The Human Genome Is In Stalemate in the War Against Itself

"The human genome is engaged in a similar evolutionary arms race… against itself. The opponents are jumping genes called retrotransposons that can hop around the genome. They increase in number by copying themselves and pasting the duplicates into new locations. If they land in the wrong place, which is perhaps more likely, they could cause diseases by disrupting important genes. So genomes have ways of keeping these wandering sequences under control... And the jumping genes are starting to fight back." (Image: Evi Christodoulou)

Cheetahs Prosper: New Study Debunks More Old Myths

"The cheetah’s true biology is clouded in myth, in speculations that have been passed down through so many wildlife programs that people mistake them for fact. “They’re fairly robust, much more so than we thought they were,” says Scantlebury. “Left to their own devices, they’re pretty good at surviving.”" (Image: Me)
 

Gut Bacteria Still Get Fed When Hosts Are Too Sick to Eat

"For bacteria, the mammalian gut is like Shangri-La. It’s warm and consistently so, sheltered from the environment, and regularly flooded with a nutritious soup. But what happens when this all-you-can-eat buffet stops serving? What happens to microbes if their host stops eating?" (Image: CDC)
 

More good reads

• In the past 40 years, we have killed half of our back-boned animals. Just let the enormity of that sink in.
• "The idea that the microbiome of any Hadza represents an "ancestral" or "healthy" human population is nonsense." John Hawks on a terribly ill-advised self-experiment.
• "In the 18 months that he spent without his head, [Mike] grew from a mere 2.5 pounds to almost 8.” Bec Crew on the sad saga of Mike the headless chicken.
• The loudest noise in recorded history was so loud it circled the Earth four times. Aatish Bhatia on the big Krakatoa Kaboom.
• Giant carnivorous red leech slurps down equally giant earthworm
• This is a fascinating piece on the neuroscientific legacy of the Vietnam War, by Emily Anthes
• The science of memory has huge implications for police line-ups. By the ever-excellent Virginia Hughes, who also writes about an alternative to the unreliable polygraph
• Team of scientists finds 167,000 "species" in Central Park, mostly microbes, mostly unknown. By Carl Zimmer
• Genome sequencing w/ 24-hr turnaround is saving the lives of infants w/ mysterious diseases. Great story by Sara Reardon.
• The Worst Cat

More good links will be released in tomorrow's linkfest on Not Exactly Rocket Science.

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And that's it! Thanks for reading.

-Ed