Today, the International Astronomical Union officially designated an asteroid 7307 Takei in honor of actor and activist George Takei, who is best known for his role as Hikaru Sulu in the original Star Trek franchise. The asteroid joins others named for sci-fi luminaries such as Issac Asmiov, Robert Heinlein, and Gene Roddenberry. [Via Yahoo/AP]
Seriously: “Beach said people become infected when they wade through shallow water and stir up the bottom. If someone allows water to shoot up the noseâ€â€say, by doing a somersault in chest-deep waterâ€â€the amoeba can latch onto the olfactory nerve. The amoeba destroys tissue as it makes its way up into the brain, where it continues the damage, ‘basically feeding on the brain cells,’ Beach said.” [via Yahoo/AP]
Recently, Dr. James Watson, one of the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA, has his complete genome sequenced. He is the first person to have his genome completely sequenced, although Dr. J. Craig Venter, scientific iconoclast, was not far behind. The real breakthrough is not that it was done, but that it was done in two months at a cost of about $1 million. Compare that to the Human Genome project, which took 13 years and $3 billion. This massive increase in efficiency is due, in part, to the sequencing developed by companies like 454 Life Sciences. Within a few years, the cost to sequence a complete genome will fall to $100,000, and it will continue to fall by an order of magnitude every few years, so that a complete genome will cost $1000 within a decade. This price point is a huge leap towards a new era of “personalized medicine,” but there are larger ramifications as well.
Ok, I’m gonna crank the nerdliness up to 11…
This video shows what I love about biology: there’s all this really amazing, incredible stuff going on inside your body all the time. The most basic business of life itself is a miracle. I find it all fascinating. In fact, I’m such a nerd that this video almost brought a tear to my eye. There’s also a full-length version available.
Last week, I gave a presentation on my current research. My brief introduction ended with comments that are a mantra to many grad students: “…which will hopefully be my dissertation project.” The talk went well enough—the audience was just other grad students—and I got a lot of good feedback. At the start of the question-and-answer period, one of the girls raised her hand and asked, “Do you have a hypothesis?”
An organism’s metabolome is all of its metabolites and metabolic processesâ€â€in other words, all of the chemicals that come out of it (like urea, carbon dioxide, and progesterone) and all of the biochemical reactions that produce those compounds. It’s one of those words that scientists concocted out of thin air because they fancy themselves clever lexicographers. But it’s a powerful concept and one of the keys to the future of personalized medicine.
Popular Mechanics gave a “Breakthrough Award” to MIT researchers who reprogrammed a virus to instead form a tiny, tiny battery anode. The researchers, lead by Dr. Angela Belcher, used the bacteriophage M13, which is a workhorse of molecular biology to incorporate cobalt oxide and gold, forming a nanowire. M13 grows in a tight cylindrical spiral, and I suspect that the scientists exploited this property in convincing the virus to grow a nanowire. As Popular Mechanics recognized with their award, this is a very interesting development.
Wired News is reporting on an international team of scientists that is developing a microrobot small enough to swim through arteries and the heart. They hope that the robot, as small as two human hairs, will be able to perform microsurgeries on cranial arteries and other areas that are beyond the reach of catheters. This both refutes and supports my notion that nanotechnology will have to draw inspiration from biology rather than our everyday macroscale world.
One the one hand, this contradicts what I said last night about micromechanical approaches not being viable, because, if they can get this robot to work, it obviously will be viable. On the other hand, it very much agrees with my assertions:
“People have tried various techniques, including electromagnetic motors,” [team leader] James Friend said. “But at this scale, electromagnetic motors become impractical because the magnetic fields become so weak.”
Instead of trying to scale down common mechanical systems, like an electromagnetic motor, Friend and his team are building piezoelectric motors, which operate on different principles.
Moreover, the new design doesn’t use propellers:
The microrobot’s design is based on the E. coli bacterium, complete with flagella that will propel it through the body.
As nanotechnology moves from hype to actual products, we will see that most successful designs use new techniques developed for the nanoscale and draw on knowledge from biology.
Researchers at MIT and the University of Hong Kong describe how peptides can self-assemble to control bleeding from surgical wounds. From Nature Nanotechnology:
The key to the success of this particular peptide is that it is water soluble and can be easily delivered by a syringe. Furthermore, self-assembly of the peptides is triggered by the ionic environment of the blood, and when broken down, the amino acid building blocks of the hydrogel can be used by the body to repair the injury.
This a great advance, thanks to nanotechnology. It can save lives on the battlefield or in accidents by stopping bleeding before the wounded are transported to the hospital. I think the other important thing here is that this is a clever application of biology rather than some sort of micromechanical approach. I think I’ve said this beforeâ€â€I think a lot of the important nanotech innovations are going to come from adapting biology, which already operates on the nanoscale, rather than trying to scale down macroscale machines. This is one example of that.
A new exhibit at the Oslo Natural History Museum showcases examples of homosexual behavior throughout the animal kingdom. Geir Soeli explained the motivation behind the exhibit:
“As homosexual people are often confronted with the argument that their way of living is against the principles of nature, we thought that … as a scientific institution, we could at least show that this is not true … You can think whatever you want about homosexuals but you cannot use that argument because it is very natural, it’s very common in animal kingdom.”
There are two examples of homosexual behavior in animals that I’m familiar with. One is bonobos, a species of primate closely related to humans. They use sex the way chimps use violenceâ€â€which is to say, as one of their main forms of social interaction. The second example is when male rats are overcrowded in a cage, although that seems to explain what happens in prisons more than normal homosexuality. So it was interesting to read about other examples, especially from non-primates. As Soeli said, homosexuality is very normal.
