Tag: biology

A rare new microbe has been found in two different clean rooms, one in Florida and the other in South America.

7:49 pm

A rare new microbe has been found in two different clean rooms, one in Florida and the other in South America.

This population of berry-shaped bacteria is so different from any other known bacteria, it has been classified as not only a new species, but also a new genus, the next level of classifying the diversity of life. Its discoverers named it Tersicoccus phoenicis. Tersi is from Latin for clean, like the room. Coccus, from Greek for berry, describes the bacterium’s shape. The phoenicis part is for NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander, the spacecraft being prepared for launch in 2007 when the bacterium was first collected by test-swabbing the floor in the Florida clean room.

Some other microbes have been discovered in a spacecraft clean room and found nowhere else, but none previously had been found in two different clean rooms and nowhere else. Home grounds of the new one are about 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers) apart, in a NASA facility at Kennedy Space Center and a European Space Agency facility in Kourou, French Guiana.

Unlike the bacteria found on ISS, this microbe does not appear to pose any specific health problem. It does provide biologists with a good example of the kind of life that might survive in hostile environments like Mars.

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A new ligament has just been discovered in the human knee.

10:44 am

A new ligament has just been discovered in the human knee.

[T]he Belgian doctors are the first to identify the previously unknown ligament after a broad cadaver study using macroscopic dissection techniques. Their research shows that the ligament, which was given the name anterolateral ligament (ALL), is present in 97 per cent of all human knees.

This only illustrates once again that as much as we think we know, there is always something new to discover.

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Curiosity has found that water and other interesting things permeate the soil of Mars.

8:14 pm

Curiosity has found that water and other interesting things permeate the soil of Mars.

When [a soil sample was] heated, the instrument detected the abundance of water [about 2% of the sample] plus significant quantities of carbon dioxide, oxygen and sulfur compounds, according to the researchers. Carbonate materials — compounds that form in the presence of water — were also identified. The experiment confirmed the presence of oxygen- and chlorine-containing compounds — likely chlorates or perchlorates. Originally discovered by NASA’s 2008 Phoenix Mars Lander (and likely detected by NASA’s Viking landers in 1976), perchlorates were found in the soil of high-latitude arctic regions. This indicates that perchlorates occur globally over Mars. Though highly toxic to human biology, some microbes are known to use the oxidizing chemical for energy. This finding intensified the debate over whether hypothetical microbes on Mars could metabolize perchlorates in a similar way.

Perchlorates were proposed as an explanation for the Viking results by scientists who did not believe those results suggested the presence of microbiological life. I find it interesting that now scientists are saying that the perchlorates might actually be evidence of life. Once again, the uncertainty of science rules the day!

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Despite data from orbiting probes that say there is methane in Mars’ atmosphere, Curiosity has detected none.

5:24 pm

Despite data from orbiting probes that say there is methane in Mars’ atmosphere, Curiosity has detected none.

The detection of methane by orbiting satellites in certain regions of Mars was intriguing as it suggested the possibility of Martian microbiological life. Curiosity is not in those regions, but apparently the scientists thought they’d detect evidence of it from a distance. That they did not reduces significantly the possibility of life on Mars.

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Two researchers have concluded that sterilizing spacecraft heading to Mars is largely a waste of money.

8:22 am

Two researchers have concluded that sterilizing spacecraft heading to Mars is largely a waste of money.

As far as Mars is concerned, say Fairén and Schulze-Makuch, such efforts are probably in vain since “Earth life has most likely already been transferred to Mars.” Meteorite impacts have had 3.8 billion years to spread Earth life forms to Mars. Several Earth spacecraft have visited Mars without undergoing the sterilization procedures now in place. If organisms transferred to Mars over the eons failed to survive, modern organisms would likely face the same fate. If they did survive, say Fairén and Schulze-Makuch, “it is too late to protect Mars from terrestrial life, and we can safely relax the planetary protection policies.”

They also note that NASA’s “Office of Planetary Protection is like an interplanetary Environmental Protection Agency” and that its “‘detailed and expensive’ efforts to keep Earth microorganisms off Mars are making missions to search for life on the red planet ‘unviable.’”

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Scientists think they have developed a chestnut tree resistant to the blight that can be re-introduced into American forests.

3:39 pm

Scientists think they may have developed a chestnut tree resistant to the blight so that three can be re-introduced into American forests.

In the early 2000s, they were first able to genetically engineer a chestnut embryo; the related paper was published in 2006 — the same year the first transgenic chestnut was planeted outside of the lab. Following that they developed a line of chestnuts called Darling 4, which seems to be a bit less resistant to the blight than Chinese chestnuts, but still much better than a regular American chestnut. Last summer, they planted one of those trees at the New York Botanical Garden, not far from where the blight was first discovered.

But they wanted even higher levels of resistance yet, and now they think they might have done it: a transgenic line of chestnuts, more resistant to the blight than even the Chinese trees. The team, lead by then-graduate student Amelia Bo Zhang, published their results in Trangenic Research in March. Earlier this month, they planted these trees at the Lafayette Road Experiment Station — the first American chestnuts on this Earth that are highly resistant to the blight.

Humans using science to do what humans do best.

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