Anyway, like most endangered natives, snakes face disease. Rattlesnakes in Illinois are succumbing to grotesque infections by Chrysosporium–a soil fungus that looks rather pretty when it’s just growing on its own, but can become a nasty opportunist.

So where did the snake-infecting strain come from? Genetic testing of infected wildlife suggests it’s a strain commonly found in black rat snakes kept as pets. So, yet another angle on the escaped pet problem–in this case, not the snake itself, but the pet snake’s pathogen that infected wild snakes. We usually think of wild animals as a “reservoir” of emerging pathogens, but we forget that pets from pet stores are swarming with invisible vermin that thrive in the cramped, stressed conditions of most commercial captive animals.

Should we care about rattlesnakes, the cause of 82% of human deaths by snakebite? According to some, some of us care too much about Earth’s nonhuman inhabitants, since God put Earth here for “our benefit, not for the Earth’s benefit.” What would Quetzalcoatl say about that.

The most famous example of experimental evolution is the domesticated silver fox bred from wild foxes by Russian scientists starting in 1959. Dmitri Belyaev began this amazing experiment, continuing through adverse political conditions up till the present day, now directed by Lyudmila Trut. In the experiment, wild foxes were selected for “low flight distance” — that is, how close you can get to the animal before it runs away. Animals selected on this basis over generations resulted in descendents with many of the traits and behaviors found in tamed dogs, such as low adrenaline production, raised tail, and floppy ears, as well as foreshortening of limbs typical of “neoteny,” the retaining of juvenile appearance. DNA chip experiments now show that certain brain genes have changed between the wild and domesticated foxes.

In another interesting experiment, mice were selectively bred for “high voluntary wheel running.” These High-Runner mice turned out to differ in their response to dopamine, resembling aspects of ADHD. One wonders, though, whether selection of this particular trait says more about the culture of today’s researchers.

The most advanced form of laboratory evolution involves breeding of bacteria–Richard Lenski’s famous experiment tracking 50,000 generations of E. coli. For this experiment, E. coli  bacteria were put in fresh glucose medium every day, growing up for several generations, then diluted again. Every 75 days, cultures were frozen away–something you cannot do with dogs or mice. And all the sample genomes could be sequenced, thanks to today’s mammoth DNA sequencers. So, in addition to the descendents, you can track the history of every diverging line of cells.

The E. coli experiment produced all kinds of fascinating observations. For example, cells fed on this rather limited diet gradually increased in size (over the generations). Size increase is interesting because it happens so often in animals, such as the evolution of horses. Alternatively “mini” animals evolve, too. So by studying E. coli we may gain clues as to general principles of evolution of size.  Another cute result–one line of descent evolved to eat the citrate buffer instead of the glucose. Tracking back the history reveals other lines that independently evolved this “new” trait. The experiment was impressive enough to earn condemnation by Conservapedia.

Today, what we call adaptive laboratory evolution has become the tool of choice for industrial development of new producer strains of cloned products. Where do you think evolution will go next?

But it’s already come home to roost (so to speak). So what do you think we should do?  Where’s the “celestial broom”?

On a more positive note, here are pix of some of my great friends from MIT and Boskone.

Melanie Berkmen, professor at Suffolk University, visiting her lab at MIT where she works with Alan Grossman. Melanie coauthored another paper we submitted with Kenyon students, on fluorescent imaging of bacterial pH.

David Hartwell, my editor at Tor Books, here selling books from his Dragon Press bookstore collection.

Larry Smith–the authors’ hero, hauls out our recent books for our convention appearances. At Boskone, The Highest Frontier sold out for him.

The one and only Charlie Stross. Expounding to us on “the corporation” in science fiction, and wearing his iconic shirt, “Tell lies for money.”

Kay Holt and Bart Leib, my two awesome friends at Crossed Genres.

Overall, a great con, with great friends and great fun. Hope to see you all at Boskone 2013!

]]> http://ultraphyte.com/2012/02/19/space-debris-watch-out/feed/ 7 slonczewski Bo12A Bo12B Bo12C Bo12D Bo12E http://ultraphyte.com/2012/02/16/worm-therapy-anyone/ http://ultraphyte.com/2012/02/16/worm-therapy-anyone/#comments Fri, 17 Feb 2012 02:45:42 +0000 Joan S. http://ultraphyte.com/?p=320 ]]> Thanks for all the sage advice on the five-second rule. The Boskone program person just came for me, but I have a minute to ask what you all think of worm therapy.

Now I hasten to add, as the saying goes, “Kids, don’t try this at home.” Picking up food after more than five seconds is not the way to get therapeutic worms. However, certain kinds of worms may (hypothesis) benefit your immune system. The theory is that since the human body evolved in the presence of parasites, our immune system functions optimally in the presence of a (modest) level of parasites. Without them, the immune system lacks a baseline and tends to overreact with asthma etc. There are some intriguing data supporting the connection between parasite absence and allergic responses. Only correlations, though, no causation.

The WSJ report involves use of a pig worm–that is, a worm that cannot reproduce in humans. So, supposedly it’s safe. Don’t know what my insurer would think.

Another interesting review here, about the similar benefits of tapeworms. What do you think?

I’ll be back later, after getting my badge down at the art show.

Update: So I got my badge, and got eaten up by Charlie & Feorag’s monster.
Paula Lieberman tells me that someone at Brigham and Women’s Hospital is trying hookworm therapy.  Yum.

Although I could not find much published in Science or Nature, several researchers do claim to have put this pressing question to the test. Paul Dawson at Clemson University said his students tested it and found that the rule absolutely doesn’t work–the fallen food is full of picked-up microbes. However, I smelled a rat (no pun) since I saw no raw data.

Then I found Dawson’s article from Journal of Applied Microbiology, “Residence time and food contact time effects on transfer of Salmonella Typhimurium from tile, wood and carpet: testing the five-second rule.” There’s a mouthful all right. The data there are really more about survival time of pathogens on floors (measured in hours or days–a sobering thought in itself) but it does show that, be it five seconds or thirty, your slice of white bread is going to pick up plenty of hitchhikers to the microbial galaxy of your human body.

A high school student, Jillian Clarke, doing summer research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, found different results. She found that the university floors at Illinois were too clean to pick up any microbes. (Take that, Clemson.) She also found interesting social observations, such as that “Cookies and candy are much more likely to be picked up and eaten than cauliflower or broccoli.”

Would you eat food picked up off the floor? In your home? Camping in the woods? If there were no more left?

Part B represents the “answer” to the problem, which DNA molecules can “find” faster than a silicon computer. DNA is particularly effective at problems allowing highly parallel computation.

In general, a DNA computation system requires three stages:

(1) Store the input data into DNA sequences, by constructing the DNA molecules.

(2) Mix the DNA molecules together, and let diffusion accomplish its task. Much is made of how this stage takes zero energy. Overall, though, one has to count the energy involved in DNA synthesis for step 1.

(3) Read the answer. Various ways to read the answer use, for instance, restriction enzymes that cleave specific double-stranded sequences, or series of electrophoretic gels that capture DNA strands with unpaired base sequences.

More recently, DNA computers are now making logic gates out of DNA, using molecules that combine information storage with enzyme capabilities, so-called DNAzymes. Such a computer was able to determine square roots of a number up to 15.

But how useful is such a “machine”?

One use is to store computing power in a kind of “instant package,” to answer a question in a remote location where electricity is unavailable. An example is a chain of “biochemical transistors” to test blood for the presence of the malaria parasite. Another example would be in devising nanobots to enter the human bloodstream for nanosurgery. The advantage here would be DNA’s high information density, compared to any known or projected silicon chip.

Will DNA computers ever be faster and better than silicon? If you have any thoughts on this, let us know.

A recent article in Science shows how DNA can build self-programmed 3D structures. The most amazing part is how the linear 1D sequence of DNA bases actually determines the 3D structure. The way this works is that short stretches of DNA have bases complementary to other short stretches elsewhere in the long strand. Wherever the short stretches line up, they will twist around each other to form a short double helix. But then, the strands come apart to form double helix with other stretches elsewhere on the molecule.

Why would life’s information molecule have such intriguing properties? If we look at DNA’s precursor, RNA, we see that life is full of 3D RNA molecules composed of “hairpin” turns. The most dramatic example is the RNA skeleton of the ribosome, life’s ubiquitous protein factory. Here is what that looks like; the RNA is the winding turquoise-green part.

What else do you think are DNA and RNA are good for?

Same-sex couples have been a subject of interest in my fiction ever since the first book fragment I sent a publisher back in 1977. As I found myself the sole young woman in an all-male chemistry lab, I figured that if two different genders could share a lab, then two the same could share a marriage.

I grew up with the impression from biology that only humans had same-sex relationships; that other animals were strictly procreative. All the textbooks and literature said so, if they said anything at all. That’s why Sharers  considered all-female society a sign of advanced civilization, in contrast to “animal behavior.” Later, it was fascinating to watch zoologists “discover” that animals too have their queer side, and Tango makes three. Considering how common these behaviors are, I wonder why they weren’t noticed until the nineties. Must be all the new high-tech cameras. :-,

Now scientists have a new hypothesis: That capacity for same-sex attraction is somehow “linked” to family stability and reproductive success. One study found that children of two lesbian mothers were better behaved. And pairs of fathers often adopt children no one else wants.

At the end of the day, whatever the family, it’s important to remember what the children want most, which is to say, “My family is normal.”  How can science fiction help us get there?

This occasion led me to reflect upon what constitutes Young Adult reading. Back when I was a teen (we won’t say when, but if you must you can look me up in Wikipedia), a cool YA book I read was The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Having a brother myself, I could definitely relate to having three. Another great read, and more practically useful, was Margaret Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa. It was science then, though some call it fiction now. But my all-time teen favorite was Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward. What a revelation to learn that contemporary Russians didn’t just wave red flags like in Time Magazine; they even got sick with American diseases. A girl had to give up her breast, at an age when I’d just acquired mine.

For Honors English, I decided to attempt Grownup Literature. I chose Henry James–and slogged through Portrait of a Lady and The Ambassadors. I never identified with any characters, nor got the jokes. What’s so wicked about Paris anyhow? I must confess to my teacher, Mr. Hernandez, that I never quite made it through The Golden Bowl. I had to watch Masterpiece Theater to find how it ended.

What did you read as a Young Adult?  What would you recommend now?

In our last two threads on green energy, it was proposed that we seed the Moon with self-replicating solar factories. Is anyone seriously attempting to do this? There was the NASA study in 1981, and a more recent (very technical) study in 2004.

Of course, Earth is full of self-replicating solar factories. They’re known as plants.

Consider an orchid, such as the Phalaenopsis I’m growing from the local grocer; it subsists on ice cubes. A stalk with three boring leaves, I thought it would be done after the blossoms fell. But surprise, it sent out two shoots each of which developed three huge buds, oddly asymmetrical. Over two weeks, the buds swelled, and you could see faint patterns of spots underneath the outer greenish sepals. Then one day, over the course of the day the sepals opened into a perfectly formed flower, complete with the little pink pedestal for the insect it needs to pollinate. A self-replicating factory for orchid flowers.

If anyone thinks Earth needs yet one more good reason to save its biosphere, surely an orchid is one. Nowhere else in the universe is there an entity that makes something as amazing as an orchid flower.

At the same time, the orchid reminds us that a couple of ice cubes a week can sustain a solar replicator. What other examples from biology could give us clues for future sustainable technology?