Secret of Death Protein Unlocked

Scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have identified a previously undetected trigger point on a naturally occurring "death protein" that helps the body get rid of unwanted or diseased cells. They say it may be possible to exploit the newly found trigger as a target for designer drugs that would treat cancer by forcing malignant cells to commit suicide.

The researchers fashioned a peptide (a protein subunit) that precisely matched the shape of the newly found trigger site on the killer protein, which lies dormant in the cell's interior until activated by cellular stress. When the peptide docked into the binding site, BAX was spurred into assassin mode. The activated BAX proteins flocked to the cell's power plants, the mitochondria, where they poked holes in the mitochondria's membranes, killing the cells. This process is called apoptosis, or programmed cell death.

"We identified a switch that turns BAX on, and we believe this discovery can be used to develop drugs that turn on or turn off cell death in human disease by targeting BAX," said Walensky, who is also an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School.

Ref: BAX activation is initiated at a novel interaction site. 2008. Evripidis Gavathiotis et al. Nature 455: 1076-1081.

Tomb of the Blind Dead

Single Species Ecosystem At The Earth's Core

The first ecosystem ever found having only a single biological species has been discovered 2.8 km beneath the surface of the earth in the Mponeng gold mine near Johannesburg, South Africa. There the rod-shaped bacterium Desulforudis audaxviator exists in complete isolation, total darkness, a lack of oxygen, and 60-degree-Celsius heat.

D. audaxviator survives in a habitat where it gets its energy not from the sun but from hydrogen and sulfate produced by the radioactive decay of uranium. Living alone, D. audaxviator must build its organic molecules by itself out of water, inorganic carbon, and nitrogen from ammonia in the surrounding rocks and fluid. During its long journey to the extreme depths, evolution has equipped the versatile spelunker with genes – many of them shared with archaea, members of a separate domain of life unrelated to bacteria – that allow it to cope with a range of different conditions, including the ability to fix nitrogen directly from elemental nitrogen in the environment.



It’s genome contains everything needed for the organism to sustain an independent existence and reproduce, including the ability to incorporate the elements necessary for life from inorganic sources, move freely, and protect itself from viruses, harsh conditions, and nutrient-poor periods by becoming a spore.

Dylan Chivian coined the name “audaxviato” from a phrase found in Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth, in a message – "Conveniently in Latin," says Chivian -- deciphered by Verne's protagonist, Professor Lidenbrock, which reads in part, "descende, Audax viator, et terrestre centrum attinges." It means "descend, Bold traveler, and attain the center of the Earth." link

Environmental genomics reveals a single-species ecosystem deep within the Earth. D. Chivian et al.. 2008. Science 322.

Mighty Peking Man

"At first glance, the Shaw Brothers' 1977 demi-epic Mighty Peking Man might seem like the usual substandard big-monkey-on-the-loose shenanigans. But truly, this is the greatest reworking of the archetypal man-woman-ape love triangle since the original King Kong threw down the gauntlet in 1933." from StompTokyo.com.

The High Pitched Sound of Love

Black Canary © DC Comics

A pair of scientists at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) asked 69 women to make voice recordings when they were at high and low fertility points in their menstrual cycle. The closer a woman was to ovulation, the more she raised her pitch, the investigators found.

The increase in tone was only slight -- it wasn't Minnie Mouse on helium -- but the peaks were enough to be picked up by the voice decoder and presumably by the male ear, as well. The difference was the greatest on the two days preceding ovulation, when fertility within the cycle is the highest.

Curiously, this distinction only occurred when the volunteer, among the sentences she was asked to speak, introduced herself: "Hello, I'm a student at UCLA."

The scientists suggest the pitch change happens because men are lured to a more "feminine" voice in a woman -- and women respond to the instinct.

Sexual signals and reproductive fitness are strongly associated with voice, which is why women are often drawn to men with the husky voice of the supposed alpha male.

"Men prefer higher pitch relative to lower pitch in the same women, and these judgements are affected by cues of social interest in the speech," say the duo, Greg Bryant and Martie Haselton of the university's Center for Behavior, Evolution and Culture.

Previous research has found changes to body scent, an increase in flirtation, a shift towards more fashionable dress styles and a preference for more "masculine" men when women are in mid-cycle. Last year, investigators found that lap dancers earned more tips when they were fertile.

Conversely, a vocal shift towards hoarseness has been found at the time of menstruation. link

Giant Tornadoes Seen Erupting From the Sun

Image courtesy NASA

A solar storm on the sun's surface was shown to twist, like a tornado does on Earth, in images from NASA's STEREO satellite taken on April 9, 2008.

This twisting also occurs in solar jets, which produce tornado-like events close to the sun's poles, new satellite data has found. "These solar tornadoes are almost a thousand times faster than a terrestrial tornado and are very big," said Spiros Patsourakos, a researcher at George Mason University.

That twist comes from the sun's magnetic field, said Etienne Pariat, also of George Mason University.

"The magnetic field lines act like a spring, which expands and jumps outward," said Pariat, who has used computer simulations to model the forces producing the jets. The forces originate in the solar interior, he added, where the sun's rotation twists the magnetic field. "But the twist cannot be stored, so it must be ejected."

TV Tornado © 1967 World Distributors

Scientists have known since the 1990s that jets of gas wider than North America were erupting from the sun's poles, but it is only now that they discovered these jets are rotating. Advanced viewing technologies have enabled scientists to study these phenomena in unprecedented clarity. link

Tornado Twins © DC Comics

Gahan Wilson Gets "Old"

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Gahan Wilson's Strange Beliefs of Children

© Gahan Wilson
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