What is love from a biological perspective? The answer is more fascinating than you think.
Could leadership skills be genetic?… or at least partially genetic? Well, scientists at University College London have discovered that the presence of a specific gene may increase the chances of an individual having a leadership role at work. This was after analyzing 4000 people’s DNA to find that the gene rs4950 increased their chances by 25% , which frankly speaking, is not a very convincing statistic. But it future studies do reveal a more impressive correlation, then there’s nothing stopping Employers, from one day, running tests on applicants.
Bacteria may be some of the more simpler life forms on this planet but that doesn’t make them any less fascinating. What particularly intrigues me about these living things is their capacity to survive almost anywhere! This includes some of the most hostile regions of our planet such as the Antarctic lakes and deep see volcanic vents.
If that wasn’t enough, scientists have now found microbes amongst the freezing temperatures of the atmosphere where food is scarce and exposure to UV light is high. The 314 different types found not only tell us that they may have a significant role to play in the atmosphere but also how easily life can evolve and adapt. If life forms such as bacteria can exist in some of the most alien and hostile regions of our planet, whats to say that they wont elsewhere in the universe?
“A mind made for mating”; A real cinematic espresso shot!
Carl Sagan on science, religion and geocentrism. Inspiring and intelligent words by from an inspiring and intelligent man.
“Once we overcome our fear of being tiny, we find ourselves on a threshold of a vast and awesome universe.”
The Science behind aging; On why we grow old and how the biological process of aging is actually preventing us from getting cancer. More similar interesting videos on the Asapscience channel.
Above is beautiful microscopic image of the scales covering the wings of the butterfly Panacea prola. As its wings reflect on light, they produce the visible dazzling colors. This species of butterfly, also known as Prola beauty is found from Costa Rica to Suothern Brazil. Charles Krebs of Washington State won tenth place in the BioScapes Imaging Competition with this stunning image.
We often get so captivated by the beauty nature holds at the macroscopic scale that we forget that it can be even more beautiful at sizes beyond our senses.
Look carefully at the above image. Is it a monkey or a lemur? Well, its fair to say that it’s a bit of both. Darwinius masillae is described as an Adapid primate that lies very closely to the ancestry of anthropoids(monkeys and apes) and is dated to have lived about 47 million years ago. It shares some of its characteristics, such as its grooming claw, with a lemur. On the other hand, its big toes and nail bearing fingers make it appear to be a primate.
In other words, Dawinius Masillae is one of the innumerable transitional fossils that have been found as proof for Evolution. Species such as the one fossilized above are a good example of how one species can change into another given a certain amount of time.
Awesome footage of a male and female tiger fighting. But interestingly, they’re cautious enough not to seriously hurt each other!
In the words of Carl Sagan; extinction is the rule and survival is the exception. What most people fail to realize is that almost all the species that have ever lived on planet earth are now extinct - that’s simply the way nature works. We see quite a few people in this age trying to save one species or another, which is nice but pointless considering how long nature has blindly had its way.
Throughout the millions of years of life on this planet -with one species after the other- none is guaranteed its time on earth. But then there’s us humans who are clearly, as Carl Sagan has put forth, an exception. We are exceptional. Special, unique, worthy, you name it! The fact is that life, let alone intelligent life that can dominate the planet, is very rare and doesn’t just come out of nowhere. It takes billions and billions of years of serendipitous evolution. And that what makes us so special. We are almost in control of nature, something that hundreds of millions of species before us failed to achieve. Maybe if everyone knew these simple pieces of facts, we’d treat our existence more wisely…
Until now, we’ve depended on crystallography, a method involving the scattering of atoms, to capture the DNA structure directly. This has always been difficult to study and interpret. However, recently researchers in Italy have managed to photograph the double helix structure directly with an electron microscope, allowing them to observe and study all the proteins, RNA and bio-molecules within it.
As you can imagine, the implications of such a scientific achievements are very vast. Not only will it allow us to study and scrutinize the molecule that identifies life with much more accuracy, but it will also allow us to be better capable of finding cures to diseases that have a genetic cause behind them such as Huntington’s, autism or even cancer.
We all know that genes spread from one organism to the next, spreading themselves into nature. But heres a more fascinating thought; Ideas too, which aren’t even physical entities but mere abstract representations, can spread from one organism to another. Revolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins used the term “meme” to describe an idea like learned skills, fashions and melodies that can spread from one individual to another within a species, until it becomes dominant amongst them.
The best ideas are replicated from one brain to another, rapidly spreading amongst a species. Its as if the ideas themselves are intelligent beings and use brains to replicate themselves, making them almost infectious. Even though nothing is happening physically, at some abstract level, phenomenal things are happening as these ideas spread themselves.
Richard Dawkins not only introduced a new term, but transformed the way we see and appreciate the power of ideas.
Kidney podocytes photographed by Thomas Deerinck.
Biology is beautiful.
What people - or more specifically; biology students- need to realize is how mind-blowing life is at the cellular level and below. As a high school science student myself, I’m often surprised to hear students groan about how boring molecular biology is. For once, forget about eating up all the information in the text book, and consider the sheer complexity and prefect nature of life at the cellular level.
We too often identify ourselves as mere human beings, forgetting that we are made up of over 80,000,000,000,000 cells, each of which serve as the very fundamental unit of life. The numbers of complex structures that are within each of these units of life and the sheer number of chemical reactions that occur within them is astonishing! Even more fascinating is how each reaction and each structure has a very specific function, all of which together unite to form a complex and phenomenal living being like you and me.
So next time you’re studying something to do with molecular biology, Instead of being bored by the vast amount of detail that you need to learn, be blown away by the fact that all this detail actually exists…
Human beings have come up with innumerable methods to soothe themselves of the terrifying concept of death or in other words; the thought of not existing. These include the different versions and concepts of an afterlife that different religions have. Very few of these methods have had any rational thinking behind them… until now.
Very few people are aware of the fact that cryonics are no longer science fiction; there are numerous companies that provide the facilities. For those of you who are unaware; cryonics is the process of freezing human bodies in hope that one day our technology would be advanced enough to bring them back. This, in many countries, is only legal once the person has been officially declared dead. The Alcor life extension foundation, for instance, has about 111 bodies and heads in storage.
But I can’t help wondering whether we really will be able to bring these people back - even if we on day have the technology. Does freezing really maintain the 86 billion neurons and trillion synapses, in the exact same patterns? Are all the neural mechanisms that make up a certain individual really preserved? What if we one day have the technology to bring someone back, but it turns out that our preservation methods we’re drastically flawed?
Would you want your body and brain preserved with cryonics?
Biologists at the Georgia institute of technology in the US have successfully revived genetic material from a bacteria that lived 500 million years ago, bringing the ancient DNA back to life. In a process not very different from what the scientists in Jurassic park did, these experts are allowing us to travel back into molecular time and observe how the very first forms of life evolved. The results of such a incredible experiment could allow us to learn how much of a fluke our existence really is.
Hence, this experiment is not only of a biological consequence but is significant even in a cosmic scale. Often, when astrophysicists try to estimate the inevitability of life in the universe, they are faced with answering the difficult question of how easy it is for life to evolve in the first place. Thus, studying these bacteria evolve over a long period of time can let us see first hand whether evolution will take the same course again on earth. That aside, it helps us learn whether evolution is predictable. If given a second chance, will it take the same/similar path and lead to similar species? Or will it result into completely different forms of life?
