Hallucinogenic drugs, animal studies and explosm

// May 18th, 2010 // 3 Comments » // Drugs, Just for Fun

So I have had a really busy week in the lovely sunshine coast, and haven’t had a chance to track down the quality science content you know and love. Instead, I have comics of drugs.

WAIT!!! THIS IS SCIENCE! Because sometimes scientists give hallucinogenic drugs to animals to see what happens to them, and to find out how the drug works. Studying hallucinogens can give insights into how the mind works and manages itself.

There are a few famous cases of animal drug studies. The first is the spider web experiment, where spiders were given LSD, caffeine, cannabis or mescaline and the resulting webs were photographed. Another one is the elephant on acid, which happened in the 60′s (or 70′s) when LSD was new and being tried on EVERYTHING. They tried giving it to an elephant at about 400 times the human dose to see if it would go into musth, if it did it would prove LSD induced a kind of psychosis. The elephant didn’t go into musth, it actually died. And they were in a zoo and everything, not cool.

So here are the drug comics. Enjoy!

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

Oh Cyanide and Happiness, how I love thee!

Catching cancer part one – HPV infection versus the face of Tasmanian Devils

// January 1st, 2010 // 2 Comments » // How Things Work, The Realm of Bizzare

This post and the next have been bubbling in the pipeline for some months now, and were finally prodded to the open by this post by Carl Zimmer about the facial tumour disease wiping out Tasmanian Devils.

So what’s the deal with the face-cancer first up? (Sidenote: You’d be surprised how many people have found my post about Cordyceps by searching face fungus. I hope you googlers don’t have face fungus, that makes me sad.) Anyhoo, Tassie Devils are the world’s largest carnivorous marsupials and are only found in Tasmania, this makes them very special little critters. They are also violent and bitey mofos, and they’re pretty ugly to boot. Here’s one.

Okay, that one’s actually cute. Try this one.

Like big teethy rats.

Tasmania ain’t a big place, so if a male meets a sexy female devil and she’s not a sister, she’s probably a cousin. That means there’s not much genetic diversity between individuals. Enter the cancer. The cancer infects the face, and Tasmanian Devils have a nasty habit of biting each other on the face, which passes on the cancer. It’s an infectious tumour! This is very VERY rare, the only other one I know is Stickers Sarcoma which infects dogs, we people don’t catch tumours from each other. Cancer researchers need to be super-sterile in teh lab to protect the cancer cells, not themselves.

In the Tassie’s case, their DNA is so much the same, I bet if you asked them if they wanted icecream they’d both say yes the cancer cells feel at home in a new host, and their inbred immune system doesn’t notice them. Cancer cells do, after all, survive the immune system by looking like a normal cell.

It’s all bad news for the Tasmanian Devils. Cancer is a hard disease to cure for the same reason it evades the immune system – it looks like a normal cell. Killing it often involves collateral damage, and it’s a shaky balance to kill the cancerous cells faster than the rest of the body. Treatments are tailored and expensive – and it’s damn hard to give radiotherapy or chemotherapy to a wild animal. On the other hand, all these devils have the same cancer cells, if we COULD find a way to target them specifically we would cure them all. It might be an easier cancer to treat than the human varieties.

An intriguing question – is this a new lifeform? The cancer cells are genetically different to the Tasmanian Devil cells, they have the ability to evolve, grow, move between hosts. Are they a single-celled parasite, an infectious microbe in their own right? Where do we draw line between a mutated cell and a new species?

Will it infect us too?

Not sure about you (each to their own), but I don’t make a habit of biting people’s faces. Plus we are a pretty spread-out species with plenty of laws and morals against inbreeding. So I think we’re safe.

But we do have something that causes cancer, and it is VERY infectious. It’s a virus called HPV, and you’ve probably already been infected by it. You probably wouldn’t even know it. That’s the topic for tomorrow. Check out part two.

Cheap date, grim reaper and swiss cheese – the world’s coolest gene names

// December 3rd, 2009 // 2 Comments » // Jibber Jabber, Just for Fun, Sex and Reproduction

I studied biochemistry at University, and I remember spending hours copying pathways, reading and rereading textbooks, then summarising, checking, drawing, testing, making mnemonics, in short EVERYTHING I could do to help me memorise things. There is a lot to remember in biochemistry, and a lot of words which don’t mean much that have to go in the right place. JAK activates JEK activates MEK which activates an enzyme which travels to the nucleus and binds to blah which attaches to blah region of the DNA and has the effect of increasing glucose absorption. Or something. Frankly I can’t remember anymore, and I’m damn glad I don’t have to try.

Meaningless acronyms are an annoying part of science, and of any job really. At work I talk about getting a tvc cadded, matching the key to the clapper and ingesting it – to anyone who hasn’t done TV advertising this is complete jibberish. Biochemistry is really no different – if you don’t know much about it, it’s because no one has explained it to you properly using normal words.

This post is not about normal words. Screw normal words! This is about the awesome, the spectacular, the creative and the downright weird.

These are some of the coolest names I have come across for proteins and genes, and a lot of them are found in the fruit fly Drosophila. Drosophila is the white lab rat of developmental science, it’s always the guinea pig because it reproduces REALLY fast, and creates multiple offspring in a single frenzy. Some other species (including humans) also get a mention in this list.

Tinman – Drosophila with a mutation to tinman develop with no heart.
Maggie – a mutation causes arrested development, in the Simpsons Maggie never ages.
Cheap Date – mutation causes Drosophila to be extra sensitive to alcohol. Another gene called Lush does the same thing.
Cleopatra – Cleopatra was killed by an asp, and interaction of mutant Cleopatra protein with the Asp protein is lethal.
Ken and Barbie – mutants (both male and female) lack external genitals.
Swiss Cheese – mutants have holes in their brain.
Grim Reaper – two separate genes, together they cause cell death.

For those biblically minded of us, there is Lot – mutants have more salt than usual, or Sarah – mutants are almost sterile, or Methuselah – mutants live extra long. Prefer Greek Myths? How about Ariadne, who showed Theseus how to get through the Minotaurs Labyrinth – in Drosophila, Ariadne mutants stop the axons of nerve cells finding their targets. Love Shakespeare (who doesn’t?), take Hamlet – which affects development of cells descended from IIB cells – “to be or not to be.”

Sometimes the names help us remember how things link together, take these names from Arabidopsis thaliana, a small flowering plant that’s like the Drosophila of plant genetics. Superman mutants have extra stamens in their flowers, while the Clark Kent is a milder version of the mutation, and Kryptonite suppresses the function of Superman.

Zebrafish have some neat ones too – including one-eyed pinhead, cyclops and squint – all important in the development of an embryo.

How about in humans? Well yesterday I talked about a spiky little protein called Sonic Hedgehog, which was originally found in, you guessed it, Drosophila, but which plays an important role in embryo development in humans. There’s not a huge number of genes with cool names in humans, and there’s a good reason for that. Imagine you had a child who was very sick and you met with the doctor, who looked at you seriously and said “I’m sorry, it’s genetic. Your son has a mutation in the Sonic Hedgehog gene.” There are a couple of others, like Tigger which is a segment of DNA which hops around into different locations

Those are my faves, but there’s plenty more out there. These are samples from My Favourite Gene Names and Gene Names by Organism, and I know there’s others that didn’t make the list. FlyNome has a searchable database of heaps of Drosophila genes and the story behind them. It’s almost worth getting into Drosophila research just for the cool names, plus imagine if you found a new gene and got to name it yourself… oh the possibilities…

When shark embryos get hungry an unborn sibling makes a tasty treat

// November 25th, 2009 // 4 Comments » // Sex and Reproduction, The Realm of Bizzare

Next time you run out of food in the fridge ask yourself this, would you eat a human? If you were in a plane crash in the middle of a desert, would you eat the person who sat next to you, or would you brave the supply of frozen muffins and green omelettes they serve as sky “food”? For your own survival, would you kill and eat your brother or sister?

Some species of shark do indeed feast on their siblings, not just out in the deep blue sea, but while still inside the uterus. Now that’s taking sibling rivalry to a whole new level.

Sharks reproduce in three ways – they either species lay eggs and leave them to hatch, or they lay eggs and let them hatch in the uterus and then give birth to them, or they have a live births. Feeding a growing embryo while it develops in the womb is quite a challenge for sharks, but they have some crazy methods to do it.

Some species, such as the lemon shark, turn their yolk sac into a placenta by attaching it to the wall of the uterus. Salmon shark embryos eat a stream of unfertilized eggs while their in the womb, providing them with plenty of nummy nutrients. Nurse sharks and sand tiger sharks, at the tender age of not even born yet, swim about and eat their siblings. From the 20 or so pups that start life, only two remain – natural selection starting early *they grow up so fast*

This video from the documentary Animals in the Womb has incredible footage of sand tiger shark embryonic cannibalism.

Why do two pups survive, and not just one? Sharks have two wombs, at least, their uterus has two separate branches that keeps the two pups apart. Apparently having their own room helps curb their aggression, who’d have thought?

Bad Ass Images of Animals Dressed as Pirates

// November 16th, 2009 // No Comments » // Just for Fun

I’m having a FREAK OUT day today. So much to do! Time’s running out! BAH!!!

To distract myself from life, I give you these pictures of pirate animals. As far as I’m concerned, Sexy Man should be devoting all his time to making awesome pictures like these (a bit of time updating my site to be more sexy would be okay too.)

And so I present unto you – animals dressed as pirates.

I can has treasure?

Check out that tattoo – so CUTE!

You can see them all here. Click through and chill out.

Science Tweets – Iceberg Art and a Vego Spider

// October 12th, 2009 // No Comments » // The Realm of Bizzare

Today’s post is a big plate o’ retweet, because when I checked me Twitter today I found many tasty morsels I knew I had to skewer. Dine well, me hearties.

Iceberg Art, all-natural and un-freaking-believable. This image hasn’t been photoshopped, it looked that good in real life. Algae, sediments, and a speedy melt/refreeze process can make icebergs look like waves caught in time, striped lollies, and generally awesome! More eye candy can be had here, some of which blow my mind. I’m updating my wallpaper as I write!

On a distinctly less pretty note, we’ve got a gigantic huntsman staking out our office at the moment. Every time I walk past it I have to swivel my neck so I can watch it and make sure it doesn’t jump onto my head. I had a huntsman on my head once, someone batted it off with a magazine and it was massive. Not cool. I ain’t good with spiders. Squid and sharks, bring it on, but creepy eight legged freaks… arachnids should just stick to land. Unless I’m on land. In which case they should drown themselves. Except for this little guy.

Bagheera kiplingi is mostly vegetarian, between 60 – 90% of its diet is made up of Beltian bodies, nutritious little parcels of yum produced by Acacia trees to feed ants, which in turn act as bodyguards for the Acacia. It’s a jumping spider, and it hides from ant security with jumping, hanging by a silk thread, and chilling on old leaves the ants don’t often patrol. Ed Yong at Not Exactly Rocket Science has the full story here. Incidentally, wasn’t Bagheera the panther in Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book? Hey, do you remember The Just So Stories? SO GOOD! Here’s an excerpt from The Elephant’s Child, about how the elephant got it’s trunk.

In the High and Far-Off Times the Elephant, O Best Beloved, had no trunk. He had only a blackish, bulgy nose, as big as a boot, that he could wriggle about from side to side; but he couldn’t pick up things with it. But there was one Elephant–a new Elephant–an Elephant’s Child–who was full of ‘satiable curiosity, and that means he asked ever so many questions. And he lived in Africa, and he filled all Africa with his ‘satiable curiosities.

Read the rest here, or browse through them all here. I recommend the Cat That Walked By Himself, it was always my favourite as a lass. For I am the cat that walks by herself, and all places are alike to me.