The Ed's Up #130

The Mysterious Thing About a Marvelous New Synthetic Cell

"Why bother? Because they ultimately want to intelligently design new life-forms from scratch—say, bacteria that can manufacture medical drugs, or algae that churn out biofuels. And creation requires understanding. “We had to start with a system where we knew and understood all the components, so that when we added specific ones to it, we could do so in a logical design way,” Venter says. They needed a minimal genome—a vanilla model that they could later kit out with deluxe accessories. And they’ve done it. Six years after Synthia, they’ve finally unveiled their bare-bones bacterium. And in piecing together its components, they realized that they’re nowhere close to understanding them all. Of the 473 genes in their pared-down cell, 149 are completely unknown." (Image: Jonathan Ernst) 
 

Scientists Can Now Watch the Brain Evaluate Risk

"By studying the brains of these rodents, Kelly Zalocusky from Stanford University has identified a specific group of neurons that are involved in risky decision-making. Their activity reveals whether a rat is about to make a safe choice or take a punt on a bigger payoff. And by silencing these neurons at the right time, Zalocusky’s team, led by Karl Deisseroth, could instantly (and temporarily) convert the risk-taking rodents into risk-avoiders." (Image: Erik de Castro) 

Adorable Prairie Dogs Brutally Kill Baby Ground Squirrels

“It’s so quick and subtle,” he says. Brutal, too. The prairie dog would grab the smaller animal by the neck or chest and violently shake it for a few minutes, either breaking its neck or puncturing its heart. Most attacks happened after a ground squirrel entered the prairie dog’s territory. But in rare cases, the killer waited in ambush outside the victim’s home-burrow, or actively dug it out. In six occasions, “the female actually stalked a baby almost like a tiger coming in for a kill,” says Hoogland." (Image: Richard Reading) 
 

Funding Freeze Hits Natural History Museum Collections

"Museum curators, biologists, and other concerned parties lamented the announcement on Twitter and other online spaces, billing it variously as “short-sighted,” “incredibly short-sighted,” and “horribly short-sighted.” They feared that it signaled a disinvestment in natural history collections. “I’m very surprised by the decision given that natural history collections are, if anything, increasingly relevant and important,” says Hopi Hoekstra, the curator of mammals at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology."
 

More good reads

• A truly beautiful piece of writing about a rare disease and dissolving bones. By Craig Childs.
• The Inherent Bias Of Facial Recognition, by Rose Eveleth. The first in what should be an excellent column on design bias.
• 5 things the world has learned about Zika so far, by Helen Branswell. Meanwhile Declan Butler considers what we know and don’t about Zika and birth defects
• Siddartha Mukherjee writes about the history of schizophrenia genetics, and his own family
• “In the end, robots may expand what it means to be human.” Adrienne LaFrance considers what it means to be a robot.
• “No buts about it, the butthole is one of the finest innovations in the past 540 million years of animal evolution.” Amy Maxmen on a surprising new discovery involving comb jellies.
• NPR's TED Radio Hour has spliced my talk on parasites with even more of me talking about parasites
• What we talk about when we talk about 'LOL'. By Megan Garber
• Obviously Don’t Set Off Nukes to Do Cool Science. Obviously. By Sarah Zhang
• An exclusive annual dinner hosted by a legendary society of scientists is for adventurous eaters only. By Liz Preston.
• "No, Polly doesn’t want your Triscuits. Got any fig trees to savage?" Natalie Angier on parrots.  

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And that's it! Thanks for reading.

-Ed