Biology News
Since the first organisms appeared on Earth approximately 3.8 billion years ago, life on the planet has had some close calls. In the last 500 million years, Earth has undergone five mass extinctions, including the event 66 million years ago that wiped out the dinosaurs. And while most scientists agree that a giant asteroid was responsible for that extinction, there’s much less consensus on what caused an even more devastating extinction more than 185 million years earlier.
The end-Permian extinction occurred 252.2 million years ago, decimating 90 percent of marine and terrestrial species, from snails and small crustaceans to early forms of lizards and amphibians. “The Great Dying,” as it’s now known, was the most severe mass extinction in Earth’s history, and is probably the closest life has come to being completely extinguished. Possible causes include immense volcanic eruptions, rapid depletion of oxygen in the oceans, and — an unlikely option — an asteroid collision.
With seed money from the National Science Foundation, bioengineers from Stanford and UC-Berkeley, are ramping up efforts to characterize thousands of molecular players and processes critical to the engineering of microbes, so that eventually researchers can mix and match these “DNA parts” in synthetic organisms to produce new drugs, fuels or chemicals. They’ll do this in a lab in Emeryville, Calif., called BIOFAB.
“Synthetic biology has the potential to make the engineering of biology much easier and more affordable. Via the BIOFAB we will help ensure that the public’s investments and interests in the next generation of biotechnology return the greatest benefits,” said co-director Drew Endy, PhD, an assistant professor in Stanford’s bioengineering department and president of the BioBricks Foundation.
By Zenaida Gonzalez Kotala
University of Central Florida Microbiology Professor Keith Ireton has uncovered a previously unknown mechanism that plays an important role in the spread of a deadly food-borne bacterium.
Listeria monocytogenes is a bacterium that can cause pregnant women to lose their fetuses and trigger fatal cases of meningitis in the elderly or people with compromised immune systems. The bacterium has been linked to outbreaks traced to food processing plants in the U.S. and Canada.
Read more: UCF Professor Finds New Way Deadly Food-Borne Bacteria Spread
On a warm June day at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Academic Middle School in San Francisco, the science classroom buzzes with activity. Students wearing goggles and white lab coats carefully cut open preserved lamb hearts, probing the cavities with gloved fingers. They “ooh” and “ah” when they see that the walls of the left ventricle are thicker than the right. They find the heartstrings – the tendons that connect the valves to the heart muscle. They use scientific terms: “Mine’s necrotic!” declares one student.
Read more: Institute Takes Fear Out of Teaching Elementary School Science
by Cassandra Brooks
Scientists from Stanford University have teamed up with Israeli and Jordanian researchers to protect the Gulf of Aqaba, a strategic waterway whose fragile marine ecosystem is vital to both Israel and Jordan. Participants in the NATO-funded project say they are bridging the Arab-Israeli political divide for the sake of science, peace and environmental conservation.
Read more: Stanford scientists team with Israeli, Jordanian researchers to study Gulf of Aqaba
Read more: HHMI Seeks School to Join Science Education Revolution
The Howard Hughes Medical Institute will hold its third nationwide competition to find 12 colleges and universities to join the Science Education Alliance (SEA), a bold effort to engage students through authentic research experiences at the start of their academic careers.
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