Alternate “life” styles: scientists predict the possibility of a Shadow Biosphere

image of a crystalline life-form

The possibility of strange forms of not-quite-alien life seems to have just got a whole lot closer to home.  Astrobiologists from Arizona State University, Florida, UC Boulder, NASA, Harvard and Australia have recently theorized about a “shadow biosphere” – a biosphere within a biosphere where alternative biochemistry may be thriving in a way that we haven’t yet thought to examine. Such “weird life” may have had, for hundreds of millions of years, their own ecologies right here in our own backyard.  Indeed, like Dark Energy and neutrinos, “weird life” may be all around us even now, only in a non-obvious way. Some astrobiologists are now suggesting that “weird life” is just as likely to be found here on Earth as it is in the Martian regolith, the seas of Europa , or certainly the complex bio-hadronistry on the surface of a neutron star.

I have included a link to their full article here: Davies_etal_Astrobio2009.pdf

Now, while I think that shadow organisms and shadow biospheres are certainly cool enough to blog about, please allow me to take the logical next step by citing yet another intriguing astrobiology paper that came out of the Santa Fe Institute. Published nearly a decade ago in an astrobiology related Nature commentary article titled, “Where are the dolphins?” scientists Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart realized (and showed mathematically that it’s already happening here on Earth) that as a civilization advances they begin to use the available electromagnetic spectrum for communication more fully and efficiently until ultimately their radiative emissions are indistinguishable from blackbody radiation.  In other words, when we look out into space with telescopes to search for signs of alien life  (SETI for example) we will likely mistake it for being just a regular old hot rock! So either three things must be true to find life through a telescope: 1. The civilization is at a very precise moment in its development,2. The civilization wants to be found and so sets aside some broadcast space for a message, 3. We know their decompression algorithm and what frequency band to apply it to.

It’s this last possibility that relates to the shadow biosphere in a philosophical sense. Unless we know how to interpret the signs of such life, we may not be able to distinguish it from the natural background.

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Early Study Linking Vaccines to Autism Officially Retracted

The Lancet, one of the world’s leading medical journals, retracted a study on February 2nd that linked autism to vaccinations. The study by Andrew Wakefield and his colleagues, originally published in 1998, is titled “Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children.” The study was one of the first scientific publications that spurned the dramatic rallying against childhood vaccinations and was one of the direct influences causing many parents to not give their children MMR vaccinations (Dr. Wakefield himself called out for parents to stop giving their children vaccinations for MMR).

Fortunately for parents, children, doctors, researchers, and anyone else who doesn’t buy in to the unsubstantiated, illogical, and downright dangerous surge against vaccinations, the editors of The Lancet and the UK General Medical Council’s Fitness to Practise Panel have announced that elements of the paper

are incorrect, contrary to the findings of an earlier investigation. In particular, the claims in the original paper that children were “consecutively referred” and that investigations were “approved” by the local ethics committee have been proven to be false.

As a result, the paper has been officially retracted.

This, undoubtedly, is a benefit for everyone. Everywhere.

Read the official retraction statement at The Lancet.

Read the original article at The Lancet. If you can’t get to the PDF, read it at Braindeer.

Read a full analysis at the New York TimesJREF, Times, or CNN.

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Inbreeding in Panda Population?: Extremely Rare Brown and White Panda Spotted

An extremely rare brown and white panda was recently spotted in the Qinling region of China. Only 7 such examples of this pigmentation have been seen in the past 25 years, suggesting that the low numbers of giant pandas have lead to inbreeding. This suggestion stems from the nature of this particular sort of pigmentation, which has been hypothesized to only be inherited when both parents carry the gene; in other words, the pigmentation is a recessive trait.

While this may contradict the apparently maintained genetic diversity revealed in the giant panda genome published last month in Nature, it is still an important question to consider and investigate. If inbreeding is indeed occurring, and genetic diversity being reduced due to that, it may leave the giant panda species susceptible to widespread disease in the future (like the captive tiger and lion species).

I’ll be sure to post updates on this topic when the current research into the inheritance of brown and white pigmented pandas is published.

Read an in-depth article at Nature: Mystery of the brown giant panda deepens

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Surprise! Jenny McCarthy Completely Ignores Scientific Research

Jenny McCarthy

I’m sure by now that we’re all aware of the actress and “activist” Jenny McCarthy and her crusade against the medical and biomedical research community. Her unfounded and dangerous belief that vaccines increase the frequency of autism has been making a splash in the easily convinced minds of many parents who are desperate to help or protect their children. However, when parents do not listen to scientists and doctors (the ones with the education to understand the situation, and not just go off what google searches suggest) and choose to not get their children vaccinated or treated properly, death and sickness ensues.

Recently McCarthy went on the front line again and went on public television to say that a recently published scientific study was wrong. Why do you say? Does she have another study to cite or some sort of evidence or empirical/quantitative support for her claim? Nope, she has “anecdotal evidence.” The study, which was published in Pediatrics (click to view the original article), concludes that “No significant associations were found between autism case status and overall incidence of gastrointestinal symptoms or any other gastrointestinal symptom category.” However, McCarthy and others would argue that this is, to their non-scientifically trained opinions, false and that special diets aid with autism symptoms (she has personally removed wheat and dairy from her child’s diet). Instead of blaming medicine, maybe they should consider pollution caused by ourselves as a cause.

The video pictured above from ABC news (click to view) contains one of the more ridiculous quotes I’ve ever heard come directly out of her mouth:

“We’re the ones seeing the real results, and until doctors start listening to our anecdotal evidence, which is ‘this is working’ it’s going to take so many more years for these kids to get better.”

Oh. Really? Your “anecdotal evidence” which has no controls, miniscule sample sizes, and no true methods of analysis has more weight than a refereed scientific study?

How do we stop the madness?

Posted in AntiScience, Health & Medicine | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Nature’s Exciting Expectations for the New Year

Genetics Pioneer Craig Venter

It seems that Nature magazine has high hopes (and don’t we all) for research progress in 2010. Among goals such as glimpsing the origins of the universe and other Earth-like planets, the biological topics expected to make big impacts are:

  1. Stopping/preventing species loss globally
  2. Synthetic genome from pioneers such as Craig Venter
  3. A surge in the number of completed genomes, including the Neanderthal
  4. Global climate considerations and models
  5. HIV prevention progress
  6. Induced pluripotent stem cell research
  7. Clinical trials with embryonic stem cells

Undoubtedly, we are all as excited as they are and are hoping for some truly astonishing discoveries in 2010. Look for some relevant research articles about this list to be featured here soon.

Read the full article here: New year, new science.

Posted in Biology, Cell Biology, Ecology and Environmental Biology, Genetics, Genomics, Lists | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Most Cited Articles Roundup 2009: H1N1 Flu Virus

Most Cited Articles Roundup 2009: H1N1 Virus

Similar to the previous post about the Most Cited Articles of 2009, I thought it might be interesting to look at some of the other big topics of this past year and what research done this past year was considered most impacting by the research community. For the next few weeks I will be posting lists of the most cited articles in a variety of the more influential or important biological topics of 2009. For the first installment, here are the top 10 most cited articles about the H1N1 flu virus from 2009 according to the ISI Web of Knowledge:

  1. Emergence of a Novel Swine-Origin Influenza A (H1N1) Virus in Humans Novel Swine-Origin Influenza A (H1N1) Virus Investigation Team
  2. Pandemic Potential of a Strain of Influenza A (H1N1): Early Findings
  3. Antigenic and Genetic Characteristics of Swine-Origin 2009 A(H1N1) Influenza Viruses Circulating in Humans
  4. Origins and evolutionary genomics of the 2009 swine-origin H1N1 influenza A epidemic
  5. Pneumonia and Respiratory Failure from Swine-Origin Influenza A (H1N1) in Mexico
  6. H1N1 2009 influenza virus infection during pregnancy in the USA
  7. Infections With Oseltamivir-Resistant Influenza A(H1N1) Virus in the United States
  8. Emergence and pandemic potential of swine-origin H1N1 influenza virus
  9. Pathogenesis and Transmission of Swine-Origin 2009 A(H1N1) Influenza Virus in Ferrets
  10. Transmission and Pathogenesis of Swine-Origin 2009 A(H1N1) Influenza Viruses in Ferrets and Mice

Happy reading!

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Evidence for Environmental and Epigenetic Cause of Autism

Autism and Retardation Trends

A study published a few months ago in the journal NeuroToxicology investigates the non-random variation in prevalence of autism. The study has shown that the highest frequency of autism occurs in areas of the study location (Minnesota) with increased amounts of pollution in the environment, such as mercury and pesticides. The study concludes there is a statistically significant trend of higher levels of autism (ASD) in EPA Superfund sites than in other sites and that this correlation may be due to increased pollution as well as population heterogeneity of genetic components such as the PON gene family. The PON gene family has been implicated in peroxonase enzyme activity, whose lowered activity tends to correlate with increased frequency of ASD.

This article is vital in the debate regarding vaccinations and autism. The authors of this paper have shown that the increase in ASD over the past number of years (pictured in the chart above) is significantly correlated with an increase in pollution, while mental retardation frequency remains steady. On the other hand, vaccination there is no correlation shown between the number of vaccinations given to children and the non-random distribution of ASD cases.

This paper should be vital reading for anyone who wants to be informed on the debate between autism and vaccinations.

To read the entire article, visit ScienceDirect: Ockham’s Razor and autism: The case for developmental neurotoxins contributing to a disease of neurodevelopment

Posted in AntiScience, Biology, Genetics | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Top 10 Most Cited Biology Articles of 2009

With a new year ahead of us and tons of exciting research to be done it’s time to be a little retrospective about all that the scientific community has accomplished this last year. The following are the top 10 most cited biology articles published in 2009 as recorded in the ISI Web of Knowledge:

  1. Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells Free of Vector and Transgene Sequences
  2. Jalview Version 2-a multiple sequence alignment editor and analysis workbench
  3. GenBank
  4. Protein structure prediction on the Web: a case study using the Phyre server
  5. The Genome Sequence of Taurine Cattle: A Window to Ruminant Biology and Evolution
  6. Human fetal lymphoid tissue-inducer cells are interleukin 17-producing precursors to RORC+ CD127(+) natural killer-like cells
  7. Human Protein Reference Database-2009 update
  8. ChIP-seq accurately predicts tissue-specific activity of enhancers
  9. Systems biology approach predicts immunogenicity of the yellow fever vaccine in humans
  10. Association of reactive oxygen species levels and radioresistance in cancer stem cells

Happy reading!

Oh, and if you’d be so kind..

Stuggling Scientist

Posted in Biology, Lists | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Transgenic, Green Monkeys Provide Possibility of Primate Model Organisms

Transgenic Marmoset Feet

This story is a few months old, but I was reading through the Nature homepage and came across their selected Images of the Year slideshow. Many of these images have to do with various space-related or physics themes, but of particular interest to me when browsing through the images was a gorgeous image of fluorescent green marmoset feet (imaged above).

In May of this past year (happy new year), researchers in Japan (Sasaki et al) successfully injected a self-inactivating lentiviral vector in sucrose solution into marmoset embryos which ended up developing normally. Many of the organs of these marmosets expressed the transgenic information, thus providing proof of concept for the possibility of using marmosets as a non-human primate model organisms. This study will provide a lot of headway into the possibility of having a more direct model for disease research and treatment development that will be more directly applicable to humans.

Take some time and visit the slideshow and appreciate all of the amazing developments in science that highlight this past year. It’s inspiring to think what will come this year.

Read the full publication at Nature: Generation of transgenic non-human primates with germline transmission

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Discovery Institute’s Embarrassing Diatribe About Darwinism

The Discovery Institute is a dangerous organization to be associated with; not necessarily physically dangerous, but academic careers can spiral to oblivion when members of this Seattle-based Intelligent Design (read: “science needs religion!”) group make statements like the one they did today. This article is title “PBS: Publishing Bad Science” and discusses (with evidence that is virtually only from Intelligent Design sources) how and why PBS is pushing only pro-Darwinian theories on its viewers and how this, in their view, is detrimental. They make note of the how “delirious” it is that the global community celebrated the achievements of Charles Darwin and his impact on the paradigm shift in scientific thinking that lead to the Theory of Evolution this past year.

Read the link above for yourself. See just how mud-slingingly stupid the Discovery Institute is in their post and count how many things you can find wrong in it. I have one right here:

But biologists have now generated all possible developmental mutations in fruit flies, and the evidence shows that there are only three possible outcomes: a normal fruit fly, a defective fruit fly, or a dead fruit fly. Not even a new species of fruit fly, much less a horse fly or a horse.

Excuse me? Since when have biologists induced mutations in each of the 165 million different bases of the Drosophila genome? How about all varieties of combinations of these mutations? Insertions? Deletions? The scientific community is FAR from having generated all possible developmental mutations in fruit flies and to say otherwise is a downright lie. I would normally say that it’s surprising for an organization trying to counter the scientific community to make a mistake as big, yet simple, as this, but then again the Discovery Institute tends to do a lot of things wrong.

What do you think? Are their thoughts founded? How many incorrect statements can you find?

I Want You To Think

Posted in AntiScience, Evolutionary Biology, Genetics, Genomics | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments
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