Category: Articles

Scientists Discover Origin of a Cancer in Tasmanian Devils

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The New York Times, December 31, 2009

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The Tasmanian devil, the spaniel-size marsupial found on the Australian island of Tasmania, has been hurtling toward extinction in recent years, the victim of a bizarre and mysterious facial cancer that spreads like a plague.

Now Australian scientists say they have discovered how the cancer originated. The finding, being reported Friday in the journal Science, sheds light on how cancer cells can sometimes liberate themselves from the hosts where they first emerged. On a more practical level, it also opens the door to devising vaccines that could save the Tasmanian devils.

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Scientists Start a Genomic Catalog of Earth’s Abundant Microbes

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The New York Times, December 28, 2009

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If you want to appreciate the diversity of life on earth, you will need a microscope.

There are about 5,400 species of mammals on the planet, but just a spoonful of soil may contain twice as many species of microbes. They can dwell in habitats where so-called higher life forms like us would quickly die, including acid-drenched mines and Antarctic deserts. By one rough estimate, there may be, all told, 150 million species of microbes.

“Microbes represent the vast majority of organisms on earth,” said Hans-Peter Klenk, a microbiologist for the German Collection of Micro-organisms and Cell Cultures, a government microbiology research center.

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What Is the Speed of Thought?

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Discover, December 16, 2009

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When Samuel Morse established the first commercial telegraph, in 1844, he dramatically changed our expectations about the pace of life. One of the first telegraph messages came from that year’s Democratic National Convention in Baltimore, where the delegates had picked Senator Silas Wright as their vice presidential nominee. The president of the convention telegraphed Wright in Washington, D.C., to see if he would accept. Wright immediately wired back: No. Incredulous that a message could fly almost instantly down a wire, the delegates adjourned and sent a flesh-and-blood committee by train to confirm Wright’s response—which was, of course, the same. From such beginnings came today’s high-speed, networked society.

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#97: Tropical Heat Speeds Up Evolution

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Discover, December 16, 2009

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If alien biologists were on an expedition to Earth, it would not take long for them to realize that there are a lot more species in the tropics than there are in temperate regions. “It’s the biggest, most obvious pattern in nature,” says Len Gillman, an evolutionary ecologist at Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand. Why that pattern exists has been a long-standing puzzle. This year, however, Gillman found a possible answer: A warm climate makes life evolve more quickly.

Gillman and his colleagues compared 130 closely related pairs of mammal species. In each case, one species lived at a higher latitude or elevation than the other.

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On the Origin of Tomorrow

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Science, December 4, 2009

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In the final words of the final sentence of On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin gave a nod to the future. “There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

Darwin recognized that as long as the ingredients for the evolutionary process still exist, life has the potential to change. He didn’t believe it was possible to forecast evolution’s course, but he did expect humans would have a big effect.

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