Xpandyourhorizons-blog - Xpand Your Horizons

Bird seen becoming new species

A population of finches on the Galapagos is discovered in the process of becoming a new species.

This is the first example of speciation that scientists have been able to observe directly in the field.

Ban on US Import of Elephant Trophies Remains, For Now

On Friday, President Trump tweeted that he was putting the decision to reverse a ban on elephant trophy imports "on hold," pending a review of "all conservation facts."

President Trump tweeted that he was putting that decision “on hold,” pending a review of “all conservation facts.”

How 100 Years of Dog Breeding Changed These Popular Breeds.

New imaging study reveals how saturated fatty acids damage cells

In our increasingly health-conscious society, a new fad diet seems to pop up every few years. Atkins, Zone, Ketogenic, Vegetarian, Vegan, South Beach, Raw - with so many choices and scientific evidence to back each, it's hard to know what's healthy and what's not. One message, however, has remained throughout: saturated fats are bad.

A new Columbia University study reveals why.

While doctors, nutritionists and researchers have known for a long time that saturated fats contribute to some of the leading causes of death in the United States, they haven’t been able to determine how or why excess saturated fats, such as those released from lard, are toxic to cells and cause a wide variety of lipid-related diseases, while unsaturated fats, such as those from fish and olive oil, can be protective.

To find answers, Columbia researchers developed a new microscopy technique that allows for the direct tracking of fatty acids after they’ve been absorbed into living cells. The technique involves replacing hydrogen atoms on fatty acids with their isotope, deuterium, without changing their physicochemical properties and behavior like traditional strategies do. By making the switch, all molecules made from fatty acids can be observed inside living cells by an advanced imaging technique called stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) microscopy.

What the researchers found using this technique could have significant impact on both the understanding and treatment of obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Published online December 1st in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the team reports that the cellular process of building the cell membrane from saturated fatty acids results in patches of hardened membrane in which molecules are “frozen.” Under healthy conditions, this membrane should be flexible and the molecules fluidic.

“The behavior of saturated fatty acids once they’ve entered cells contributes to major and often deadly diseases,” Min said. “Visualizing how fatty acids are contributing to lipid metabolic disease gives us the direct physical information we need to begin looking for effective ways to treat them. Perhaps, for example, we can find a way to block the toxic lipid accumulation. We’re excited. This finding has the potential to really impact public health, especially for lipid related diseases.”

Yihui Shen et al, Metabolic activity induces membrane phase separation in endoplasmic reticulum, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2017). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1712555114

Davide D'Amico

The Evolution of Multicellular Life

Biologists create beetle with functional extra eye

On “Game of Thrones,” a three-eyed raven holds the secrets of the past, present and future in a vast fantasy kingdom. But for real-world biologists, a “three-eyed beetle” may offer a true glimpse into the future of studying evolutionary development.

Using a simple genetic tool, IU scientists have intentionally grown a fully functional extra eye in the center of the forehead of the common beetle. Unraveling the biological mechanisms behind this occurrence could help researchers understand how evolution draws upon pre-existing developmental and genetic “building blocks” to create novel complex traits, or “old” traits in novel places.

The study’s results appear in the journal of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The work also provides deeper insights into an earlier experiment that accidentally produced an extra eye as part of a study to understand how the insect head develops.

“Developmental biology is beautifully complex in part because there’s no single gene for an eye, a brain, a butterfly’s wing or a turtle’s shell,” said Armin P. Moczek, a professor in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Biology. “Instead, thousands of individual genes and dozens of developmental processes come together to enable the formation of each of these traits.

Eduardo E. Zattara, Anna L. M. Macagno, Hannah A. Busey, Armin P. Moczek. Development of functional ectopic compound eyes in scarabaeid beetles by knockdown oforthodenticle. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2017; 114 (45): 12021 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1714895114

The creation of three-eyed beetles through a new technique developed at IU provides scientists a new way to investigate the genetic mechanisms responsible for the evolutionary emergence of new physical traits.Credit: Photo by Eduardo Zattara

Just 1°C of ocean warming can upend marine ecosystems 

For 9 months, the researchers monitored the distribution and growth of marine species that settled on the heated boxes and compared them with those that lived above unheated boxes. All it took was one look to notice the difference, Ashton says. In the 1°C increase experiment, a single species of moss animal, Fenestrulina rugula, doubled its growth rate. Within 2 months, the calciferous shelves it created dominated the community, the team reports today in Current Biology. What’s more, overall species diversity plummeted by 50%.