How Hammerhead Sharks Evolved

• Being a very strange species, scientists have always been curious over the origin of the hammerhead shark, and a new study shows that they actually evolved from much larger sharks, and the went through two more major evolutions.
• This shrinking in size is thought to be the effect of the early age at which hammerheads are able to reproduce, instead of trying to get more food to grow larger, they tried to reproduce more at young ages, resulting in a smaller species.
• Their trademark head shape was originally used by the large hammerheads to give a sort of lift underwater, the way a wing does, and although the small species does not get this same effect, they still benefit by being able to fit more electrical sensors in their noses, making prey detection much easier.
• Unfortunately, these sharks, which share similarities in growth stages as humans, are being hunted almost to extinction today.

Reflection:
Hammerhead sharks have always seemed interesting, but I have never really thought about how they came to be, so it is nice to have such a clear cut answer to an evolutionary question. The hammerheads also demonstrated how a vestigial trait, in this case their noses, can be later turned around and used as an advantage, only in a different way. What was the most curious though, was how the species grew smaller, despite the fact that a larger shark would have had more advantages. It almost seems like the species cared solely about reproducing and cared nothing for the actual fitness of its future offspring.

Source:
Staff, LiveScience. "How Hammerhead Sharks Evolved | LiveScience." LiveScience | Science, Technology, Health & Environmental News. 20 May 2010. Web. 21 May 2010. .

Weird wonders lived past the Cambrian

• A recent archaeological dig in Morocco has revealed a set of rare, soft-bodied organisms that almost never leave fossils, dating to the Early Ordovican Period, where previously they were thought only to exist in the Cambrian Period.
• The first trace of fossils like this was found at the Burgess Shale in Canada, but it was not nearly as large as this "treasure trove" of fossils containing creatures such as "halkieriids, which look like slugs wearing chain mail; Hallucigenia, which resemble long-legged centipedes with sea-urchin spines; and Opabina, which have five eyes and a long nose with a claw on the end."
• These surprising discoveries, occurring in what would have been open ocean during the Ordovican, have also revealed that horseshoe crabs have been around much longer than expected, actually first appearing around 30 million years ago.
• Morocco is a bit like a fossil capitol of the world due to the staggering amount of fossilized remains picked up there, often picked up and sold by ordinary farmers, and even the recently discovered fossils were unearthed by a small scale, local fossil collector named Mohammed Ben Said Ben Moula.

Reflection:
An article like this makes me think all the way back to the beginning of the year, when an in class video showed how different layers of the earth can reveal so much about evolutionary history. This at least gave me the background to understand how all of this took place. As far as the actual discovery, although not as ground-breaking as some of the others listed on this blog, it is nonetheless just as important, as it is, like I said in an earlier article, "another piece of the puzzle."

Source:
Jones, Nicola. "Weird Wonders Lived past the Cambrian: Scientific American." Science News, Articles and Information | Scientific American. 12 May 2010. Web. 21 May 2010. .

City Vs. Country Birds

• When biologists Fran Bonier and John Wingfield decided to delve into discovering differences between birds living in more urban and more natural environments, they discovered a very clear difference.
• Analyzing surveys sent out to bird enthusiasts all over the world, the team found that not only could city birds be found in a wider range of climates, but that they had developed quite a few adaptations along the way.
• Aside from being able to learn much more quickly than their country counterparts, city birds were found to be able to tolerate much higher hormonal stress levels, a likely reason that the birds managed to survive in such a, as some would say, "hospitable" environment.
• As John Wingfield says, the city birds "have a lot of flexibility in dealing with severe environments or environments that fluctuate widely."

Reflection:
This article immediately caused me to recall the peppered moth story, both having their similarities and differences. While both animals found themselves in a new man-made environment, the moths had to evolve to stay away from predators, while the birds, although having many predators removed by the presence of humans, also lost their food source. The one thing that I wondered about was why the city birds never ended up mating with the country birds and passing their useful traits down, helping the entirety of the bird population. Although the animals may not have the intelligence to directly affect their own evolutionary path, it seems like if it would happen naturally, the birds would just undergo natural selection and soon smart city birds would populate the countryside. On the other hand, if the city, in a sense, is also "evolving" than this could not happen, as the birds would need to be constantly under city influence to gain city traits.

Source:

Reed, Sunita. "City Vs. Country Birds." ScienCentral | Science Videos | Science News. 9 Apr. 2010. Web. 21 May 2010. .

EXTRA BREAKING NEWS: Researchers Create the World's First Fully Synthetic, Self-Replicating Living Cell

• Just today the J. Craig Venter institute announced that they have created "the first self-replicating species who's parent is a computer", a bacteria known as M. mycoides, whose fabrication came about through a process surprisingly dependent on yeast.
• After machines put together small chains of DNA, the snippets were implanted in yeast cells, whose enzymes are specifically geared toward repairing DNA, and the chains were snapped together.
• After repeating this process to create longer and longer chains until a full genome was created (with "watermark" DNA strands to mark the bacterium as synthetic), the entire string of DNA was implanted in a sort of "surrogate" bacterium, where the mycoides began to produce its own proteins that destroyed the surrogate proteins, creating a new bacterium made up entirely of the synthesized genes.
• Some scientists, however, are questioning whether or not this is truly synthetic life as although the DNA was completely sequenced by computer, the real creation only occurred in an existing cell, not to mention the obvious ethical issues surrounding the discovery.
• The company claims that their next project will be to create an algae capable of converting carbon dioxide into biofuel, which will require a genome chain twice as long.

Reflection:

I really must say, this article makes me absolutely ecstatic that the due date of the blogs was moved. Personally, this article is one of my favorites, and I believe that it is one of the turning points in scientific history. Just thinking about the multitude, no, the myriad of possibilities and implications that arrive from this breakthrough is just staggering. Naturally, our in depth coverage of protein synthesis and cell division greatly helped me understand the process used and I was quite surprise when I finished reading the article and though, "Wow, I actually understand what just happened." Although the author of the article notes that mammals are unlikely to be fabricated any time soon due to their immense combination of genomes, an upward of 3 billion genes, I believe that with the great rate at which science is accelerating, almost anything can become possible. Naturally, the completely human-orchestrated creation of life will definitely heat up the "should humans play God?" debate common in stem cells, but I doubt that anything will be able to stop this boulder of a discovery once it has started rolling.

Source:
Dillow, Clay. "Researchers Create the World's First Fully Synthetic, Self-Replicating Living Cell | Popular Science." Popular Science | New Technology, Science News, The Future Now. 20 May 2010. Web. 21 May 2010. .

Animal's Scary Snort is Blatant Lie Aimed at Getting Sex

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• The topi antelope, or Damaliscus lunatisi, gives off a very distinct snort when it spies predators, an evolutionary adaption allowing it to warn the rest of its pack of predatory presence.
• When females undergo ovulation, they often move quickly from mate to mate, often preventing some male topi from mating at all, but the males have begun to combat this by giving off a false "predator alert".
• This often causes the female to be put off guard and stay nearer to the male to protect herself, resulting in a second chance for the male to pass his genes on.
• During field tests where recordings of true and false male "warning call" was played out of a loudspeaker from a car window, scientists like Jakob Bro-Jørgensen found that the females were unable to distinguish between the two, despite the high frequency at which males pull of this trick.
• As Bro-Jørgensen said, "The lie is so blatant that it is quite amusing."

Reflection:

Naturally, I never would have picked this article before the sex unit, but now that I am reading, I realize that it really is a quite amazing study. After all, in class we have reviewed many means by which males attract mates, whether it be by beauty like the peacocks, or strength like chimpanzees, this is the first time I have ever really heard of an animal pulling a trick on the opposite gender. Of course, in the article they liken this behavior to humans, such as when a guy uses a scary movie to get his girlfriend to move towards him for security. Articles like this, where human and animal behavior is connected, have really made me start to see just how close humans are to animals. This also makes me start to see the worth in having so many articles, after all, this is a bit like one big puzzle, that we must piece together. If I had only read one or two articles for example, I would never have noticed all of the similarities that people share with the animal "ancestors".

Source:

Choi, Charles Q. "Animal's Scary Snort Is Blatant Lie Aimed at Getting Sex | LiveScience."LiveScience | Science, Technology, Health & Environmental News. 19 May 2010. Web. 20 May 2010. .

Solar Powered Sea Slugs Aid Climate Change

• Phyllodesmium Lizardensis is able to form a symiotic bond with the algae from the coral it eats.
• Among other things, this allows them to use the algae to recycle the sun's energy, or use the "stinging cells" in certain corals to defend themselves.
• The key to this surprising change is the ability of the nudibrachs (sea slugs) to incorporate into themselves the characteristics of tiny single celled plants, zooxanthellae, which also share a somewhat symbiotic bond with the corals.
• When tested, results showed that a sudden change in climate will leave the coral dead in a zooxanthellae-coral bond, but the zooxanthellae die in a zooxanthellae-nudibrach bond.

Reflection:
This is quite an interesting article in my opinion, despite the fact that much of it is scientific mumbo jumbo. It almost seems to me like these slugs are "cheating" evolution by not only benefiting from whatever ways natural selection shapes them, but being able to use the hard earned natural advantages of other organisms. It almost reminds me of humans, the way we can derive vaccines from bacteria to gain immunity, or cut the coat of an animal to gain its benefits. In fact, the more that on thinks about it, humans are really leeching from the entire world, taking whatever they need and adapting it for use by themselves. In essence, just like these corals.

Source:
Martlew, Marea. "Solar Powered Sea Slugs Aid Climate Change (Science Alert)." Science Alert: Australia & NZ Science News, Scholarships, Jobs, Events. Web. 19 May 2010. .

Viruses Store and Deliver Keys to Evolution

• Scientists like Forest Rowher, believe that virus' called phages can act as gene transporters for bacteria.
• With an estimated 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 phages on the earth, and the facts that antibodies kill bacteria but not viruses, and can switch environments very rapidly, it would make perfect sense for viruses to carry evolutionary advantages.
• By using a process called metagenomics, scientists found that the genetic profile of viruses and bacteria in different environments was very distinct.
• There are many times when viruses won't kill the bacteria they have infected, supporting this theory, and genes related to movement of bacteria have been found in viruses, suggesting that they can "control" instead of kill the bacteria during infection.
• Other viruses have been found to contain genes that allow the "consumption" of substances that bacteria cannot normally eat, unless the virus gives them the genes.

Reflection:
This story caught my eye because it presented a completely different viewpoint than that which I normally looked at viruses through. Before, I would have said, if anything, that viruses could only slow down evolution, because all they do is wipe out populations of cells very quickly. However, this article shows that despite the destructive nature, they can provide a collateral advantage instead of damage. along with some of the other articles I have read, this article makes it seem like almost anything can be bent to the will of humans. I would imagine that the next step of this discovery would be to give viruses certain genes and then inflict them upon bacteria to control the bacteria.

Source:
Bryner, Jeanna. "Viruses Store and Deliver Keys to Evolution - LiveScience- Msnbc.com." Breaking News, Weather, Business, Health, Entertainment, Sports, Politics, Travel, Science, Technology, Local, US & World News- Msnbc.com. Web. 19 May 2010. .

Female Komodo Dragon Has Virgin Births

• At the Chester Zoo in London, a female Komodo dragon that had been living alone recently laid 25 eggs, 11 of which hatched.
• Scientists discovered that where normally the only one of the four egg cells produced by meiosis would survive, in rare cases in certain animals, one will become an egg while another will act like a "surrogate" sperm cell.
• This process, know as parthenogenesis, does not, however create clones of the parent due to the mixing around of the genes during meiosis.
• Hypothetically, this would allow a single komodo dragon to create an entire population, although it would have severely decreased genetic diversity, and many problems could arise due to the inbreeding that would follow.

Reflection:
I chose this story because i thought it strange that a single lizard could act as a mother and a father while giving birth to new offspring. If not for the rate of extinction at which komodo dragons are dieing off, this would allow them to increase their population at staggering rates, which I would guess would completely throw the ecosystem out of whack. I also found it interesting that one egg cell could so quickly and easily make such a dynamic change in its function. This is very much like stem cells which remind me of a story where a man uses the stem cells of a lizard to bring them back from the dead. Also this article brings to mind the recent video "Why Sex?"

Cuckoos, Wrens in Escalating Evolutionary Arms Race

• The Horsefield's bronze-cuckoo lays its eggs in the nests of other birds which most birds can usually identify as cuckoos before, but never after, the eggs hatch.
• However, superb fairy-wrens in Australia, who are bad at telling the eggs apart due to dark enclosed nests, have begun to adapt to recognize cuckoo hatchlings, and will leave them behind.
• To combat this, the Horsefield's bronze-cuckoos evolved to more perfectly match the calls of the fairy-wrens, rendering distinction almost impossible.
• With fairy-wrens unable to distinguish between egg type and hatchling call, it would seem that they would be doomed, but instead they just wait for the cuckoo to hatch.
• When the cuckoo hatches, it will push out all of the wren eggs, and the parent wren will discover the true identity of the impostor, taking advantage of Australia's long hatching season and re-nesting.

Reflection:
I chose this story because it proved to be a good clear example of an evolutionary arms race. I also had never heard of birds tricking other birds into taking care of their young for them. Another thing i found interesting was how the hatched cuckoos instinctively pushed all of the other eggs out of the nest. How even innocent baby birds could turn out to be ruthless contenders in the arms race was quite amazing. What I learned from reading this was that an evolutionary arms race is not always just a battle between two traits in two organisms like with the salamanders and the snakes, but that the species in the race can employ a much sneakier and wider range of tactics too.

Sources:

1. Owen, James. "Cuckoos, Wrens in Escalating Evolutionary Arms Race." Daily Nature and Science News and Headlines | National Geographic News. Web. 19 May 2010.
2. Drew, Ray. "Birds of South Eastern Australia." Untitled Document. Web. 19 May 2010. .
3. "The Escalating Coevolutionary Arms Race between Cuckoos and Their Hosts : Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)." ScienceBlogs. Web. 19 May 2010. .

This Germ Could Save Your Life

• Microbiologist David Thaler is one of the primary advocates for using genetically modified bacteria to fight disease instead of cause disease; however, this idea is having a very difficult time of becoming a reality due to the the difficulty being able to perform live tests, on actual people.

• This could become a reality with Jeffrey Hillman's research, which began with him setting up a series of cage matches between colonies of Streptococcus mutans, the sugar-eating bacteria that commonly cause tooth decay, to create a species of super bacteria that could easily wipe out all other bacteria in a person's mouth.

• The difference between these bacteria and their weaker counterparts, is that the genetically modified S. mutans contains a gene from Zymomonas mobilis, used in Mexican beer, so that the S. mutans will produce a harmless alcohol as waste instead of a tooth-destroying acid.

• Later, due to regulations from a special board on the FDA, the bacteria were made to be dependent on a certain amino acid which was made into a special mouthwash to prevent the uncontrolled spread of these bacteria.

• Finally, a in 2006 the bacteria was tested on real people (under heavy laboratory conditions though) and, as predicted, was a success, although it has yet to be tested freely on people with actual medical conditions in an actual environment.

Reflection

When I first spied this article, I thought having bacteria work for me to clean my teeth might be interesting, especially because I have braces, which make it extremely hard to brush and floss my teeth. However, as I read further, I realized that this could become the domestication of bacteria, and the domestication of plants and animals had been such a huge event that it had changed the entire world forever, and enabled a huge leap in progress, the creation of cities include. If more bacteria were “domesticated”, I thought, this would be like the Agricultural revolution from the Neolithic times. In fact, I wasn't at all surprised when one of the scientists described it as “the second Neolithic Revolution” later in the article. As I continued reading, it just seemed like such an ingenious plan that people would be able to “tame” bacteria to do their bidding. On the downside, though, I think that their could be a lot of risk involved in thrusting “safe” bacteria upon humans. The way I see it, scientists will only have one chance to impress the public with this new technology, before it is destroyed by rumors and hysteria.

Source:

Sachs, Jessica S. "This Germ Could Save Your Life | Popular Science." Popular Science | New Technology, Science News, The Future Now. Web. 19 May 2010. .

Being Bad at Relationships Is Good for Survival

• According to researchers, evolution has naturally split humans into two distinct groups, those emotionally secure, and those emotionally insecure, and recent studies have shown why.
• An experiment was set up to simulate different groups of people in a building which had just begun to catch on fire, and groups containing more insecure people consistently reacted more quickly than those who did not.
• The scientists concluded that although an emotionally secure person will do better in relationships, which is a natural evolutionary advantage, their self-created sense of security causes them to react more slowly to immediate dangers.
• Conversely, more insecure people, will be much more aware, and not lulled into the sometimes false sense of security that strong group connections can provide

Reflection:
I found this article to be so interesting because it really demonstrates how two different adaptations can both be beneficial at the same time. Either be better at finding a mate and thus be able to reproduce more, or be more aloof but better at surviving, and thus being able to reproduce more. Typically, any example of natural selection I would have thought of would contain only one favored trait, but never would I have imagined that two practically opposite traits could both coexist and help survival. This is very much similar to the video we watched in class about the peacocks. Even though the bright feathers of a peacock slowed it down, hindered its flying ability, and made it stand out to prey, females would only choose mates who had these brilliant feathers. Just as interesting is the fact that such contradictory adaptions could even arise; after all, it would be much more beneficial for there to be one definitively better trait. Such a peculiar quirk in our evolutionary path has truly produced a double-edged evolutionary sword.

Source:
Minkel, JR. "Being Bad at Relationships Is Good for Survival | LiveScience." LiveScience | Science, Technology, Health & Environmental News. 15 May 2010. Web. 19 May 2010. .

After Years of Herbicide Use, Roundup-Resistant Superweeds Are Evolving to Invade U.S. Fields

• Through overuse of the herbicide "Roundup" produced by Monsanto, weeds have begun to take on the natural course of evolution and become resistant to Roundup.
• Unfortunately for Monsanto, this renders their genetically modified "Roundup Ready" crops, which were designed to be immune to Roundup so that the two products could be used alongside each other.
• 90% of soybeans, 70% of corn, and 70% of cotton in the US are having to be protected from weeds through use of even stronger herbicide, ultimately harming the environment and lowering crop yields, meaning higher food prices for everyone.
• This event is much akin to the overuse of anti-malarial drugs that caused malaria to be so deadly today.

Reflection:
This was a perfect article for me to read this year due to the excellent amount of background I have had, such as the GMO video and Food Inc. From videos and class lessons like these, I really could have predicted literally everything that happens in this article. It is very strange how such a huge and powerful company like Monsanto could be so caught off guard by such a foreseeable and natural event, that almost any high school biology student could predict. Of course, there is the possibility that Monsanto was fully aware that this would happen. After, they are such a big company that the only people who are really damaged by this are the farmers and consumers. Then Monsanto could make a new herbicide and new plants and the mind boggling number of farmers who use Monsanto's products would have to buy completely new ones all over again. Mark my words, as sure organisms evolve, Monsanto will evolve its products, and its profits, very soon.

Dillow, Clay. "After Years of Herbicide Use, Roundup-Resistant Superweeds Are Evolving to Invade U.S. Fields | Popular Science." Popular Science | New Technology, Science News, The Future Now. 4 May 2010. Web. 16 May 2010. .

TED 2010: Halting Blood Vessels Key to New Cancer Treatment; Possibly Obesity

• Dr. William Lee has recently made the connection that the treatments for cancer and obesity could be very similar, as both required a steady supply of blood to develop, making both prone to angiogenesis inhibitors.
• Connecting these two, he realized that perhaps diet could have a major impact on cancer, similar to its effects on obesity.
• Testing different foods, he found that extracts from foods like red grapes, strawberries, and soybeans could have an impact, and some, such as jasmine and sencha teas, would undergo a great increase in potency if combined, implying that the right combination of foods is the key.
• When tested alongside current major angiogenesis inhibitors known as statins, some foods actually showed more potential than the drugs, not to mention the obvious extra nutritional benefits provided.
• When similar tests were performed on obese mice, it was found that stricter regulation of angiogenesis could actually allow scientists to "cycle" the mices' weight up and down.

This is certainly an uplifting article; should more research show positive results, it would mean a simple, inexpensive way to control, health, obesity, and cancer all in one. If the results were to get enough publicity, it would force a major food overhaul in places like restaurants and supermarkets. Healthy food is definitely something that is very much needed in this country, and I do try to eat healthily, but it would be great if I did not have to try and food producers made better food instead of cheaper food. This would ultimately be a major success in the overall health of the entire country and others, especially seeing how those with less money would have the same edge in fighting off these diseases as the more wealthy. This is truly the type of research that needs to be done, research that will benefit all people, not just those who can afford it. Also the group of foods, which can be seen in the picture, is quite diverse as far as coming from different parts of the world, meaning other countries could benefit. In closing, this approach of looking from one angle at two approaches should be more widely used, as it would benefit all fields of almost everything.

Source:
"TED 2010: Halting Blood Vessels Key to New Cancer Treatment; Possibly Obesity | Epicenter | Wired.com." Wired News. Web. 10 May 2010. .