Mike is very busy being an awesome scientist. So, I have the duty of reacting to the latest “ENCODE takedown” published by Graur et al in Genome Biology and Evolution: “On the immortality of television sets: ‘function’ in the human genome according to the evolution-free gospel of ENCODE”. The title kind of tells you that the ENCODE consortium has a snowball’s chance in Hell of coming out of this one looking good – not that the paper was written by unbiased critics. Continue reading “So I take it you aren’t happy with ENCODE…”
Category: Curiosities of Nature
Science Caturday: New Treatments for Old Kitties
Note: We usually feature lolcats here on Science Caturday, because we love both cats and science (and we like to LOL). But today we haz a more serious kitty science post.
Most cats love to be stroked, but many older cats suffer from osteoarthritis, a condition that owners may not notice and can make even petting painful. Scientists at the University of Montreal recently published a study in the journal Research in Veterinary Science on how to recognize and treat osteoarthritis in cats. “Osteoarthritis frequently affects cats’ elbows, backs and hips and joints in the hind limbs, and its prevalence increases dramatically with age. More than 80 % of cats older than 11 years old have it,” explained lead author Eric Troncy of the university’s Faculty of Veterinary Medicine. Continue reading “Science Caturday: New Treatments for Old Kitties”
Meet the Margay
Shut the front door.
Seriously this cat is incredible and adorable. The margay (Leopardus wiedii) is a bit like a mini ocelot. They are native to the Americas and there is even a record of one found in Texas over 100 years ago!
These cats are nocturnal and live primary in the rainforests from Argentina all the way to Mexico. They are absolutely striking and unfortunately this has made the margay a target for fur poachers resulting in their IUCN status as near threatened.
Most amazingly, the margay can rotate its ankle 180 degrees to climb trees upside down. 
The picture to the right cannot do the ankle rotation move justice (watch the video 1:23!). They can climb down trees head first and may even nap upside down. Margays can hang from a branch upside down by a single paw. The video below is absolutely gorgeous and worth the time to watch (full screen).
A Margay and Her Kittens from Phil Slosberg on Vimeo.
Video Credit: Phil Slosberg, a talented wildlife photographer in Costa Rica
“Meet the…” is a collaboration between The Finch & Pea and Nature Afield to bring Nature’s amazing creatures into your home.
Meet the sexually empowered female Texas Blind Salamander
The Texas Blind Salamander (Eurycea rathbuni) is in the Plethodontidae family, also known as lungless salamanders. There are over 400 species of plethodontids making them the most speciose family of salamanders. These salamanders have elaborate and stereotyped courtship rituals. Research has suggested that in general, the male initiates the mating ritual in salamanders. While research and data are sparse for Texas Blind Salamander, it has been reported in captivity that the female actually initiates the courtship behavior.
The female has been reported to rub her nose on the dorsum and side of the male near the cloacal region. Next, the female was observed to rub her cloacal region against the rocks on the bottom of the tank nearby the male. The nearby male began to show interest at this point and courtship ensued. The courtship sequence proceeded with the male depositing a spermatophore, leading the female, and finally the female’s cloaca aligned over the spermatophore to pick it up.
This courtship behavior account comes from a lovely paper in 1988 by Bechler in The Southwestern Naturalist.
Learn more about Plethodontidae here on the Amphibiaweb page.
“Meet the…” is a collaboration between The Finch & Pea and Nature Afield to bring Nature’s amazing creatures into your home.
Gene patents: it’s the sequence, stupid
Should your genome be balkanized into small fiefdoms of intellectual property? The briefs and court decisions in the Myriad BRCA patent case make for fascinating reading, because of the great effort expended by defenders of gene patents to deny that it’s the DNA sequence information that matters.
The historian of science Daniel Kevles has a lively review of this issue in the NY Review of Books. He gives us a clear example of how this denial of sequence value works:
The principal in the court majority was Judge Alan Lourie, who had been an organic chemist before turning to the law. He insisted that in patent law, unlike in biology, BRCA DNA was not information but was solely a chemical compound. Having been chemically modified at its ends upon extraction from its neighboring DNA, it differed sufficiently from the native version to be patent-eligible. He dismissed the Mayo ruling as irrelevant to the case, embracing arguments made by Myriad’s lawyers that the justices’ ruling in that case concerned a biomedical process while the Myriad case concerned DNA, a composition of matter.
To any working molecular biologist, this is ridiculous. DNA has no value solely as a chemical compound outside of the cell (unless you’re doing DNA origami). For this same reason, DNA is not analogous to a mineral extracted from the ground, or a kidney harvested from a body (to cite some other examples people have used). The isolated substance itself is irrelevant. It’s the sequence information that matters: the reason we isolate DNA as a chemical compound is to obtain its sequence. And sequence alone is not patentable.
But recognizing this would disrupt too many business interests: Continue reading “Gene patents: it’s the sequence, stupid”
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