important than Lucy,"
said Alan Walker, a paleontologist from
Pennsylvania State University who was not part
of the research. "It shows that the last common
ancestor with chimps didn't look like a chimp,
or a human, or some funny thing in between."
The Ardipithecus ramidus fossils were discovered in Ethiopia's harsh Afar desert
at a site called Aramis in the Middle Awash region, just 46 miles (74 kilometers)
from where Lucy's species, Australopithecus afarensis, was found in 1974.
Radiometric dating of two layers of volcanic ash that tightly sandwiched the fossil
deposits revealed that Ardi lived 4.4 million years ago.
The biggest surprise about Ardipithecus's biology is
its bizarre means of moving about.
All previously known hominids—members of our
ancestral lineage—walked upright on two legs, like
us. But Ardi's feet, pelvis, legs, and hands suggest
she was a biped on the ground but a quadruped when
moving about in the trees.
Her big toe, for instance, splays out from her foot
like an ape's, the better to grasp tree limbs. Unlike a
chimpanzee foot, however, Ardipithecus's contains a
special small bone inside a tendon, passed down
from more primitive ancestors, that keeps the
divergent toe more rigid. Combined with
modifications to the other toes, the bone would have
helped Ardi walk bipedally on the ground, though
less efficiently than later hominids like Lucy. The
bone was lost in the lineages of chimps and gorillas.
According to the researchers, the pelvis shows a similar mosaic of traits. The large
flaring bones of the upper pelvis were positioned so that Ardi could walk on two legs
without lurching from side to side like a chimp. But the lower pelvis was built like an
ape's, to accommodate huge hind limb muscles used in climbing.
The team also found some 6,000 animal
fossils and other specimens that offer a picture
of the world Ardi inhabited: a moist woodland
very different from the region's current,
parched landscape. In addition to antelope and
monkey species associated with forests, the
deposits contained forest-dwelling birds and
seeds from fig and palm trees.
Wear patterns and isotopes in the hominid
teeth suggest a diet that included fruits, nuts,
and other forest foods.
If White and his team are right that Ardi
walked upright as well as climbed trees, the
environmental evidence would seem to strike
the death knell for the "savanna hypothesis"—
a long-standing notion that our ancestors first
stood up in response to their move onto an
open grassland environment.
Two hundred thousand years after Ardipithecus, another species called
Australopithecus anamensis appeared in the region. By most accounts, that
species soon evolved into Australopithecus afarensis, with a slightly larger
brain and a full commitment to a bipedal way of life. Then came early
Homo, with its even bigger brain and budding tool use.
Did primitive Ardipithecus undergo some accelerated change in the
200,000 years between it and Australopithecus—and emerge as the ancestor
of all later hominids? Or was Ardipithecus a relict species, carrying its
quaint mosaic of primitive and advanced traits with it into extinction?
Study co-leader White sees nothing about the skeleton "that would exclude
it from ancestral status." But he said more fossils would be needed to fully
resolve the issue.
February 12, 2009
Scientists in Germany Draft Neanderthal Genome
By NICHOLAS WADE NY TImes
Scientists report that they have reconstructed the genome of Neanderthals, a
human species that was driven to extinction some 30,000 years ago, probably
by the first modern humans to enter Europe. The Neanderthal genome, when fully
analyzed, is expected to shed light on many critical aspects of human evolution.
An early inference that can be drawn from the new findings,
which were announced Thursday in Leipzig, Germany, is that
there is no significant trace of Neanderthal genes in
modern humans. This confounds the speculation that modern
humans could have interbred with Neanderthals, thus
benefiting from the genes that adapted the Neanderthals to the
cold climate that prevailed in Europe in last ice age, which
ended 10,000 years ago. Researchers have not ascertained if
human genes entered the Neanderthal population.
Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary
Anthropology in Leipzig led a team that had to overcome
daunting technical obstacles to produce the draft of the
Neanderthal genome. Dr. Pääbo began his project more than
10 years ago, when he succeeded in extracting the first
verifiable piece of Neanderthal DNA. Distinguishing human
and Neanderthal DNA is hard because they are so similar.
He said at a news conference in Leipzig on Thursday that
he now had retrieved usable DNA from six Neanderthals
and analyzed 3.7 billion units of DNA. The Neanderthal
genome, like that of modern humans, is 3.2 billion units
in length. Because many units have been analyzed
several times over, and many not at all, Dr. Pääbo can
now see about 63 percent of the Neanderthal genome.
He will continue to analyze it until he has accumulated
the equivalent of 20 Neanderthal genomes, which will
allow almost every unit to be accurately known.
Archaeologists have long debated whether Neanderthals could speak,
and they have eagerly awaited Dr. Pääbo’s analysis of the Neanderthal
FOXP2, a gene essential for language. Modern humans have two changes
in FOXP2 that are not found in chimpanzees, and that presumably evolved to
make speech possible. Dr. Pääbo said Neanderthals had the same two
changes in their version of the FOXP2 gene. But many other genes are
involved in language, so it is too early to say whether Neanderthals could
speak.
Possessing the Neanderthal genome raises
the possibility of bringing Neanderthals
back to life. Ethical considerations aside,
Dr. Pääbo said, Neanderthals could not be
generated with existing technology. Dr.
George Church, a leading genome
researcher at the Harvard Medical School,
disagreed. He said Thursday that a
Neanderthal could be brought to life
with present technology for about $30
million.