Now here's an interesting use of genetic engineering. Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have genetically engineered a virus to make a better lithium battery.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) modified two genes in a virus called M13, which caused it to build a shell made out of a compound called iron phosphate. These shells attached to a carbon nanotube to create a powerful and tiny electrode

The battery could provide more power digital devices and and are said to be more environmentally friendly than current battery technologies.

Meanwhile, just to add to your transfat/saturated fat/ polyunstaurated fat confusion - here's a new one: brown fat.

White fat, or white adipose tissue, is the jiggly stuff that stores spare energy from food. By contrast, brown adipose tissue consumes energy to generate body heat. The tissue teems with mitochondria that metabolize food, hence its color. "It's like the burner for the heater," says medical geneticist Sven Enerbäck of the University of Göteborg in Sweden, who led one of the studies.

Epigenetics, or evolution without genetic change, may now be explained, courtesy of flies that inherit red eyes because of temperature changes experienced by their parents.

Such phenomena could only be examined in a descriptive manner in the past. Today, it has been scientifically proven, which molecular structures are involved: important factors are the histones, a kind of packaging material for the DNA, in order to store DNA in an ordered and space-saving way. It is now clear that these proteins have additional roles to play. Depending on the chemical group they carry, if they are acetylated or methylated, they permanently activate or deactivate genes.

And evolution gets even stranger - changes in species also create changes in the environment that made them evolve.

Further analysis showed the tanks with the two newest species had larger molecules of dissolved organic carbon, or bits of decaying plants and animals. This prevented sunlight from penetrating the water and inhibited plant growth. ”Our study shows that through evolution, sticklebacks can engineer the light environment of their own ecosystems,„ says co-author Blake Matthews, a UBC post-doctoral fellow who is now a researcher at Eawag, the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology. ”It also demonstrates how speciation of a predator might alter the evolutionary course of other organisms in the food web.„

Posted by Rob O'Neill at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Not wanting to be the bearer of bad tidings, the NZ Herald is reporting that 180 NZ plant species face extinction, up from 122 five years ago. only one specimen of a Kaka Beak variety was found in the wild in a recent survey.

Scientists are still finding new species, but when they do they are often on their way to extinction. They found one species with just five specimens - all female.

Meanwhile, efforts are under way to save venomous land mammals - rather hideous shrews called the Hispaniolan Solenodon and Hutia - in the Dominican Republic (film here).

And Russian scientists have a new theory for mass the extictions around the Permian Triassic boundary. Maybe it wasn't asteroids and volcanoes, but ... poisonous salt lakes.

Posted by Rob O'Neill at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)