Tag Archives: Science

Bioprospecting

I’ve been thinking about There Will Be Blood (based on Upton Sinclair’s Oil!) and its relationship to present day. In the movie, a ruthless oil prospector risks life and limb looking for mineral wealth – and in particular, oil. The complete lack of technology is staggering. For the first half of the move (set in ~1900) the main character is literally digging for oil with a shovel. And after a great deal of labor and conniving, he becomes fantastically wealthy. It reminds me of Charles Steen, about whom I read in Uranium by Tom Zoellner. Another ruthless bastard, he got rich in the Uranium mining boom in the 1950s.

Firstly, let me say that out of a million bastards with shovels, only a tiny percentage had the cunning and physical prowess to make it big. And only one of those actually stumbles on to a big enough claim to be rich. One in a million. In 100 years, there are maybe a dozen examples of rich men who started out with determination and a shovel.

Having said that, what’s out there for future prospectors? Not oil or uranium or any mineral. In places where such things are abundant and land is cheap, a major corporate interest will take it over from any tiny private party who might get in the way. Think I’m joking? “The oil giant Shell has agreed to pay $15.5m (£9.6m) in settlement of a legal action in which it was accused of having collaborated in the execution of the writer Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other leaders of the Ogoni tribe.”

Maybe the future is in bioprospecting. Imagine exploring the antarctic seeking the rare octopus whose venom will lead to a better understanding of protein folding at cold temperatures – and from there to cold-adapted vaccines, storable antibodies, and cures for major diseases, etc. Maybe it’s happening now.

Coffee makes us happy

As if we didn’t already know, coffee makes us happy. Actually, any warm drink would do, it seems. And it’s not so much happy as it is cooperative and trustful. It’s Science!

Neuroscience Marketing reminded me of this phenomenon. I saw it first in a documentary about making decisions. It seems that the NYT noticed it a few years ago when it was published in Science.

What’s the gist? Well, it seems that if you handle a cup of hot coffee you are more apt to trust and accept people. They tested this by giving people either a hot or cold beverage for a minute. Then they asked people if they would hire a new acquaintance or not. Subjects were statistically more likely to hire the candidate if they had a hot beverage relative to a cold beverage.

Surprising? Maybe. Bear it in mind for interviews, I suppose.

Cheers,
Peter

Directed Evolution: macro and micro scale

I work in a lab now that focuses on directed evolution. We typically look at a huge, diverse pool of molecules and then select and “breed” them to get molecular properties we want.

This is something that can be used on the macro scale, too. In thinking about diseases, it’s important to consider not just a patient, but the population dynamics of the pathogen. Malaria, for instance, can be exacerbated or ameliorated by the preferential treatment given to severe cases. If sever cases are allowed to go untreated and the victim is allowed to be visited by mosquitoes, then the most severe forms become more likely.

Constant vigilance in removing severe cases from the population by something as simple as bed nets for every sick person can dilute the population of virulent forms of the disease. Tricks like these are undoubtedly going to be more and more important as diseases learn to avoid our chemical cures.

Here’s a neat article on the subject over at Nature

Cheers,
Peter

The Long awaited paper on observing evolution in E. Coli

Some sixteen months ago, we here at The Big Upshot took note of an amazing 21 year study in which bacteria were grown in a high citrate environment to which they were poorly adapted. After some 40,000 generations, the bacteria actually invented a new phenotype, true evolution in action.

This was not mere adaptation, but real bona-fide generation of novel “designed” attributes. This is like an animal with a beak turning into an animal with teeth given sufficient time and incentive. It turns out that what might seem “irreducibly complex” is not actually all that irreducible. Richard Lenski’s lab carefully saved samples of the little creatures all along the way, like an artificial fossil record. So not only is the proof eating citrate in a petri dish, something its ancestors couldn’t do, but the precise genetic changes that got it there are all “on file,” so to speak.

I’ve been waiting with bated breath for the follow up study where they go through the lineage of the Strain that Evolved. And lo, it has arrived. I’m going to level with you all, this is really, really cool. Kudos to all of the authors. If anybody ever tries to sell some intelligent design (deity-sign?) to you, slap this on the table like it’s your enormous stick of science.

-Peter

Correlation and causation: meditations on violence

XKCD looks at causation and correlation

With XKCD’s comic firmly in mind, I considered the news today. Constance Holden with the ScienceNOW Daily News over at Science Magazine drew my attention to an article linking violence to childhood sugar consumption. The telling quote is this:

Although lower education levels correlated with daily sweet-eating, the connection with violence remained significant even when the researchers controlled for factors such as family circumstances, parental attitudes, and IQ. “Try as I did, I couldn’t get rid of the sweets-violence connection,” says Morris.

So… it may be that highly sugared children (sugartots?) are made more violent by sugar… or it could be that violent people are drawn to sugar as children… the candy manufacturers may be drugging children to reduce their impulse control… or kids whose without parents failed to help them learn impulse control lack impulse control in adulthood… it’s all very complicated.

-Peter