Archive for the ‘biological’ category: Page 126
Jun 11, 2021
These Tiny Creatures Were Revived After 24,000 Years Frozen in The Siberian Permafrost
Posted by Genevieve Klien in categories: biological, chemistry
For tens of thousands of years, a microscopic creature lay frozen and immobile underground in the Siberian permafrost.
Yet, when scientists thawed it out, the tiny multicellular animal didn’t just revive — it reproduced, suggesting that there is a mechanism whereby multicellular animals can avoid cell damage during the freezing process and wake up ready to rumble.
“Our report is the hardest proof as of today that multicellular animals could withstand tens of thousands of years in cryptobiosis, the state of almost completely arrested metabolism,” said biologist Stas Malavin of the Soil Cryology Laboratory at the Institute of Physicochemical and Biological Problems in Soil Science in Russia.
Jun 8, 2021
Arctic rotifer lives after 24,000 years in a frozen state
Posted by Quinn Sena in categories: biological, chemistry
Bdelloid rotifers are multicellular animals so small you need a microscope to see them. Despite their size, they’re known for being tough, capable of surviving through drying, freezing, starvation, and low oxygen. Now, researchers reporting in the journal Current Biology on June 7 have found that not only can they withstand being frozen, but they can also persist for at least 24000 years in the Siberian permafrost and survive.
“Our report is the hardest proof as of today that multicellular animals could withstand tens of thousands of years in cryptobiosis, the state of almost completely arrested metabolism,” says Stas Malavin of the Soil Cryology Laboratory at the Institute of Physicochemical and Biological Problems in Soil Science in Pushchino, Russia.
The Soil Cryology Lab specializes in isolating microscopic organisms from the ancient permafrost in Siberia. To collect samples, they use a drilling rig in some of the most remote Arctic locations.
Jun 6, 2021
The teeth of ‘wandering meatloaf’ contain a rare mineral found only in rocks
Posted by Quinn Sena in categories: biological, nanotechnology
The hard, magnetic teeth of a leathery red-brown mollusk nicknamed “the wandering meatloaf” possess a rare mineral previously seen only in rocks. The mineral may help the mollusk — the giant Pacific chiton (Cryptochiton stelleri) — meld its soft flesh to the hard teeth it uses for grazing on rocky coastlines, researchers report online May 31 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
C. stelleri is the world’s largest chiton, reaching up to roughly 35 centimeters long. It is equipped with several dozen rows of teeth on a slender, flexible, tonguelike appendage called a radula that it uses to scrape algae off rocks. Those teeth are covered in magnetite, the hardest, stiffest known biomineral to date: It’s as much as three times as hard as human enamel and mollusk shells.
Materials scientist Derk Joester and colleagues analyzed these teeth using high-energy X-rays from the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Ill. They discovered that the interface between the teeth and flesh contained nanoparticles of santabarbaraite, an iron-loaded mineral never seen before in a living organism’s body.
Jun 3, 2021
New NASA Missions Will Study Venus, a World Overlooked for Decades
Posted by Alberto Lao in categories: biological, space
One of the spacecraft will probe the hellish planet’s clouds, which could potentially help settle the debate over whether they are habitable by floating microbes.
Jun 3, 2021
Researchers: Culture drives human evolution more than genetics
Posted by Scott Bleackley in categories: biological, evolution, genetics
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY • JUN 3, 2021
Culture drives human evolution more than genetics
I wonder about the thought that only humans do this, and perhaps that somehow culture is separate in some way from biological evolution enmeshed with the rest of the planet?
by University of Maine
Culture is an under-appreciated factor in human evolution, Waring says. Like genes, culture helps people adjust to their environment and meet the challenges of survival and reproduction. Culture, however, does so more effectively than genes because the transfer of knowledge is faster and more flexible than the inheritance of genes, according to Waring and Wood.
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May 27, 2021
Scientists recognize intruders in noise
Posted by Scott Bleackley in categories: biological, economics, mathematics, security
## MATHEMATICS • MAY 24, 2021
# *Noise is commonly discarded, but identifying patterns in noise can be very useful.*
*Generalize the Hearst exponent by adding more coefficients in order to get a more complete description of the changing data. This makes it possible to find patterns in the data that are usually considered noise and were previously impossible to analyze.*
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May 26, 2021
Bioengineers Develop Algorithm to Compare Cells Across Species – With Striking Results
Posted by Genevieve Klien in categories: bioengineering, biological, evolution, information science
Researchers created an algorithm to identify similar cell types from species – including fish, mice, flatworms and sponges – that have diverged for hundreds of millions of years, which could help fill in gaps in our understanding of evolution.
Cells are the building blocks of life, present in every living organism. But how similar do you think your cells are to a mouse? A fish? A worm?
Comparing cell types in different species across the tree of life can help biologists understand how cell types arose and how they have adapted to the functional needs of different life forms. This has been of increasing interest to evolutionary biologists in recent years because new technology now allows sequencing and identifying all cells throughout whole organisms. “There’s essentially a wave in the scientific community to classify all types of cells in a wide variety of different organisms,” explained Bo Wang, an assistant professor of bioengineering at Stanford University.
May 26, 2021
Methane-eating microbes make their own oxygen
Posted by Quinn Sena in categories: biological, food, space
Circa 2010
Researchers have discovered a possible new species of bacteria that survives by producing and ‘breathing’ its own oxygen. The finding suggests that some microbes could have thrived without oxygen-producing plants on the early Earth — and on other planets — by using their own oxygen to garner energy from methane (CH4).
“The mechanism we have now discovered shows that, long ago, these organisms could have exploited the methane sources on Earth and possibly on other planets and moons by mechanisms that we didn’t know existed,” says Mike Jetten, a microbiologist at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands and part of the team that conducted the study, which is published in Nature today1.
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May 24, 2021
Spermageddon: are humans going extinct?
Posted by Mishari Al Hasawi in categories: biological, chemistry, economics, existential risks
A new topic a new challenge for future civilizations.
I won’t write an introduction I will ask couple of questions to make you think about it.
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