New clues about how carbon dioxide affects bumble bee reproduction

In addition to inducing a calming effect, carbon dioxide also can trigger a range of other physiological responses in bumble bees, according to a Penn State researcher.
Photo Credit: Eduardo Goody

While a beekeeper puffing clouds of carbon dioxide into a hive to calm the insects is a familiar image to many, less is known about its other effects on bees. A recent study revealed clues about how the chemical compound affects bee physiology, including reproduction.

The research team, led by an entomologist in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences, set out to disentangle how carbon dioxide seems to bypass diapause, a phase similar to hibernation during which bees sleep over the winter, to trigger the reproductive process in bumblebee queens.

The researchers found that carbon dioxide first induced a change in metabolism, which then triggered secondary effects on reproduction. The findings, recently published in Insect Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, were contrary to previous hypotheses.

“Previously, it was believed that CO2 directly affected reproduction, but this study is some of the first evidence showing this is likely not the case,” said Etya Amsalem, associate professor of entomology. “We found that CO2 changes the way macronutrients are stored and reallocated in the body. The fact that the reproductive process is then kickstarted is just an artifact of these processes.”

Smallest mobile lifeform created

The origin of all biological movements, including walking, swimming, or flying, can be traced back to cellular movements; however, little is known about how cell motility arose in evolution.

A research team led by graduate student Hana Kiyama, from the Graduate School of Science at Osaka City University, and Professor Makoto Miyata, from the Graduate School of Science at Osaka Metropolitan University, introduced seven proteins, believed to be directly involved in allowing Spiroplasma bacteria to swim into a synthetic bacterium named syn3—through genetic engineering. syn3 was designed and chemically synthesized to have the smallest genomic DNA possible including the minimum essential genetic information required for growth from the smallest genomes of naturally occurring Mycoplasma bacteria.

“Studying the world’s smallest bacterium with the smallest functional motor apparatus could be used to develop movement for cell-mimicking microrobots or protein-based motors,” said Professor Miyata.

This genetically re-engineered syn3 changed from its normal spherical shape into a spiraling helix, which was able to swim by reversing the helix’s direction just like Spiroplasma. Further investigation revealed that only two of these newly added proteins were required to make syn3 capable of minimal swimming.

“Our swimming syn3 can be said to be the ‘smallest mobile lifeform’ with the ability to move on its own,” said Professor Miyata. “The results of this research are expected to advance how we understand the evolution and origins of cell motility.”

Published:

In the journal Science Advances

Source/Credit:  Osaka Metropolitan University

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Commercial Dishwashers Destroy Protective Layer in Gut

Rinse aids in commercial dishwashers often contain alcohol ethoxylate. This substance damages the intestinal epithelium, which can lead to chronic diseases.

Residue from rinse agents is left behind on dishes after they are cleaned in professional-grade dishwashers. This damages the natural protective layer in the gut and can contribute to the onset of chronic diseases, as demonstrated by researchers working with organoids at the Swiss Institute of Allergy and Asthma Research.

Whether it’s at a restaurant, at school or in the barracks, commercial dishwashers help plates, glasses and cutlery become squeaky clean and dry in a matter of minutes. These practical appliances come with risks, however, as was recently discovered in a new study by researchers at the Swiss Institute of Allergy and Asthma Research (SIAF), an associated institute of the University of Zurich (UZH). One ingredient in particular found in commercial rinse agents has a toxic effect on the gastrointestinal tract.

Chemical residue on clean plates

A typical cycle in a commercial dishwasher involves circulating hot water and detergent for around 60 seconds at high pressure. Afterwards, there is a second 60-second washing and drying cycle in which water and a rinse agent are applied. “What’s especially alarming is that in many appliances, there’s no additional wash cycle to remove the remaining rinse aid,” says Cezmi Akdis, UZH professor of experimental allergology and immunology and director of the SIAF, who led the study. “This means that potentially toxic substances remain on the dishes, where they then dry in place.” When the dishes are used the next time, this dried chemical residue can easily end up in the gastrointestinal tract.

Better Than a Hole in the Head

Just as blood pressure informs heart health, intracranial pressure (ICP) helps indicate brain health. ICP sensing is the burgeoning focus of Jana Kainerstorfer's biomedical optics lab at Carnegie Mellon University. Her team is working to modernize ICP sensing approaches, which historically have been invasive and risky. Their noninvasive alternatives will ease the risk of infection, pain and medical expenses, as well as present new monitoring capabilities for patients with an array of brain injuries and conditions, from stroke to hydrocephalus.

Investigating pressure levels in the brain is a laborious task for health professionals and hasn't progressed much since the 1960s. Current practice involves drilling a hole into a patient's skull and placing a probe inside for continuous monitoring of ICP levels. It comes with the risk of infection and damaging the brain itself, and while valuable data is to have, ICP measurement is reserved only for the most critical of situations.

"At the core of it, what we've done is build a sensor alternative that doesn't require drilling a hole into the patient's head," said Kainerstorfer, an associate professor of biomedical engineering. "We recently published two papers that explore the use of optical sensors on the forehead for noninvasive ICP monitoring, using near-infrared spectroscopy and diffuse correlation spectroscopy. Both approaches represent huge strides in improving the patient experience and providing better tools to monitor pressure levels in the brain, which can be a key variable in both diagnosis and treatment decisions."

Male orb-weaving spiders fight less in female-dominated colonies

 Orb-weaving spiders spin webs connected to each other in vast networks; within their colonies, individual spiders guard their own webs from intruders and often fight each other over food and mates.
Photo Credit: Gregory Grether/UCLA

Birds do it. Bees do it. Even spiders in their webs do it: cooperate for more peaceful colonies.

That’s one of the surprising findings of a new study by UCLA undergraduates of orb-weaving spiders in Peru.

The study also revealed that when there are more females than males in colonies of orb-weaving spiders, males fight less with each other — and that females fight less in female-dominated colonies than in male-dominated ones, leading to colonies that are somewhat more peaceful. The spiders also showed little hostility to individuals from different colonies, a discovery that has not been previously documented for colonial spiders.

The research was published in the Journal of Arachnology.

“We’re used to thinking of animals like honeybees and elephants living cooperatively,” said the paper’s senior author, Gregory Grether, a UCLA professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. “But spiders usually live solitarily, so we were excited to study these colonial spiders and find out how they interact with colony mates as well as with individuals from other colonies.”

Mysteriously bright flash is a black hole jet pointing straight toward Earth, astronomers say

Caption:Astronomers identified an extremely bright black hole jet, halfway across the universe, pointing straight toward Earth.
Illustration Credit: Dheeraj Pasham, Matteo Lucchini, and Margaret Trippe.

Earlier this year, astronomers were keeping tabs on data from the Zwicky Transient Facility, an all-sky survey based at the Palomar Observatory in California, when they detected an extraordinary flash in a part of the sky where no such light had been observed the night before. From a rough calculation, the flash appeared to give off more light than 1,000 trillion suns.

The team, led by researchers at NASA, Caltech, and elsewhere, posted their discovery to an astronomy newsletter, where the signal drew the attention of astronomers around the world, including scientists at MIT. Over the next few days, multiple telescopes focused on the signal to gather more data across multiple wavelengths in the X-ray, ultraviolet, optical, and radio bands, to see what could possibly produce such an enormous amount of light.

Now, the MIT astronomers along with their collaborators have determined a likely source for the signal. In a study appearing in Nature Astronomy, the scientists report that the signal, named AT 2022cmc, likely comes from a relativistic jet of matter streaking out from a supermassive black hole at close to the speed of light. They believe the jet is the product of a black hole that suddenly began devouring a nearby star, releasing a huge amount of energy in the process.

Physicists observe wormhole dynamics using a quantum computer

Artwork depicting a quantum experiment that observes traversable wormhole behavior.
Illustration Credit: inqnet/A. Mueller | Caltech

Scientists have, for the first time, developed a quantum experiment that allows them to study the dynamics, or behavior, of a special kind of theoretical wormhole. The experiment has not created an actual wormhole (a rupture in space and time), rather it allows researchers to probe connections between theoretical wormholes and quantum physics, a prediction of so-called quantum gravity. Quantum gravity refers to a set of theories that seek to connect gravity with quantum physics, two fundamental and well-studied descriptions of nature that appear inherently incompatible with each other.

"We found a quantum system that exhibits key properties of a gravitational wormhole yet is sufficiently small to implement on today's quantum hardware," says Maria Spiropulu, the principal investigator of the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science research program Quantum Communication Channels for Fundamental Physics (QCCFP) and the Shang-Yi Ch'en Professor of Physics at Caltech. "This work constitutes a step toward a larger program of testing quantum gravity physics using a quantum computer. It does not substitute for direct probes of quantum gravity in the same way as other planned experiments that might probe quantum gravity effects in the future using quantum sensing, but it does offer a powerful testbed to exercise ideas of quantum gravity."

The research will be published December 1 in the journal Nature. The study's first authors are Daniel Jafferis of Harvard University and Alexander Zlokapa (BS '21), a former undergraduate student at Caltech who started on this project for his bachelor's thesis with Spiropulu and has since moved on to graduate school at MIT.

Most distant detection of a black hole swallowing a star

This artist’s impression illustrates how it might look when a star approaches too close to a black hole, where the star is squeezed by the intense gravitational pull of the black hole. Some of the star’s material gets pulled in and swirls around the black hole forming the disc that can be seen in this image. In rare cases, such as this one, jets of matter and radiation are shot out from the poles of the black hole. In the case of the AT2022cmc event, evidence of the jets was detected by various telescopes including the VLT, which determined this was the most distant example of such an event. 
Illustration Credit: ESO/M.Kornmesser

Earlier this year, the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) was alerted after an unusual source of visible light had been detected by a survey telescope. The VLT, together with other telescopes, was swiftly repositioned towards the source: a supermassive black hole in a distant galaxy that had devoured a star, expelling the leftovers in a jet. The VLT determined it to be the furthest example of such an event to have ever been observed. Because the jet is pointing almost towards us, this is also the first time it has been discovered with visible light, providing a new way of detecting these extreme events.

Stars that wander too close to a black hole are ripped apart by the incredible tidal forces of the black hole in what is known as a tidal disruption event (TDE). Approximately 1% of these cause jets of plasma and radiation to be ejected from the poles of the rotating black hole. In 1971, the black hole pioneer John Wheeler[1] introduced the concept of jetted-TDEs as “a tube of toothpaste gripped tight about its middle,” causing the system to “squirt matter out of both ends.”

Tropical wildlife follow the same daily patterns worldwide

An elephant faces a camera trap in one of millions of photos analyzed for a new study led by a Rice University visiting student. The study found striking similarities in how rainforest animals across the world spend their days.
Resized Image using AI by SFLORG
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Lydia Beaudrot/Conservation International

How do animals in the wild use their time? A researcher at Rice University is part of a new study that shows what motivates the daily ramble of tropical populations.

The study by an international team that includes Rice bioscientist Lydia Beaudrot and is led by Andrea Vallejo-Vargas, a graduate student at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences and currently a visiting scholar at Rice, found that communities of mammals across the wet tropics divide their days in similar ways, all generally geared toward finding their next meal. (Or avoiding being the next meal.)

Using millions of images from camera trap networks in 16 protected forests around the world, they examined the relationship of mammal activities to body sizes and feeding routines to find common characteristics among diverse populations.

Their open-access study in Nature Communications confirms that despite their diversity, similar patterns dominate the days of wildlife in Africa, Asia and the Americas.

The study showed that the activity of herbivores and insectivores was largely influenced by temperature in the environment (in study-speak, “thermoregulatory constraints”). For instance, large African herbivores are seven times more likely to be nocturnal than smaller herbivores.

Important discovery could help extinguish disease threat to koalas

Retrovirus is more prevalent in New South Wales and Queensland koalas, compared to animals in Victoria and South Australia.
Photo Credit: Jordan Whitt

University of Queensland virologists are a step closer to understanding a mysterious AIDS-like virus that is impacting koala populations differently across state lines.

Dr Michaela Blyton and Associate Professor Keith Chappell from the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN) and School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, have uncovered another piece of the puzzle in their quest to halt the koala retrovirus known as KoRV - a condition strongly associated with diseases that cause infertility and blindness.

“We’ve learned that the retrovirus is far more prevalent in New South Wales and Queensland koalas, compared to the southern populations in Victoria and South Australia,” Dr Blyton said.

“Uncovering crucial patterns like these helps us learn how the disease is evolving, how it’s spreading, and how we can contain the damage through anti-viral medication or koala breeding programs.”

Koala numbers have fallen rapidly over the past decade due to widespread land clearing, climate change induced weather events, and disease.

Dr Blyton’s research has already established the link between KoRV and chlamydia, cystitis and conjunctivitis, which suggests the virus weakens the animal’s immune system.