On Pilobolous:
When I first wrote my post on Pilobolus (here and here) I really wanted to do something extra, which I could not do at the time. If you scroll down that post, you will see I reprinted the Figure 1 from the Uebelmesser paper. What I wanted to do was find (and I asked around for something like that) the exact times of dawn and dusk at the site where Uebelmesser did her work and thus be able to figure out the dates when the tests were done and the exact phase-relationship between the dawn and the time when Pilobolus shoots its spores.
Now, I see that such a chart exists (via) and I can, if I find time and energy, do it one of these days. Then, I can do the same thing for the Chapel Hill coordinates, go out to a nearby farm, and repeat the experiment myself.
On Antlions:
I knew, when I wrote my post on antlions (here and here) that they had endogenous circalunar rhythms. But today, I also learned that:
- antlions secrete a toxin that paralyses their prey
- the antlion toxin is produced by its bacterial endosymbiont Enterobacter aerogenes
- the normal function of that toxin in the bacterial cell is as a chaperonin, i.e., a protein that makes sure that other proteins are folded correctly into their normal 3D shapes
- the Enterobacter aerogenes toxin is very similar to a protein made by Escherichia coli
- the Enterobacter aerogenes toxin is 1000 times more toxic to cockroaches than the E.coli one
- neither of the proteins is toxic to mice (and presumably to us).
One learns something new and cool every day.
On Vertebrate Eyes:
Eye is a very important organ in my own specialty, so I was surprised to see how much new I learned by reading this eye-opening post by PZ. Bookmarked for future use in teaching....
- Log in to post comments