The next steps could be transplanting these blood vessels, or using progenitor cells to grow vessels in engineered muscles or organs. According to the American Heart Association:

If researchers can develop ways to speed the growth of the vessels, non-surgical cardiac bypass procedures could potentially grow new vessels around those blocked by atherosclerosis.

[Lead researcher Joyce] Bischoff said other findings include:

* The cells created a vigorous network of vessels that connected to one another and to the vessels of the host mouse within seven days and continued to transport blood during the four-week study.

* Once combined and implanted, the two progenitor cells arranged themselves into vessels with minimal outside help, i.e., without any genetic alteration or manipulation to improve their growth. This is important because many growth-promoting genes are the same genes that become activated in cancer.

Eventually, predict researchers, Bischoff's technique could be used to treat cancer or heart disease. Imagine just regrowing an artery that had become clogged, or removing a tumor and replacing it with a chunk of tissue that already has healthy veins in it that can attach to your circulatory system.

Researchers Grow Human Blood Vessels in Mice [Eurekalert]

It turns out that when you're under stress, your body releases more of the hormone cortisol, which stimulates that hyper-alert "fight or flight" reflex. While cortisol is good in small doses, over time it erodes the small caps at the end of your chromosomes known as telomeres (the little yellow dots at the end of those blue chromosomes in the picture). Many researchers have long suspected that telomeres would provide a key to longevity because they are quite large in young people and gradually shrink over time as cells divide.

Rita Effros, the researcher who led the UCLA study, believes that she can synthesize a pill that combats stress by putting more telomerase — the substance that builds telomeres — into the body. This would keep those telomeres large, even in the face of large amounts of cortisol. It might also make your body live a lot longer too.

Effros told Eurekalert:

When the body is under stress, it boosts production of cortisol to support a "fight or flight" response. If the hormone remains elevated in the bloodstream for long periods of time, though, it wears down the immune system. We are testing therapeutic ways of enhancing telomerase levels to help the immune system ward off cortisol's effect. If we're successful, one day a pill may exist to strengthen the immune system's ability to weather chronic emotional stress.

And, perhaps, to live much longer lives.

UCLA Study Identifies the Mechanism Behind the Mind-Body Connection [Eurkalert]

Normally, a microfluidic chip looks like the one you're seeing here on the left. These chips allow researchers to combine tiny amounts of fluid — or microscopic organisms in fluid — in extremely precise ways. They're used in biomedical research a great deal, but perhaps the most well-known application of microfluidics is in inkjet printers (the head that spews your ink is a microfluidic device). What's cool about the image you're seeing below, of the Campanile clock tower on the UC Berkeley campus, is that it's made out of only 6 fluid channels, all of which end with a dead end. Nevill and Day worked on a technique to make it quite simple to push tiny amounts of fluid through these long channels, filling in the picture with different colored dyes.

Nevill writes:

This amazing image created by Austin inspired me to expand on the idea of 'microfluidic art.' Austin has moved into another lab, but I have another undergraduate, Albert Mach, who is helping me with this. Albert is developing a way to preserve this 'art' for extended time periods. It's common practice for microfluidicists to fill their devices with dye to take pictures. This works well, but only lasts for a few days because the dye dries up. Even if you somehow cap the inputs and outputs, the dye rarely lasts longer than a couple of days, especially in PDMS because it is permeable to air.

Looking forward to more! (Thanks, Terry!)

Microfluidic Art [via J Tanner Nevill]

There are two categories in the contest, each with their own prize. The important thing to remember is that this contest is about creating cool new lifeforms that are also, in some way, entertaining. So each entry will be judged for plausibility (i.e. whether it is scientifically justifiable), creativity, usefulness, and entertainment value.

Our esteemed judges include synthetic biologist Drew Endy (MIT), evolutionary biologist and PLoS co-founder Michael Eisen (UC Berkeley), Spore game developer Jason Shankel (EA/Maxis), and biology researcher/io9 "ask a biogeek" columnist Terry Johnson (UC Berkeley).

Category One: BioBricks Lifeform
Using the BioBricks registry of standard biological parts, propose a lifeform design that you could conceivably create in a lab. Must include a complete description of how you would make the lifeform, what it would do, and what possible hazards might be involved in creating it. You may design this creature with a team, but only one of you can claim the prize. You may enter lifeforms that you have entered in other contests, but you must state in your entry which contest(s) you've already entered. More points given if you've actually got a working organism.
Prize: All travel and hotel expenses paid trip to the Synthetic Biology Conference in Hong Kong in October, as well as the chance to present your research there.

Category Two: General Synthetic Lifeform
This lifeform can be more creative. Propose a scientifically justifiable lifeform, which could conceivably be created using current technology. Explain how you would create it, what it would do, and hazards involved. Unlike the BioBricks lifeform, this lifeform can be more speculative. It should be science fictional, but must remain scientifically plausible.
Prize: $1000, plus a cool comic book artist will draw your lifeform and you'll get a signed copy of the original art.

DEADLINE FOR ALL ENTRIES IS AUGUST 25 AT MIDNIGHT PST.

General Rules

1. Send queries and completed entries to madscience@io9.com.
2. On entries, please include your full name, an email and phone number where we can reach you, plus any information about other contests you may have entered your lifeform in.
3. Winners will be announced September 8.
4. All general Gawker contest rules apply.

Don't expect giant machines that can purify the atmosphere or nanotech that can reverse global warming just yet. The U.S. government has yet to approve the fledgling agency which would unify several independent researchers and university labs with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Basically, it would be an Earth-monitoring super-group whose goals are to research and solve humanity's crimes against the biosphere.

USGS director Charles Grote, who is helping to put the group together, isn't quite as grandiose when explaining the ESSA's mission:

The USGS, in bringing not only its geologic, biologic, hydrologic and geospatial expertise to the understanding of natural systems, but also its research capabilities in energy, mineral, water, and biologic resources, gives the new organization a comprehensive perspective on both environmental and resource systems. If we effectively link these capabilities with those of NOAA, we will have a powerful research institution

But David Rejeski, former member of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, is thinking bigger:

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has demonstrated the value of funding high-risk, high-reward research and development. ESSA should foster similar ventures in the environmental arena.

Given the kinds of projects that have come out of DARPA, including the internet and swarm robots, Rejeski is clearly hoping for giant robots who can cool down the oceans or clean up chemical spills. That's what we're hoping for too.

Earth Systems Science Agency, we have a planetary emergency! Help us before it's too late!

Image from Earth Sons.

Organizing an Earth Systems Science Agency [Nature via Eurekalert]

Making a list of marine species might not seem like a big deal, but taxonomists face some daunting problems. For one thing, some species have dozens of names, nicknames and even "official" Latin names dating back centuries. The Census of Marine Life is sorting through all of them and figuring out which species are which, assigning them scientific names, and noting all of their aliases. To make matters worse, researchers are constantly finding new species, sometimes hundreds at a time. It can take years for a new find to be published because of the taxonomic chaos.

The Census is working with the World Register of Marine Species to clear all this up. They currently have over 120,000 validated names, and expect to top 200,000 by the end of this year. What's truly astonishing is their estimate for the total marine species on Earth, discovered and undiscovered: over 1 million. At the current rate of progress, it would take over 500 years to catalog all of them. As more and more species are threatened by pollution and climate change, it becomes even more important to identify them.

Ultimately, the Census of Marine Life catalog will be used to build the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS). This information portal will have photographs, distribution info and a ton of other data on each species, all easily accessible and updatable. Census data will also be contributed to the Encyclopedia of Life and the Species2000 project, which will create a similar catalog for every single species on our planet - animal, plant, fungi...everything. Image by: NOAA.

Census Of Marine Life Lists 122,500 Known Species, Over Halfway To Complete Inventory By Oct. 2010. [Science Daily]

According to UPI:

The department also assessed the possibility of a terrorist attack releasing pathogens from the lab — which will work on the most infectious animal diseases, like Foot and Mouth; and on those most deadly to humans, like the Hendra and Nipah viruses. The overall risk assessment for a release at the five mainland sites was "moderate" because of "the potential easy spread of a disease through livestock or wildlife" nearby, the statement said.

DHS is currently considering five possible sites in the mainland United States. They'd better hope nobody in those towns has read The Hot Zone or seen 28 Days Later.

New Report on Bio-War Lab Danger [UPI via Space War]

According to a release from Oregon State University, where some of the research took place:

While using fluorescence to illuminate organic material has been done for decades, light sources were too large and unwieldy to use for a robotic mission to another planet, said [researcher Michael] Storrie-Lombardi. However, new generations of light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, are very small, reliable and energy efficient, he added.

"Placed on a Mars rover, one of these LEDs positioned a few centimeters from a target can easily provide enough light to produce fluorescence in small polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons," Storrie-Lombardi said. "But even more encouraging is the very recent development of a small 375 nanometer laser diode that can illuminate anything a PanCam can see, including geological layers and crevices high up on an otherwise inaccessible rock outcrop."

Added [U.K. scientist Jan-Peter] Muller: "This laser is now undergoing rigorous tests in the laboratory under Mars-like conditions prior to showing that it is flight-ready, even at this late stage, to be seriously considered to be launched in only five years' time."

The instrument appears to be "an ideal initial survey tool," Storrie-Lombardi pointed out.

"It requires no sample preparation, does not destroy sample material and requires only electrical power to operate, conserving precious water and other consumable resources for sister instruments," he said.

I'm waiting for a USB version of the device to attach to my laptop or mobile. You never know where you might need to scan for lifeforms.

Laser fluorescence could find life on Mars [via Eurekalert]

Over at Wired, which has been doing a great job covering this controversy, Thomas Goetz explains that this is rather like the state government refusing to let people give themselves pregnancy tests:

We neither want nor assume that doctors should have a gatekeeper role in establishing whether we are or are not pregnant, nor do we look to the state to protect us from that information. Pregnancy is a part of life, and it has all sorts of implications and ramifications. So too with DNA . . . The assumption that there must be a layer of "professional help" is exactly what the new age of medicine bodes — the automation of expertise, the liberation of knowledge and the democratization of the tools to interpret and put to use fundamental information about who we are as people. Not as patients, but as individuals. This is not a dark art, province of the select few, as many physicians would have it. This is data. This is who I am. Frankly, it's insulting and a curtailment of my rights to put a gatekeeper between me and my DNA.

And yesterday Aaron Rowe added fuel to the anti-gatekeeping side of this debate with his list of ten reasons why regulators should not hinder people's ability to gain access to information about their own genetic code. Most of his reasons boil down to "I like these companies and they seem like nice/well-informed people." That may be true, but as I've pointed out before a lot of these companies may be run by shysters. That doesn't matter. The fact is, this is consumer technology. We don't prevent people from buying computers even though they could lead to bewilderment and might be best set up with help from "professionals." Ultimately, as Rowe writes:

The price of genetic tests is high, and insurance companies are not paying for them, which makes the current situation much like an open beta test. Early adopters know that they are part of an experiment, and their experiences — good or bad — will allow each business to refine its services.

In other words, this is consumer biotech, not medicine. It should be treated more like a Macbook Air than like an AIDS test.

Top 10 Reasons Regulators Should Not Hinder Access to Genetic Testing [Wired]

According to LiveScience:

[Lead researcher Andrea] Camperio-Ciani and his team hypothesize that the genes they modeled may cause people of both sexes to be extremely attracted to men, which would lead men with the genes to pursue relationships with other men, while causing women with the genes to have more sexual partners, and become pregnant slightly more often than an average woman.

Scientists involved in the study were also quick to point out that there is no single genetic cause for homosexuality, and that environmental factors are almost certainly involved as well. They also are still completely clueless about female homosexuality. Researchers have yet to figure out what causes lesbianism, and so far nobody has figured out a form of gene therapy I can use to make straight girls want me.

Sexually Antagonistic Selection in Human Male Sexuality [PLoS One via LiveScience]

Wonder of life and all that crap. But seriously — wonder of life! It's pretty awesome. Now if only I could get a robot to do this for me, instead of having to poot out those eggs myself every month, I would be totally psyched.

Human Ovulation Caught on Film [via New Scientist]

A group of researchers observing this Brazilian insect drama in the wild say it's the first time they've been able to prove scientifically that parasites essentially mind-control their hosts to ensure the parasites' survival.

According to a release from PLoS One:

Inside the caterpillar host, a cruel drama takes place: the eggs of the parasitoid hatch and the larvae feed on the body fluids of the host. The caterpillar continues feeding, moving and growing like its unparasitized brothers and sisters. When the parasitoid larvae are full-grown, they emerge together through the host's skin, and start pupating nearby. Unlike many other combinations of host and parasitoid, the host remains alive but displays spectacular changes in its behaviour: it stops feeding and remains close to the parasitoid pupae. Moreover, it defends the parasitoid pupae against approaching predators with violent head-swings.

The caterpillar dies soon after the adult parasitoids emerge from their pupae, so there can be no benefit whatsoever for the caterpillars . . . The research team found that, in the field, parasitoid pupae which were guarded by caterpillars suffered half as much predation as those which had no bodyguard. Hence, the behavioural changes of the host result in increased survival of the parasitoids.

In other words, this caterpillar is made to love those wasps so much that it will protect them at all costs, including its own life. Now imagine if these researchers decided to figure out whether this wasp behavior mod could be ported to the human brain. A squirt of wasp juice could make you a super soldier, willing to give your life to protect whatever your "parasite" might be.

Parasitoid Increases Survival of Its Pupae By Inducing Host to Fight Predators [PLoS One via Science Daily] (Thanks, Brian!)

Right now, the blog contains a pretty interesting writeup of the group's first meeting, and a lot of questions about whether biology hobbyists' time has come. A presentation from bio hobbyist Mackenzie "Mac" Cowell focused on how easy it is to get all the stuff you need for your wet lab online, and also explored the accomplishments of bio hobbyists. Mac described one such hobbyist:

A ham-radio hacker, turned reluctant cancer patient, recently combined his expertise about radio waves with spare parts from his home to build a prototype device capable of targeting the destruction of cancer cells. This device is undergoing clinical trials at two major medical research centers, after attracting investments from venture capitalists and the collaboration of a Nobel Laureate who was intrigued by preliminary results generated from the DIYers garage.

This is exactly the kind of bio-tinkering io9 wants to encourage. And in fact, we're willing to put our money where our many mouths are and actually hand out some cash to people who are doing DiYbio in their backyards. Oh yes, my pretties. Watch io9 for more details next week!

In the meantime, check out the DiYBio club. They have a pretty active Google group too.

DiYBio [blog]

As a biologist who studies whole organisms and populations, I find that more and more of biology (in terms of funding, positions and emphasis) is going to the sub-organismal level. We now have lots of cell biologists, geneticists, neurologists, biochemists, biomechanics, bioengineers and so on, but not a lot of behaviorists, population ecologists, biodemographers and others who study the emergent properties that arise at the higher levels of organization. What role, if any, do you foresee for understanding of these higher level biological phenomena in the future sci-fi-ish stuff?

As far as emerging biotechnology goes, science fiction grapples more frequently (if not always very seriously) with issues of organismal or ecological impact than the scientific establishment. There are good reasons for this. Ecological ruminations are a tradition for the authors, and the scientists have - until quite recently - been limited by technical considerations. As a scientist, I hope the title Planetary Ecologist will go on someone's tax return someday.

A Sandworm of Arrakis, from Frank Herbert's Dune.

Some would say that Frank Herbert's Dune was the beginning of ecological science fiction, but its roots go much deeper than that. Every time an author has imagined an alien world and then tried to fill it with beings capable of surviving on it, that author is grappling with issues of ecology, and every time an author has decided how those aliens would act, they were engaging in a bit of recreational behaviorism. Herbert elevated the tone and raised the bar, no doubt, but there is a long-standing tradition of biological and behavioral what-if in SF. The rise of environmentalism coupled with another favorite SF theme - dystopianism - brought us the environmental disaster subgenre, from the ridiculous The Day After Tomorrow to more thoughtful treatments like David Brin's Earth or the works of Kim Stanley Robinson.

Mars (with a little terraforming and a lot of luck).

While there are (of course) ecologists in the scientific community, there are very few thus far that bridge the gap between research at the molecular level and ecologies larger than a tissue culture dish. This is not to imply that ecologists are ignorant of molecular biology; the field has generated far too many useful tools for that. The bioengineers and cell biologists who are designing new organisms at the molecular level, on the other hand, are not always well versed in the basics of ecology and evolution. They are necessarily focused on what one scientist has called the molecular sociology of the cell.

Up until quite recently it would have been ludicrous to expect a molecular biologist to consider the higher-level environmental interactions of, for example, a particular gene, because he or she was still trying to figure out (at a molecular level) what the damn gene did to the cell itself. Take a peek at the inner life of a cell (if you haven't seen if before). A single cell is a giant bag of confusion. Trying to sort out web of interactions between the thousands of molecules present in hundreds of compartments using the technology at hand has been compared to figuring out the rules for a game of football using only pictures of the field (that only show certain players) at various times. This is why many researchers like to work with single cells instead of a cell in its natural environment, whatever that is - the cell alone is complicated enough. Experimental limitations or therapeutic concerns often require an intimate knowledge of a single organism's physiology, effectively tying a researcher to a single animal. Heinlein said, "Specialization is for insects". I would add grad students to the list.

Take E. coli as an example. We've had its genome sequenced for over a decade. Type its name into Google Scholar and you'll find over 1.5 million hits. Yet programming this bacteria - synthetic biology - is still a difficult and time-consuming process. When The University of Texas at Austin's entered their light-sensitive pigment-producing bacteria biofilm in the intercollegiate Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) contest, they realized that their achievement barely scratched the surface - that the "program" they'd written into the bacteria was relatively simple compared to the programming it already used to survive. In recognition of this fact, they produced perhaps my favorite "Hello world" program ever.

10 GOTO e. coli 20 Hack it genetically to turn it into a light-sensitive film

It's also important to note that almost all of the engineered cells and organisms made today are never meant to be released in the environment (and wouldn't be likely to survive in it if they did). Those that aren't created purely for research purposes are typically meant to live in small, artificial, and easily replaceable ecologies, like bioreactors in a pharmaceutical company or fermenters in a winery.

Either the bacteria are doing what they've been programmed to or we have a serious Cthulhu problem.

Genetically modified foods are a special case, but as a special case they've already received the most attention by ecologists. GM organisms that are designed to move outside of the lab enter the purview of the ecologists.

While disciplines like bioinformatics combine computational and molecular biology with evolutionary studies, increasingly complicated bioengineered organisms designed for the wild will require the ability to effectively model the ecologies they were designed for. In brief, once we're good enough at figuring out how to make a cell jump or play dead, the next frontier of design will be figuring out when we want a cell to jump or play dead, considering its surroundings. Top image via Electro-Plankton.

Do you have questions you've always wanted to ask a biogeek? You can email me at tdj@io9.com.

All four families have a few things in common. First, the people with Unertan syndrome are all the products of incestuous marriages. Children of closely-related people often suffer birth defects. Also, the children who walk on all fours are developmentally disabled; some are unable to talk. What shocked the researchers was that the families with quadrupedal members did not share the same kinds of genetic mutations. One of the researchers, Tayfun Ozcelik, gave a talk today at the European Society of Human Genetics about the genetic study. According to a release from the Society:

Although the families lived in isolated villages 200-300 km apart and reported no ancestral relationships, the scientists expected to find a single genetic mutation implicated in the condition. They were surprised to find that this was not the case.

"We carried out genome-wide screening on these families", said Professor Ozcelik, "and found regions of DNA that were shared by all those family members who walk on all fours. However, we were surprised to find that genes on three different chromosomes are responsible for the condition in four different families.

"In families A and D there were mutations in VLDLR on chromosome 9, and in family B the phenotype maps to chromosome 17 to a region that contains at least 157 genes, and we are still looking for the precise mutation. Neither region appears to be implicated for family C."

In all cases, the affected individuals were the offspring of consanguineous marriages, which suggests that if they had married outside the family they would not have had the condition. All of them had significant developmental delay in infancy. "Whereas normal infants make the transition to walking on two legs in a relatively short period", said Professor Ozcelik, "these individuals continued to move on their palms and feet and never walked upright. Although they can stand from a sitting position and maintain this upright position with flexed hips and knees, they virtually never initiate bipedal walking on their own."

It has been suggested in the past that lack of access to medical care exacerbated the effects of an under-developed cerebellum, and that this led to quadrupedality. "Although it may be true that family B lacked proper medical care, families A and D had consistent access to good medical attention, and both families sought a correction of quadrupedality in their affected children", said Professor Ozcelik. "Indeed, an unaffected member of family A is a physician, who has been actively involved in the medical interventions. In addition, the parents in family A also discouraged their affected children from walking on all fours, to no avail. We think that social factors are unlikely to be involved in the development of quadrupedal locomotion."

Along with brain enlargement, speech, and the ability to make tools, upright walking has long been regarded as one of the key traits that have led to modern humans. Professor Ozcelik's team have opened a window on how mutations in VLDLR affect brain development and influence gait in humans.

"It will be interesting to see if the VLDLR gene is involved in other types of cerebellar ataxias. In addition, we hope to identify the defective genes associated with quadrupedal locomotion in families B and C", he says.

All the families do share genetic factors in common, and Ozcelik's team says similar genetic factors are found in a few North American families whose members cannot walk at all.

If it turns out that there are several groups of genes that control for bipedalism, it might be possible to genetically modify people to walk on all fours. It's hard to imagine why anyone would want to do this outside a mad scientist movie. However, many human genes are shared with our quadrupedal mammalian cousins. Perhaps discovery of the bipedal gene could be the first step in helping cats, dogs, and apes to walk upright. Yes, it could be the first key to "uplifting" other species.

Genetic Mutation Linked to Walking on All Fours [Eurekalert]

Nature's full of clawed animals, but the frogs' defense mechanism is unique in the natural world because their claws literally rip through the skin when extended. They're also made of bone instead of keratin (sorry, no adamantium claws are known to exist in reality, except for this guy). Researchers aren't sure if the claws are retractable or not, and as Yong notes, they may never really want to find out:

The clawed frogs belong to a family called Arthroleptidae that were discovered in Central Africa more than a century ago. At first, people wondered if the claws just stuck through the skin as a side effect of the preservation process. Alternatively, the frogs may have used them to grip or climb. Their true function as defensive weapons only became clear when naturalists first described actually picking up and handling live animals.

Doing so is a mistake, and anyone who makes it is punished with a series of deep, bleeding wounds inflicted by the struggling animal as it kicks out violently with its claws. The ability is well known to the people of Cameroon, who only ever hunt the frogs with machetes or spears.

In the X-Men movie, Wolverine, when asked if it hurts to pops his claws, answers, "Every time." One can't help but think that the same is true for the frogs.
...
However, many amphibians have extraordinary healing abilities that can even regenerate severed limbs. It may be that the clawed frogs, like their comic-book counterpart, have a 'healing factor' that closes up the wounds that open every time their claws are used.

Source: Not Exactly Rocket Science

There are dozens of pens and pencils jammed inside that finger. I love how these tools used by fingers, when stuffed inside the finger itself, look like creepy blood and guts and bone. Hawkinson often turns body parts inside-out in his work. You can check out more of it at Ace Gallery.

Severed Fingers and Giant Babies [via Bioephemera]

Oxytocin is a chemical associated with many of the "pleasurable" feelings you have, from basic trust, to love and orgasm. Researchers in Switzerland theorized that people playing social trust games might change their behaviors if given doses of oxytocin, since the chemical might artificially enhance their willingness to trust someone. Indeed, they were right: subjects dosed with Oxytocin were willing to trust people even after they'd been explicitly told that those people had behaved in untrustworthy ways in the past. People who had not been dosed did not trust the "untrustworthy" people.

According to a release from Neuron:

In their experiments, the researchers asked volunteer subjects to play two types of games—a trust game and a risk game. In the trust game, subjects were asked to contribute money, with the understanding that a human trustee would invest the money and decide whether to return the profits, or betray the subjects' trust and keep all the money. In the risk game, the subjects were told that a computer would randomly decide whether their money would be repaid or not.

The subjects also received doses of either the brain chemical oxytocin (OT) or a placebo via nasal spray. They chose OT because studies by other researchers had shown that OT specifically increases people's willingness to trust others.

During the games, the subjects' brains were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging. This common analytical technique involves using harmless magnetic fields and radio waves to map blood flow in brain regions, which reflects brain activity.

The researchers found that—in the trust game, but not the risk game—OT reduced activity in two brain regions: the amygdala, which processes fear, danger and possibly risk of social betrayal; and an area of the striatum, part of the circuitry that guides and adjusts future behavior based on reward feedback.

Baumgartner and colleagues concluded that their findings showed that oxytocin affected the subjects' responses specifically related to trust . . . "If subjects face social risks, such as in the trust game, those who received placebo respond to the feedback with a decrease in trusting behavior while subjects with OT demonstrate no change in their trusting behavior although they were informed that their interaction partners did not honor their trust in roughly 50% of the cases."

Brain's Trust Machinery Identified [Eurekalert]

Diseases from space

Of course the classic space disease hits earth in The Andromeda Strain, an early-1970s novel written by a then-unknown medical doctor called Michael Crichton. He was so obsessed with making his deadly disease from a meteor into the stuff of hard science fiction that he actually included footnotes to medical journals and other sources to prove that this scenario could happen. A miniseries based on the book is about to hit the airwaves soon, and it's pretty fun and gross so keep your eyes peeled for it. One of the coolest diseases from space was created by award-winning author Octavia Butler in the novel Clay's Ark, about a guy named Clay who returns from space infected with a strange virus. As the virus spreads, a percentage of the population begins to return to a semi-animalistic state, growing a four-legged morphology and being led by instinct to form patriarchal packs of human-hunting creatures. It's a really fascinating look at what would happen if people could not fight their "animalistic" urges to kill and fuck, and had to give into those urges even as they knew they weren't in their best interests. On a lighter note, there is the excellent space disease that comes in a meterorite in one of the short stories in 1980s classic movie Creepshow. Stephen King in a rare movie acting role plays a dim-witted guy in Maine who touches the meterorite and slowly turns into a giant plant creature. Cannot be missed. And then there's the disease that hits the space station in the movie version of Doom, which turns people into creatures who can shoot their tongues. You really don't need to know much more than that, honestly.

Sexually-transmitted diseases

One of the most bizarre episodes on Star Trek: Enterprise was "Stigma," the "psychic AIDS" episode where vulcan hottie T'Pol revealed that she'd been mind-raped by some seriously unsafe dude and it had given her a kind of brain-HIV that was explained with the usual "tech tech tech" panache you know so well from Trek. Not surprisingly, another great scifi sex disease comes from David Cronenberg, whose movie Rabid tells a rather incoherent story about how plastic surgery leads to this sex disease that involves things that live in armpits and poke you. No, really. Although The Hunger is a vampire movie (where Susan Sarandon has sex with Catherine Deneuve, to the collective happiness of people the world over), the flick treats vampirism scientifically — it turns out that this condition (which is transmitted during sex, though maybe it doesn't have to be, but who cares because of the aforementioned hot lesbian sex) involves sciencey things like blood cells and ancient Egyptians. But one of the truly coolest and most disturbing sex diseases is "the bug" in the comic book series Black Hole, by Charles Burns. In the book, hundreds of teenagers who've caught the bug have become mutant stoners living in the woods to escape stigma (ooh, there's that word again) from the non-mutant populace. Excitingly, Black Hole is about to become a movie directed by David "Fight Club" Fincher, with some writing credits going to Neil Gaiman. And if you like MILFs, you've got to see Flesh-Eating Mothers, all about suburban moms who get a bizarre venereal disease that turns them into child-eating freaks.

Diseases of the Superpowered:

You've probably forgotten Anne McCaffrey's novel Crystal Singer, but we haven't. People with perfect pitch go to a planet where crystals for ship engines are mined using special tones that can only be produced by singing (in perfect pitch). Singers who land on the planet hoping to become miners are all stricken with a disease that kills some, but leaves the rest with super-senses and groovy sex lives. Similarly, a disease grants mega-powers in the Powers comic book, and in the novel The Changeling Plague. Then there are the diseases that only affect super-powered people, like the legacy virus in X-Men, which kills only mutants. Then there's the cylon disease in Battlestar Galactica, which spreads via the resurrection process and kills the cylons in a grisly way — it's a nice cross between computer virus and bio-virus. And on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, there was a disease that affected only the mega-powered changelings, making them more and more gooey each time they changed shape until they turned into nothing but yucky liquid.

Diseases that make you a zombie

The most popular scifi disease these days has to be anything that turns people into zombies. There's the disease "Rage" in 28 Days Later, which converts people into fast-moving, drooling, human-eating freaks. And it would seem that pretty much the same disease is attacking people in the remake of I Am Legend that came out a few months ago, though that disease kills a lot of people and leaves only a small percentage of the population as zombies. A government-created disease is what causes Jenna Jameson to become the world's first zombie stripper in Zombie Strippers, and the amazing novel World War Z (soon to be a movie) is a pseudo-documentary tale of what happens to the world when a zombie virus divides the population into killers and killed.

Diseases that reduce the population

If you're sick of VD from space, and zombies seem somehow unrealistic to you, there are always the more realistic scifi diseases that just reduce the population by killing people instead of turning them into mutants or monsters. In Stephen King's classic The Stand, the world has been reduced by a government-created virus. Survivors have to pick sides between a nice old lady who is fighting a mean young man as they try to recreate human civilization (I think there's something about god and the devil in there too, but let's please ignore that). Ursula Le Guin's novel Lathe of Heaven is about what happens when a liberal doctor discovers that his patient can change reality with his dreams. In an effort to create world peace and reduce overpopulation, the doctor tries to direct his patient's dreams, only to find that they come true in a way he didn't expect. Populations are reduced via a virulent plague, and peace breaks out when aliens attack the moon and the tiny group of remaining humans come together against a common enemy. In Connie Willis' awesome time-travel tale The Doomsday Book, a pandemic is reducing the population of London while a young woman travels back to the Middle Ages and lives through a wave of the black death that is ravaging the tiny town she's taken shelter in. Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood's apocalyptic biotech novel, is about a mad scientist who destroys humanity with a plague in his attempt to create a more perfect species that will be free of war and other human problems.

In fact, nearly all the money put into developing synthetic organs in the U.S. (about $3.5 billion) has come from private industry. Apparently the government considers synthetic hearts too much of a "hot button" issue with religious groups. So funders snub anyone looking for cash to develop next-gen organs that will probably save our lives in 20 years. Unfortunately, you'll only be able to license your organs, since they're provided by private industry. Wonder if the right of first sale applies to synthetic organs? [Growing Body Parts via RedOrbit's aggregation of a Kansas City Star article]

A study in 2005 at Stanford showed that there is only one gene that controls whether a sticklefish will develop bony plates on its body. So clearly this gene got switched on after the lake was cleaned up. But why? According to PhysOrg:

Back when the lake was polluted, the transparency of its water was low, affording a range of vision only about 30 inches deep. The tainted, mucky water provided the sticklebacks with an opaque blanket of security against predators such as cutthroat trout, and so the fish needed little bony armor to keep them from being eaten by the trout.

In 1968, after the cleanup was complete, the lake's transparency reached a depth of 10 feet. Today, the water's clarity approaches 25 feet. Lacking the cover of darkness they once enjoyed, over the past 40 years about half of Lake Washington sticklebacks have evolved to become fully armored, with bony plates protecting their bodies from head to tail. For example, in the late '60s, only 6 percent of sticklebacks in Lake Washington were completely plated. Today, 49 percent are fully plated and 35 percent are partially plated, with about half of their bodies shielded in bony armor. This rapid, dramatic adaptation is actually an example of evolution in reverse, because the normal evolutionary tendency for freshwater sticklebacks runs toward less armor plating, not more.

"We propose that the most likely cause of this reverse evolution in the sticklebacks is from the higher levels of trout predation after the sudden increase in water transparency," said Peichel, whose Hutchinson Center lab has established the stickleback as a new model for studying complex genetic traits. By examining multifaceted traits in the fish, such as body type and behavior, Peichel and colleagues shed light on the genetic networks at play in other complex traits, such as cancer and other common human diseases.

The ability of the fish to quickly adapt to environmental changes such as increased predation by the cutthroat trout is due, Peichel believes, to their rich genetic variation. The sticklebacks in Lake Washington contain DNA from both marine (saltwater) fish, which tend to be fully plated, and freshwater sticklebacks, which tend to be low-plated. When environmental pressures called for increased plating, some of the fish had copies of genes that controlled for both low and full plating, and so natural selection favored the latter.

"Having a lot of genetic variation in the population means that if the environment changes, there may be some gene variant that does better in that new environment than in the previous one, and so nature selects for it. Genetic variation increases the chance of overall survival of the species," she said.

Researchers document rapid reverse-evolution [PhysOrg]

According to National Geographic:

Nudibranchs crawl through life as slick and naked as a newborn. Snail kin whose ancestors shrugged off the shell millions of years ago, they are just skin, muscle, and organs sliding on trails of slime across ocean floors and coral heads the world over.

Found from sandy shallows and reefs to the murky seabed nearly a mile down, nudibranchs thrive in waters both warm and cold and even around billowing deep-sea vents . . . So why, in habitats swirling with voracious eaters, aren't nudibranchs picked off like shrimp at a barbecue? The 3,000-plus known nudibranch species, it turns out, are well equipped to defend themselves. Not only can they be toughskinned, bumpy, and abrasive, but they've also traded the family shell for less burdensome weaponry: toxic secretions and stinging cells. A few make their own poisons, but most pilfer from the foods they eat. Species that dine on toxic sponges, for example, alter and store the irritating compounds in their bodies and secrete them from skin cells or glands when disturbed. Other nudibranchs hoard capsules of tightly coiled stingers, called nematocysts, ingested from fire corals, anemones, and hydroids. Immune to the sting, the slugs deploy the stolen artillery along their own extremities.

But sometimes even the vicious Nudibranchs must find time for love. That's what you're seeing right here, with two Nudibranchs getting busy.

Find out more about these dangerous but recycling-conscious snails, and see over a dozen more pictures in the full gallery at National Geographic.

Living Color: Toxic Nudibranchs [National Geographic] Thanks, Marilyn Terrell!

Photographs by David Doubilet for National Geographic.

The answer is: not for a really, really long time. First of all, genetically-modifying a viable human embryo (which the one in the aforementioned experiment was not) is illegal in most countries. Second, we wouldn't know how to modify a human embryo to enhance its superpowers even if we wanted to. Sure we might be able to knock out a few genetic diseases given a few more years, or make it glow like those bunnies and kittens with the fluorescent fur.

A recent article in AP makes it clear exactly what this so-called 'designer embryo' really was:

"None of us wants to make designer babies," said Dr. Zev Rosenwaks, director of the Center for Reproductive Medicine and Infertility at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center.

The idea of designer babies is that someday, scientists may insert particular genes into embryos to produce babies with desired traits like intelligence or athletic ability. Some people find that notion repugnant, saying it turns children into designed objects, and would create an unequal society where some people are genetically enriched while others would be considered inferior.

The study appears to be the first report of genetically modifying a human embryo. It was presented last fall at a meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, but didn't draw widespread public attention then. The result was reported over the weekend by The Sunday Times of London, which said British authorities highlighted the work in a recent report.

Rosenwaks and colleagues did the work with an embryo that had extra chromosomes, making it nonviable. Following a standard procedure used in animals, they inserted a gene that acts as a marker that can be easily followed over time. The embryo cells took up the gene, he said.

The goal was to see if a gene introduced into an abnormal embryo could be traced in stem cells that are harvested from the embryo, he said. Such work could help shed light on why abnormal embryos fail to develop, he said.

Genetically-modified embryo stirs criticism [AP via PhysOrg]

The art piece was called "Victimless Leather," and according to The Art Newspaper:

The artists, Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, say the work which was fed nutrients by tube, expanded too quickly and clogged its own incubation system just five weeks after the show opened . . . Paola Antonelli, head of MoMA's architecture and design department and curator of the show, says she had to make the decision to turn off the life-support system for the work, basically "killing" it.

Ms Antonelli says the jacket "started growing, growing, growing until it became too big. And [the artists] were back in Australia, so I had to make the decision to kill it. And you know what? I felt I could not make that decision. I've always been pro-choice and all of a sudden I'm here not sleeping at night about killing a coat...That thing was never alive before it was grown."

MoMA Exhibit Dies [Art Newspaper]

Peggy from Biology in Science Fiction writes:

The experiment that Natali is remembering is probably the work of Joseph and Charles Vacanti of the Tissue Engineering & Organ Fabrication Laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital. Back in 1997 their photo of a mouse with a human ear-shaped growth on its back made a splash in the popular media. It's no wonder that it caught Natali's attention.

He apparently didn't pay much attention to the story attached with the picture, though, because the experiment had absolutely nothing to do with genetic engineering. What the Vacantis and colleagues actually did was form a biodegradable polymer into the shape of a human ear, seed it with cow cartilage cells (bovine chondrocytes), and implant it under the skin of the experimental mice1. They found that new cartilage formed in the shape of the implant. And it turns out their methodology had immediate real-world applications. They used similar techniques to grow a "shield" in the chest of boy who was born with no cartilage or bone between his skin and heart. They also were able to grow a replacement thumb tip using a scaffold made of coral. It's very cool tissue engineering technology.

It isn't that surprising that Natali thinks that genetic engineering was involved. He may have seen the full page ad in the New York Times placed by the anti-biotechnology group the Turning Point Project, which (according to Wikipedia) showed the picture of the ear-bearing mouse with the description "This is an actual photo of a genetically engineered mouse with a human ear on its back." The image also made the email chain letter rounds with similarly misleading information.

Splice: Rock and Roll Geneticists and the Horror of Genetic Engineering [Biology in Science Fiction]

Lynn Hershman Leeson recently released a film about Kurtz' arrest called Strange Culture. Tilda Swinton played Kurtz' wife (pictured), largely because the Academy Award-winning actor wanted to help call attention to the artist's plight.

Luckily, the court seemed to think the charges, which included mail fraud for receiving biological samples in the mail, were absurd. According to Artvoice:

U.S. District Judge Richard Arcara ruled that criminal charges brought against him by federal prosecutors were "insufficient on[their] face."

Kurtz is Cleared [Artvoice]

The key is to lower protein-production in cells, which is why eating less can cause lifespan extension. According to the University of Washington:

In this project, the UW researchers studied many different strains of yeast cells that had lower protein production. They found that mutations to the ribosome, the cell's protein factory, sometimes led to increased life span. Ribosomes are made up of two parts — the large and small subunits — and the researchers tried to isolate the life-span-related mutation to one of those parts.

"What we noticed right away was that the long-lived strains always had mutations in the large ribosomal subunit and never in the small subunit," said the study's lead author, Kristan Steffen, a graduate student in the UW Department of Biochemistry.

The researchers also tested a drug called diazaborine, which specifically interferes with synthesis of the ribosomes' large subunits, but not small subunits, and found that treating cells with the drug made them live about 50 percent longer than untreated cells. Using a series of genetic tests, the scientists then showed that depletion of the ribosomes' large subunits was likely to be increasing life span by a mechanism related to dietary restriction — the TOR signaling pathway.

Researchers Uncover Details About How Dietary Restriction Slows Down Aging [Eurekalert]

If not the medical tricorder from Star Trek, when could we possibly see diagnostic equipment capable of scanning for infections, viruses or impending heart attacks, attached to wrist watches or other portable devices?

If you're interested in your EKG or your glucose level, you may have to find a tricorder ringtone for your iPhone. Wearable heart monitors with Bluetooth are well on their way to market. Not only could a doctor remotely monitor a patient using a PocketPC such as the Alive EKG (at left), there's no reason why a patient's bluetooth-enabled cell phone couldn't be used to automatically alert a physician in case of emergency, too.

Impressive as that is, I'm a firm supporter of devices with lasers over devices without lasers. This laser digitizer (below), when attached to a PDA, can be used to record the width and depth of a healing wound - helping doctors and nurses better track patient progress. The PDA, called the ARANZ Medical Silhouette, can then be used to upload measurements and images into a patient file. I challenge anyone to use this device without feeling like you are living in the future.

Not every portable monitoring device needs to be quite so high tech. Patients in rural areas and the third world often do not have physical access to doctors - but for many applications, they might be able to do without. The CellScope (at left) aims to turn an ordinary cell phone camera into a "telemicroscope" capable of sending high-magnification images of skin or blood samples to a doctor for remote diagnosis. An inexpensive alternative to a long trip for a routine diagnosis, and the speed at which the information can reach a physician makes this a potentially valuable tool for keeping real-time track of disease outbreaks.

The gold standard for infectious disease monitoring in patients is usually a blood test for a biomarker molecule of some sort. While we can't yet wave a device over someone and know that much about the contents of their blood, we may be soon be able to miniaturize the equipment necessary to perform the analysis. Electronic noses, for example, may soon be able to diagnose diseases by smell (with a little help from a layer of artificial mucus) - if a dog can be trained to smell cancer on a patient's breath, why not?

Microfluidic lab-on-a-chip technologies (pictured below) can already be used to determine the presence and extent of gum disease by testing for biomarkers present in a few microliters of saliva. Researchers aim to pack everything the device requires into a 5-pound package, and to develop similar chips for other diseases. If you'd like to avoid getting the disease in the first place, real-time infectious disease monitors can be used as an early-warning system, with prototypes currently capable of detecting the presence of the avian flu virus. While there's plenty of tweaking to do before these silicon chip-based sensors are installed in hospital air vents or worn by soldiers in the battlefield, the alternatives to early detection range from a mild fever to coughing up blood - followed by extensive tests to reveal why you have a mild fever or are coughing up blood. Far better to know what's coming so that we can limit exposure and treat the disease as early as possible.

If these possibilities aren't tantalizing enough to interest you in medical miniaturization, keep in mind that Gene Roddenberry inserted a clause into his contract stating that anyone who can build a tricorder can use that name to describe the device. One company has already combined an EMF meter, light and colorimeter, barometer, thermometer, and clock into a tricorder, but the medical version is as of yet unrealized. If you succeed, a warning - reversing the polarity on any of these devices is more likely to bugger its electronics than allow it, like most technologies on Star Trek, to perform impossible feats critical to the plot.

Terry Johnson is a biology researcher at UC Berkeley and io9's resident biogeek. If you have a question you'd like Terry to answer, email him at: tdj@io9.com.

Attendees listened to talks with names like "What product features will influence an animal advocate's decision to move from vegetarianism to In Vitro Meat?" and went to panels devoted to "large-scale tissue engineering." While it's still more expensive to produce cultured meat than it is to raise chickens for the slaughter, the economics are changing as swiftly as the technologies to produce cultured meat. Mostly the barriers to market entry in a few years will be the meat industry itself, which may attempt to scare consumers away from the stuff or pull strings in government block the synthetic flesh via regulations.

For the record, cultured meat tastes just like regular meat — it's tissue-engineered muscle, made of exactly the same biological ingredients as meat from dead animals. It can also be a lot less fatty. Texture is one of the remaining issues, which is why proponents of cultured meat suggest it will first come to market as chicken nuggets and ground meat.

Andrew Revkin of the New York Times Dot Earth blog imagines vat meat as an eco-alternative:

But one could envision someday a model, say, of a solar-powered facility in southern California or Singapore basically turning sunlight and desalinated seawater into growth medium and then tons of cruelty-free, sustainable nuggets of chicken essence.

Whatever works best. If it is harder to move people [to stop slaughtering animals] on ethical grounds than it is to provide a sustainable humane substitute, I'm all for the substitute.

Can People Have Meat and a Planet Too? [Dot Earth]

Wong, who saw the film at the Philly Film Festival and loved it, explains the plot thusly:

Jennifer is a photographer who was born with at least 7 clitorises. She is an insatiable nymphomaniac whose enthusiastic lovemaking often ends in the death of her partners. She lives a life devoid of any hope of happiness until she crosses paths with Batz.

Batz has a 24 inch, drug addicted penis with a mind of its own, literally. After Jennifer accidentally sees Batz monster phallus, she has a renewed hope that she may have finally found her one true love. Unfortunately, before the two can get together and live happily ever after, Batz penis detatches from his owner and goes out on a rampage around town, attacking every hot, naked girl it can find.

Frank Henenlotter's Got a New Movie! [AICN]

Basically Brody and Polley create a human-animal hybrid creature that gets out of control. But we've been there, done that. Why not get really nasty, ala Bela Lugosi in 1930s shocker Murders in the Rue Morgue, and have our demented scientists trying to implant a naked lady with gorilla blood? (Yeah, the 30s were a crazy time.) Or how about going the more realistic route, dealing with what it would be like as a human-animal hybrid, with no civil rights due to that pesky nonhuman DNA? Sadly, Splicers will give us nothing more than another monster flick with a DNA twist. [Cinema Blend]

Tissue engineered skin has been used on humans since 2001, though initially it was merely a replacement for cadaver skin as a temporary solution for burn patients whose skin was damaged too extensively to consider skin grafts. More permanent solutions designed to more closely mimic the structure of skin are on the way, with several different designs currently under research or in the clinic. We're a long way from a tissue engineered donor-free face transplant, but we'll get there. There are non-medical benefits to this work as well - a variation on tissue engineered skin called Episkin is being marketed in Europe as an alternative to animal testing of cosmetics.

One