dr. dolittle | March 17, 2017Water bears, aka tardigrades, are resilient little creatures. These microscopic animals can survive both freezing and boiling temperatures, radiation, high pressure, starvation, the vacuum of space and even desiccation. This last ability caught the attention of a team of researchers interested in how they are able to survive for years despite being completely dried out, an ability known as anhydrobiosis.
Video by Daiki D. Horikawa, via YouTube.
The team discovered special genes that make proteins to protect the animal's cells during anhydrobiosis. The proteins created by these genes are…
dr. dolittle | March 14, 2017
via GIPHY
A new article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences presents the discovery of a species of frog with fluorescence. The South American polka dot tree frog, aka Hypsiboas punctatus is already rather cute under normal light. But when exposed to UV light, this frog really shines. It gets its glowing personality from fluorescent molecules, hyloin-L1, L2 and G1, found in the skin, lymph tissues, and secretions from glands. These molecules have not been found in other animals. Researchers are not yet sure why these frogs fluoresce.
Source:
Taboada C, Brunetti AE…
dr. dolittle | March 12, 2017 Image of a painted turtle by Victor Young, New Hampshire Fish and Game Department. (via Wikimedia commons)
Bisphenol A (BPA) has earned a bad reputation as a potential endocrine disrupting chemical in several studies of developing animals. Some studies even report correlations of BPA levels with certain diseases in humans. Thus it is not surprising there are a plethora of BPA-free food containers, especially for baby food and bottles, as our most common route of exposure is through our diet. It gets there from the epoxy resin lining of some canned foods as well as our use of polycarbonate …
dr. dolittle | February 28, 2017 Picture of a komodo dragon by CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Researchers studying komodo dragons (Varanus komodoensis) at George Mason University discovered 48 previously unknown peptides in their blood that might have antimicrobial properties. Their findings were published in the Journal of Proteome Research. For the largest lizard, these peptides may help prevent the animals from getting infections from their own saliva, which is host to at least 57 species of bacteria. With this number of bacteria, it is easy to understand why they evolved so many defense mechanisms to prevent…
dr. dolittle | February 27, 2017 Image of a gilthead sea bream by Roberto Pillon - via Wikimedia Commons
Similar to humans, muscle growth in fish is increased with exercise. Unlike humans, however, teleost fish are able to continue growing in length as well as weight throughout their lives. This type of meat, I mean muscle, growth happens in two ways: 1) muscle cells get bigger and 2) new muscle cells form. Researchers at the University of Barcelona in Spain wanted to know what effect moderate sustained swimming would have on the muscles of young fingerling gilthead sea bream, a type of teleost fish (image above). Their…
dr. dolittle | February 21, 2017 Image of a fin whale by Aqqa Rosing-Asvid via Wikimedia Commons
Fin whales have big mouths, really big mouths. When your meals consist of tiny krill, it is understandable why you would evolve the ability to stretch your mouth super-wide.
Fin whale dinner. Image by Øystein Paulsen via Wikimedia Commons.
With each meal comes a lot of water, which expands a pouch in the bottom of their mouths. As the pouch expands, all of the tissues in the pouch expand as well including blood vessels and nerves. Stretchy nerves caught the interest of of Dr. Margo Lillie who published a recent study in…
dr. dolittle | February 20, 2017 Enzyme from pitcher plant helps mice digest gluten. Image by Mokkie - Praca własna, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Pitcher plants are a known enemy of insects, but perhaps beneficial for people suffering from celiac disease. Chemist Dr. David Schriemer at the University of Calgary was studying the pitcher plant Nepenthes x ventrata (shown above) in his search for an enzyme similar to pepsin for use in his experiments. Pitcher plants secrete digestive fluids with a pH similar to own digestive juices. Through his research he found the enzyme from pitcher plants could break down the…
dr. dolittle | February 20, 2017 By Copyleft [CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
As I was looking through the scientific literature the other day, I came across an article published in 1973, "The Evolutionary Advantages of Being Stupid." With a title like that, how could I not read it?
In this article Dr. Eugene D. Robin discussed how larger and more complex brains are associated with greater intelligence, which by evolutionary standards was thought to be related to "superiority." He described how this line of thinking places man at the peak of evolution resulting in our tendency toward an anthropocentric view of the…
dr. dolittle | February 16, 2017I love fish. The diversity of these aquatic creatures is so vast, I find them fascinating. Take the eel for example:
Image of a Japanese eel (Anguilla japonica) by opencage, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14520151
In a study published this month in the American Journal of Physiology - Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology, researchers wanted to link information they learned from sequencing the RNA of eels with understanding how the animals adapt to saline environments. During acclimation to saltwater, fish have no choice but to drink the water.…
dr. dolittle | February 14, 2017 Image of ants by Vinayaraj (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Happy Valentine's Day!
Inotocin is the insect form of the so-called "love" hormone oxytocin. Oxytocin, as you may know, is responsible for inducing labor in pregnant women. A recent study published in Scientific Reports describes the work of a team of researchers that created a synthetic version of inotocin which could bind to both oxytocin and vasopressin receptors in human tissues. Vasopressin is important for preventing water loss in the kidneys, which is how it…
dr. dolittle | February 1, 2017I was surfing YouTube and found this neat video from Scientific American about the special properties of frog tongues and saliva that help them catch their prey:
dr. dolittle | January 31, 2017
Cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis) are masters of camouflage. Being able to mimic their surroundings helps them hide from predators. But how do they maintain their camouflage while moving through complex environments, such as coral reefs, sea grass, and varying light patterns? A new study published in Frontiers in Physiology examined this question. They wanted to know how small an object in the environment could be for the cuttlefish to still mimic it quickly enough while moving. What they found was that cuttlefish could match camouflage of objects as small as 10-19cm wide, or just enough to…
dr. dolittle | January 23, 2017 Asian house shrew image by W.A. Djatmiko (Wie146) - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0.
The stomach and small intestine of many species moves rhythmically during fasting, something called the rhythmic 'migrating motor complex', or MMC. The MMC has 3 phases: no contraction, intermittent small contractions followed by regular large contractions. These contractions are thought to help clean the GI tract by moving along debris and bacteria as well as preparing our guts for the next meal. They are also the cause of 'stomach rumbles' when we are hungry. If the time between contractions is too long or…
dr. dolittle | January 17, 2017 Photo of one of Leonie's hatchlings from Tourism and Events Queensland.
The story begins in 1999 when Leonie, a zebra shark (aka a leopard shark in Australia), was captured from the wild. In 2006 she was transferred to Reef HQ Aquarium in Queensland, Australia where she met her mate. By 2008, she had started laying eggs and the pair had multiple litters of offspring through sexual reproduction. After her mate was removed from the tank to prevent further breeding, she has shared the tank with one of her offspring, a female named Lolly who, since reaching sexual maturity herself, has never…
dr. dolittle | January 16, 2017 Image of goldfish from Wikipedia
Liver failure or congenital defects can lead to a build-up of ammonia in the brain of mammals resulting in life-threatening swelling, convulsions and comas. For goldfish (Carassius auratus), environmental exposure to ammonia causes reversible swelling of the brain. In a new study published in the American Journal of Physiology - Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology, researchers wanted to explore how the fish were able to accomplish this. They exposed goldfish to high levels of ammonia for 72 hours which, like mammals, caused oxidative stress …
dr. dolittle | January 13, 2017 Image of an orca and her calf from Wikimedia Commons
Orcas are one of only three species of mammals that go through menopause, including humans of course. A new study published in Current Biology may have discovered why this happens in killer whales.
Examination of 43 years worth of data collected by the Center for Whale Research and Fisheries and Oceans Canada, revealed a remarkable finding about the costs of reproduction in orcas. Older mothers tend to spend more time taking care of the family, so to speak, by making sure her offspring know where or when to find food. While this…
dr. dolittle | January 11, 2017 Dummerstorf marathon mouse, Image from Leibniz Institute for Farm Animal Biology
As the name implies, Dummerstorf marathon mice are bred to run. If allowed to be sedentary, these animals can build up quite a bit of fat within their peripheral tissues even if they do not overeat. If given an exercise wheel, however, they burn fat very quickly.
In a new study published in the Journal of Comparative Physiology - B, researchers discovered that the livers of these mice have an increased ability to not only store fat but to also rapidly mobilize fat when necessary for exercise. If they are able…
dr. dolittle | December 29, 2016Drumroll please.....
Out of roughly 18,000 new species discovered this past year, the International Institute for Species Exploration at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry has narrowed down the top 10 to the following:
I am rather partial to tortoises myself. What were your favorites?
dr. dolittle | December 29, 2016
A study recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides evidence that pigeons can learn to recognize words. That is after the birds were trained over a period of 8 months. According to the study authors "The pigeons’ performance is actually more comparable to that of literate humans than baboons’ performance."
To read, we must be about to decode letters and the sounds they make as well as orthographic knowledge to recognize words by sight. Although our lineages split over 300 million years ago, pigeons (like humans and baboons) possess orthographic…
dr. dolittle | December 27, 2016 Image of zebrafish By Pogrebnoj-Alexandroff from Wikimedia Commons
We tend to think of carbon monoxide (CO) only in terms of being a poisonous gas. The reason for its toxicity is due to its ability to bind really tightly to our hemoglobin molecules, which prevents oxygen from being able to bind. In mammals, CO also decrease breathing rate. As you can imagine, it is a pretty terrible gas to breath in when you are a species dependent on hemoglobin for delivery of oxygen to tissues.
Did you know that CO is also produced in our bodies when heme molecules are broken down by enzymes called heme…