Monday Science: The Happy Birthday DNA Show

TWO weeks ago I attended the Communicating Your Science workshop organised by the Genetics Society and held at Chicheley Hall, a country mansion owned by the Royal Society. The workshop focused on storytelling, communication in interdisciplinary research, scientific writing, publishing, business and radio broadcasting. I absolutely loved it. As part of this, we were challenged by The Naked Scientists crew to create a 15 minute radio show, with less than 24 hours notice, to be recorded as live with no interruptions. Above is a link to the show my group created, which just so happened to be recorded on 25th April 2013, the 60th anniversary of the Watson and Crick paper in which the structure of DNA was revealed. We were allowed some pre-recorded segments, which is where I feature along with our vox pops from 'the streets of Milton Keynes' (actually the staff in the venue, hence the tweeting birds in the background). Consequently I had no live vocals so I took on the role of show producer, gesticulating silently to signify timings, panic and relief when it was all over!

Disclaimer: as this was done so quickly, the science in it may not be completely accurate. It was more for the experience of putting a show together than for complete accuracy.

The Universe As It Is

“Peeping through my keyhole I see within the range of only about thirty percent of the light that comes from the sun; the rest is infrared and some little ultraviolet, perfectly apparent to many animals, but invisible to me. A nightmare network of ganglia, charged and firing without my knowledge, cuts and splices what I do see, editing it for my brain. Donald E. Carr points out that the sense impressions of one-celled animals are not edited for the brain: ‘This is philosophically interesting in a rather mournful way, since it means that only the simplest animals perceive the universe as it is.’”

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
(with thanks to Liz Wainwright)

#bgrs2013

Click here to read the Storify of the event.
(Biosciences Graduate Research Committee student symposium 2013, University of Birmingham)

RiAus: Drugs in Sport

MY latest RiAus blog post is a review of one of their events, called Science Behind the Headlines: Drugs in Sport, and you can read it here. You may think it odd that I am reviewing an event held in the Science Exchange, Adelaide, when I live in Birmingham, UK. The problems this geographic discrepancy present are addressed in my review, as are the perils of being a fan of tea. Further details about the event can be read here. 

My article:

Review of Science Behind the Headlines: Drugs in Sport by Simon Bishop for RiAus.

RiAus: Defying the laws of nature. Again.

EXCITING news! I am now a blogger for the Royal Institution of Australia (RiAus). My first post, 'Defying the laws of nature. Again.' is now up, and can be accessed here. As it was my first post, I couldn't resist the temptation to bring in a few old friends: the thylacine and the Tasmanian devil. I am looking forward to the many future opportunities this position with RiAus will offer, and the challenges they set me!

Defying the Laws of Nature. Again. by Simon Bishop for RiAus

Monday Science: Look at his happy, happy face

IN THE beginning, there was the mouse. There was also the nematode worm (Caenorhabditis elegans), the African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis), the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster), thale cress (Arabidopsis thaliana) and the zebrafish (Danio rerio), and, to a lesser extent, chickens, rabbits, guinea pigs and daphnia. These were the model organisms of science. Now, it seems, there's a new member of the club.

Say hello to this chap:

Source

Doesn't he look happy? He's an axolotl, a curious species of endangered amphibian that lives only in the lakes around Mexico City — lakes that are being threatened by pollution and competition by invasive species. Fully grown axolotls are neotenic salamanders, 'adults' that are stuck with juvenile features because they never went through metamorphosis. Other species of salamander lose their gills and move on to land as they develop, and the happy-go-lucky, flapping external gill form of the axolotl can be induced to do this by the artificial application of thyroid stimulating hormone, but in its natural environment the axolotl is content to stay in a larval state for the duration of its life. Think of it as a tadpole that has grown its legs, but never becomes a frog.

Axolotls are not a new model in science, but a recent push into research in regeneration and injury repair has seen a flurry of articles and interest in using the threatened amphibian. Because of its perpetual larval state, the axolotl is able to regenerate lost limbs, instead of forming a scar. February was a bumper month for axolotl developmental biology papers, so I picked one, and now I’m going to tell you what it said.

Exciting Tasmanian Devil News!

REGULAR readers of this blog will know that I am a big fan of the Tasmanian Devil. It is a black and white ball of fur, underneath which is a marsupial carnivore, one so keen on its food that once it starts eating nothing can distract it, and nothing will be left once it is finished (its blood-curdling squeals of delight are the origin of its name 'devil', when heard by early settlers at night). It is also dying.

This from a previous post of mine:

In a phenomenon almost unique to science, the already small population is suffering from a transmissible form of cancer called Devil Facial Tumour Disease (DFTD), with over 70% of the population infected. It is almost completely lethal, causing swelling in the mouth and face, leading to suffocation and starvation. 80% of the population has been wiped out since its discovery in 1996, and it is predicted that the species could be extinct within 25-35 years.

I have previously covered the discovery that the low genetic diversity in the species has existed in the population for at least 100 years and how this has implications on how we decide which species to invest conservation efforts on. I also introduced the disease and explained why low genetic diversity in the species could be a blessing or disaster for its survival, and how, biologically speaking, the cancer is utterly remarkable — it is contagious and makes its own myelin, a protein usually seen only in the nervous system, which the immune system never attacks.

I hurry through these details because there is new news. It is covered very nicely here and here by Ed Yong, but I shall cut to the chase:

Monday Science: There Be Dragons, Says Bloke

IT was the news that I had been waiting for for years. ‘Antarctic Lake Vostok yields 'new bacterial life'’ claimed BBC News Online last Thursday. ‘Unclassified Life Found in Antarctic Lake’ claimed RIA Novosti. ‘‘Unclassified and unidentified’ life found in Antarctic lake’ claimed the Telegraph. My eyes widened, and my heart started to beat a little faster.

Russian scientists have been drilling into Lake Vostok, a lake that has been sealed beneath 2.3 miles of permanent Antarctic ice for between 14 and 25 million years, since 1998. What they might find in the waters it contains piqued the interests of scientists around the world, myself included. Imagination ran wild as the possibilities were considered — if anything lived down there (and early tests suggested it might) it relied on an unknown energy source, since no light can penetrate the glacier above, and it would have been geographically isolated from other life forms for so long that it would likely have diverged on to its own evolutionary path. In short, if anything lived down there, it would be unlike anything we have ever seen.

But drilling was slow progress, held back by the triple whammy of isolation (Vostok Station is extremely isolated, even by Antarctic standards), inhospitality (it is the location of the coldest ever recorded temperature on Earth, a frightening -89⁰C) and concerns over contamination of the lake by the drilling process. Researchers got within 50 metres of the lake surface in 2011, and to the lake surface itself in 2012, but were forced to withdraw before analysis could begin as Antarctic winter drew in.

After 15 years of painstakingly slow work, teasing followers hoping for news, it was therefore a disappointment that a team from the United States beat the Russians to the achievement of being first to drill into an Antarctic lake, accessing Lake Whillans, which is covered by a not insubstantial 800 metres of ice. Furthermore, initial water samples showed that Lake Whillans “definitely harbours life”, according to a researcher on the team. A British team also came very close to accessing Lake Ellesworth, 2.1 miles beneath the ice.

Now, finally, samples from Lake Vostok are now on the research vessel Akademik Fyodorov, which will depart Antarctica for Russia in May. On arrival, water and ice samples will be sent to institutes in St Petersburg and Irkutsk for further analysis, estimated to be published later in the year or early 2014. But herein lies a problem: analysis is not yet complete, nor verified, and yet the news has already been broken to the wider world. It is now established: life has been found in Lake Vostok.

Or has it?