A Homely Rodent May Hold Cancer-Fighting Clues

Posted on by Lori Jia

The New York Times, June 19, 2013

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The laboratory of Vera Gorbunova and Andrei Seluanov, a husband-and-wife team of biologists at the University of Rochester, has the feel of a petting zoo. They maintain colonies of several species of rodents — some familiar, like mice and guinea pigs, and some much more exotic, like blind mole rats from Israel and naked mole rats from East Africa.

Amusing children with furry creatures is not their goal, however. The biology of animals is mysteriously diverse, and lurking within it may be clues to new kinds of medicine.

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Dracula’s Children

Posted on by Matt Kristoffersen

Millions of years ago, some bats gave up their old habits of hunting for insects and tried something new: drinking blood. These creatures evolved into today’s vampire bats, and it’s mind-boggling to explore all the ways that they evolved to make the most of their sanguine meal.

A lot of the adaptations are easy enough to see with the naked eye. Vampire bats have Dracula-style teeth, for example, which they use to puncture the tough hide of cows. When they open up a crater-shaped wound, they dip in their long tongue, which contains two straw-shaped ducts that take up the blood. Continue reading “Dracula’s Children” →

Permanent Present Tense: My Review of a Remarkable Book On Memory

Posted on by Matt Kristoffersen

Say the letters “H M” to a neuroscientist, and chances are he or she will nod knowingly. H.M. was a man who died in 2008. His full name was Henry Molaison, and a surgical procedure in the 1950s left him without much of his memory. Studies on his mind laid the groundwork for our understanding of memory today. In tomorrow’s issue of the Wall Street Journal, I review a remarkable biography of Molaison, written by MIT neuroscientist Suzanne Corkin, who studied him from their first meeting in 1962 till his death–and beyond. While it’s not a perfect, it is–pardon the pun–a memorable one.

Originally published June 14, 2013. Copyright 2013 Carl Zimmer.

The Man Who Wasn’t There

Posted on by admin

The Wall Street Journal, June 14, 2013

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In 1962, a young graduate student at McGill University named Suzanne Corkin met a 35-year-old man named Henry Molaison. Molaison and his mother had come to Montreal from their home in Connecticut so that Ms. Corkin and her colleagues could run a week-long series of psychological tests on him. Molaison was a sweet, cooperative subject. Ms. Corkin and Molaison talked a lot that week, mostly about Molaison’s childhood. Beyond his early years, though, Molaison’s recollections faded away.

The reason was both simple and profound. As a child, Molaison had suffered from severe epilepsy. In 1953, a surgeon took the drastic step of removing the part of his brain that was believed to be the cause.

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Putting the Brakes On Cancer’s Evolution

Posted on by Matt Kristoffersen

I arrived this afternoon in San Francisco, so that I can participate in an exceptional sort of meeting: the 2nd International Biannual Evolution and Cancer Conference. Friday night I’ll be giving a talk about some of the lessons we can learn about cancer from other animals (details at the end of this post), but for the most part, I’ll be on the receiving end, learning about the latest research at this fascinating crossroads.

Cancer is fundamentally an evolutionary disease, as I explained in a 2007 article for Scientific American. By which I mean that cancer is an inevitable menace to any multicellular organism, which has led the evolution of lots of anti-cancer defenses in our biology. But each time cancer emerges, it plays out in an evolutionary process, a natural selection happening within our own bodies. As new mutations arise, certain cancer cells fare better than others. Tumors evolve, as their cells gaining all sorts of abilities–such as attracting new blood vessels to feed their voracious appetites–that their ancestors didn’t have.

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