carotenoid
dr. dolittle | August 20, 2016 Photo of Astronaut Robert Overmyer from NASA, via Wikimedia Commons.
I recently went on a trip to visit the Endeavour space shuttle currently on display in Los Angeles. Seeing the shuttle up close brought back memories of watching the space shuttle launches on TV and the childhood dream of visiting other planets...a dream that also inspires Hollywood to continue to produce movies and TV shows about space exploration. Turns out, The Martian movie may soon become reality. In fact, NASA is working towards sending astronauts to Mars sometime in the 2030's. Aside from the technological…
dr. dolittle | August 22, 2012
Red pea aphids (Acyrthosiphon pisum); Figure from: Valmalette et al., 2012
In 2010, scientists at the University of Arizona showed that aphids can produce their own carotene. No other animals are known to produce this important antioxidant and must therefore obtain it from their diets. Aphids apparently acquired this ability to produce carotenoids from a fungal gene that was incorporated into their own genome at some point in evolutionary history. Because aphids were shown to produce large amounts of carotenoids, researchers Valmalette et al., wanted to know if the carotenoids served any…