SEX PILLS!!!

Turning Males On: Activation of Male Courtship Behavior in Drosophila melanogaster

Yufeng Pan, Carmen C. Robinett, Bruce S. Baker

The innate sexual behaviors of Drosophila melanogaster males are an attractive system for elucidating how complex behavior patterns are generated. The potential for male sexual behavior in D. melanogaster is specified by the fruitless (fru) and doublesex (dsx) sex regulatory genes. We used the temperature-sensitive activator dTRPA1 to probe the roles of fruM- and dsx-expressing neurons in male courtship behaviors. Almost all steps of courtship, from courtship song to ejaculation, can be induced at very high levels through activation of either all fruM or all dsx neurons in solitary males. Detailed characterizations reveal different roles for fruM and dsx in male courtship. Surprisingly, the system for mate discrimination still works well when all dsx neurons are activated, but is impaired when all fruM neurons are activated. Most strikingly, we provide evidence for a fruM-independent courtship pathway that is primarily vision dependent. 

PLoS ONE 6(6): e21144. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0021144

Why is this cool?

 The researchers did something here that is truly amazing: they found a pathway into male courtship behavior...in flies!!!! "Almost all steps of courtship, from courtship song to ejaculation, can be induced at very high levels through activation of either all fruM or all dsx neurons in solitary males."  Kablam!! I don't know much about flies or their mating behavior, but I think this could have amazing repercussions on human mating!

 Imagine that an analogous system is investigated in humans and that medicines are discovered to activate or deactivate the system in both men or women! The activating pill would be prescribed to couples who are experiencing a lull in their physical interactions. I say physical because the concentration of whatever this fantastical drug will decide the type of interaction.

A low dose gives attraction and high dose gives complete submission to sexual desire. Maybe the deactivating pill would be prescribed for a cheating spouse or a spouse that feels the urge to cheat. 

It reminds me of the story Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I'm thinking specifically of the scene where Deckard and his wife are arguing about using the mood organ. If you have not read it, you really should because Blade Runner omits a great many awesome ideas.

SMOKING ROCKS!!!

Nicotine decreases food intake through activation of POMC neurons.

Mineur YS, Abizaid A, Rao Y, Salas R, DiLeone RJ, Gündisch D, Diano S, De Biasi M, Horvath TL, Gao XB, Picciotto MR.

Smoking decreases appetite, and smokers often report that they smoke to control their weight. Understanding the neurobiological mechanisms underlying the anorexic effects of smoking would facilitate the development of novel treatments to help with smoking cessation and to prevent or treat obesity. By using a combination of pharmacological, molecular genetic, electrophysiological, and feeding studies, we found that activation of hypothalamic α3β4 nicotinic acetylcholine receptors leads to activation of pro-opiomelanocortin (POMC) neurons. POMC neurons and subsequent activation of melanocortin 4 receptors were critical for nicotinic-induced decreases in food intake in mice. This study demonstrates that nicotine decreases food intake and body weight by influencing the hypothalamic melanocortin system and identifies critical molecular and synaptic mechanisms involved in nicotine-induced decreases in appetite.

Science. 2011 Jun 10;332(6035):1330-2.

Why is this cool?

 SMOKING IS GOOD...for something. There has been a lot of talk about cancer and emphysema associated with cigarettes and all that data is pretty conclusive, but what if cigarettes actually did some good?! People have known that smokers are usually skinny and wily, but why?

 Turns out smokin' activates your brain to be less hungry. So, when you see someone bad mouthing cancer sticks, you tell them that you're losing weight in an all natural way because going to the gym is unnatural. Animals don't gym and they are as natural as it gets. They just keep it trim and smoke all the time.

  What did the researchers do? They say that through "a combination of pharmacological, molecular genetic, electrophysiological, and feeding studies" they were able to see activation of "pro-opiomelanocortin (POMC) neurons." I don't know anything about these neurons or neurobiology, so I can not say exactly what that means. What I can say is that they have found a mechanism by which nicotine intake affects appetite and that is stellar!

 What does this mean for the future? Maybe this research will be a drug and just like multivitamins people will take them everyday to stay slim. Gyms would go out of business because the pill would keep people slender and they would not feel the urge to break themselves on an elliptical. 

 The government could enforce the pill and bring down rising healthcare costs attributed to obesity! Imagine that being on insurers may do the same because costs associated with obesity are so high.  Are the financial costs of obesity so much higher than those attributed to smoking as to justify heavy taxes on sweets and high calorie foods while lowering taxes on and regulations of smoking? A skinny world could be perfection...maybe.

GOSSIP!!!

The Visual Impact of Gossip.
Anderson E, Siegel EH, Bliss-Moreau E, Barrett LF.

Gossip is a form of affective information about who is friend and who is foe. We show that gossip does not impact only how a face is evaluated-it affects whether a face is seen in the first place. In two experiments, neutral faces were paired with negative, positive, or neutral gossip and were then presented alone in a binocular rivalry paradigm (faces were presented to one eye, houses to the other). In both studies, faces previously paired with negative (but not positive or neutral) gossip dominated longer in visual consciousness. These findings demonstrate that gossip, as a potent form of social affective learning, can influence vision in a completely top-down manner, independent of the basic structural features of a face.

Science. 2011 May 19. [Epub ahead of print]

Why is this is cool?

 This is so cool that I can barely contain my excitement! I think the abstract sums up their work really well, but here is a brief re-cap of the main point: gossip about something affects how you see that something! Negative gossip makes you visually aware of the thing gossiped about! 

 I see this has having huge ramifications for education. The authors suggest the same and I think it would be interesting to explore thoughtspace on this issue. It seems to fit with that age old idiom "you learn more from mistakes than from successes." That is if you generalize a mistake to be an input of negative information on a topic. So, having this knowledge what would be the best way to teach? 

 Maybe instead of talking about the achievements that Richard Nixon had, an elementary school teacher would discuss the many failures of Nixon? The idea being that knowing his failures would increase knowledge retention.

 What about a PE teacher who makes sure to evenly split up the class so that adept athletes can not pick other adept athletes and, thus, increases the randomness of the game and the chances that each student will learn from losing instead of just the shrimpy kids who get annihilated?

 Is it possible that knowing only successes does not increase consciousness on a topic? Am I so far off? I should read the paper and see what they say. 

 Are there other things besides education that could be affected by this? Could this explain politics in some way? No, matter how well intentioned and skillful a politician may be, a negative comment will have a more lasting impact?

VIRUS INDUCED BEHAVIOR CHANGE!!!

Infection with a plant virus modifies vector feeding behavior.

Stafford CA, Walker GP, Ullman DE.

Vector infection by some animal-infecting parasites results in altered feeding that enhances transmission. Modification of vector behavior is of broad adaptive significance, as parasite fitness relies on passage to a new host, and vector feeding is nearly always essential for transmission. Although several plant viruses infect their insect vectors, we have shown that vector infection by a plant virus alters feeding behavior. Here we show that infection with Tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV), type member of the only plant-infecting genus in the Bunyaviridae, alters the feeding behavior of its thrips vector, Frankliniella occidentalis (Pergande). Male thrips infected with TSWV fed more than uninfected males, with the frequency of all feeding behaviors increasing by up to threefold, thus increasing the probability of virus inoculation. Importantly, infected males made almost three times more noningestion probes (probes in which they salivate, but leave cells largely undamaged) compared with uninfected males. A functional cell is requisite for TSWV infection and cell-to-cell movement; thus, this behavior is most likely to establish virus infection. Some animal-infecting members of the Bunyaviridae (La Crosse virus and Rift Valley fever virus) also cause increased biting rates in infected vectors. Concomitantly, these data support the hypothesis that capacity to modify vector feeding behavior is a conserved trait among plant- and animal-infecting members of the Bunyaviridae that evolved as a mechanism to enhance virus transmission. Our results underscore the evolutionary importance of vector behavioral modification to diverse parasites with host ranges spanning both plant and animal kingdoms.

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2011 Jun 7;108(23):9350-5. Epub 2011 May 23.

Why is this cool?

 First of all, what is it? Something that I didn't know for awhile was that "vector" does not just mean a line with a direction, it also means something that carries disease from to the host. An example is that fleas were vectors for bubonic plague during the Black Death time. Today's paper is about how how a plant virus (Tomato spotted wilt virus) infects thrips (Frankliniella occidentalis) and how the thrip infects tomato plants.

 What they found was that after being infected, thrips  increase their feeding three-fold when compared to uninfected thrips. They also found that infected thrips had increased probing tendencies also about three-fold increased. Looking at it in broad terms, a virus changed the behavior of an organism. Wow! Like Super Wow. World of Warcraft WoW!!

 There are times that I look in the mirror and I see myself as a person with interests and a history and beliefs about many things, but, sometimes, I see something different. My eyes wander over my nose, glasses, and mouth, only to see a biological machine. If a computer could see itself in a mirror, it would see itself as I sometimes see myself. 

The biological machine is the execution of timeless genetic material and it subject to further programming. I would like to believe that I am some biologically-independent personality, but after reading about how my personality can change with insufficient HP and how a blow to the head can make me mind dead, I am positive that it is not the case. This thing I call "me" exists in a precarious state of well-fed (possibly over-fed) and disease-free. If one of those things should change, so would my personality.

 Strange, I say "my personality" as if it were a thing like a messenger bag that I carry all my things in. Am I the collection of my personality, history, and biological disposition? What is this thing called "me"?

HIGH GRAVITY LIFE!!!

Microbial growth at hyperaccelerations up to 403,627 x g.

Deguchi S, Shimoshige H, Tsudome M, Mukai SA, Corkery RW, Ito S, Horikoshi K.

It is well known that prokaryotic life can withstand extremes of temperature, pH, pressure, and radiation. Little is known about the proliferation of prokaryotic life under conditions of hyperacceleration attributable to extreme gravity, however. We found that living organisms can be surprisingly proliferative during hyperacceleration. In tests reported here, a variety of microorganisms, including Gram-negative Escherichia coli, Paracoccus denitrificans, and Shewanella amazonensis; Gram-positive Lactobacillus delbrueckii; and eukaryotic Saccharomyces cerevisiae, were cultured while being subjected to hyperaccelerative conditions. We observed and quantified robust cellular growth in these cultures across a wide range of hyperacceleration values. Most notably, the organisms P. denitrificans and E. coli were able to proliferate even at 403,627 × g. Analysis shows that the small size of prokaryotic cells is essential for their proliferation under conditions of hyperacceleration. Our results indicate that microorganisms cannot only survive during hyperacceleration but can display such robust proliferative behavior that the habitability of extraterrestrial environments must not be limited by gravity.

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2011 Apr 25. [Epub ahead of print]

Why is this cool?

 Are we alone in the universe? Is there others out there sharing this thing called life? I am pretty sure bad ass aliens like Squeed roam the universe looking for a place to shoot their whatever guns and drink their madness juices.

From TURF By Jonathan Ross and Tommy Lee Edwards from Image

 Today's paper is not about aliens, it is about bland microbes, but those microbes demonstrate something that we have always known, NOTHING CAN STOP LIFE!! Well, more like nothing can stop bacteria (and yeast) from growing anywhere. Anyway, the researchers took some microbes and spun them around to simulate an increase in gravity. They maxed out at 403,627 times Earth gravity!
To put that into context, if you weighed 100 lbs on Earth, you would weight 2700 lbs on the sun and that is only 28 times Earth gravity. Now, imagine 403,627 times Earth gravity! It would be kind of like being on the surface of a white dwarf!

Enter the White, Hot Room

 Since we are on the topic of aliens, What do you think will happen in that movie Super 8? Without a doubt, it is the only movie that looks interesting this summer.

GIANT SQUIDS!!!!

First-ever observations of a live giant squid in the wild.

Kubodera T, Mori K.

The giant squid, Architeuthis, is renowned as the largest invertebrate in the world and has featured as an ominous sea monster in novels and movies. Considerable efforts to view this elusive creature in its deep-sea habitat have been singularly unsuccessful. Our digital camera and depth recorder system recently photographed an Architeuthis attacking bait at 900 m off Ogasawara Islands in the North Pacific. Here, we show the first wild images of a giant squid in its natural environment. Recovery of a severed tentacle confirmed both identification and scale of the squid (greater than 8 m). Architeuthis appears to be a much more active predator than previously suspected, using its elongate feeding tentacles to strike and tangle prey.

Proc Biol Sci. 2005 Dec 22;272(1581):2583-6.

NOTHING IS COOLER THAN THIS!!

 My heart is a big place where I keep feelings for my parents and brothers with the VIP room reserved for my wife. Secretly, I keep a second VIP room that holds my feelings for things like giant squids. Deep down, I know that if I dove into the ocean and swam around, a giant squid would show up and tell me the profound secrets of the deep. I would grab its tentacle and it would take me to a magical world where human fingers are used as currency and the Void calls to us all.

 As you can read from the abstract, the researchers were able to record a giant squid hunting and that is really cool. The particular squid that they observed was about 8 m long! To put that into real numbers, you would need 4.2 John Waynes to get the same length as the giant squid!

 When I think of giant sea creatures, I am reminded of the most devastating creatures ever:

STARRO!!!

 Starro is a gigantic starfish thing that floats in space until it reaches an inhabited planet. When it gets to the planet it releases tons of little Starros that begin feeding on the population to create more gigantic Starros.

Recently, Starro was revealed to be controlled by an alien that had subjugated the Starro queen, but I will not show it because it does not have the visual appeal of a gigantic starfish.

EPIC BIRTH CONTROL REVOLUTION!!!!

Effectiveness of an oral contraceptive; effects of a progestin-estrogen combination upon fertility, menstrual phenomena, and health. 

PINCUS G, GARCIA CR, ROCK J, PANIAGUA M, PENDLETON A, LARAQUE F, NICOLAS R, BORNO R, PEAN V.

Science. 1959 Jul 10;130(3367):81-3.

Why is this beyond cool? Possibly awesome?

 Revolution is a word that I throw around when I read some of the older papers, because so many of them had a gigantic effect on all of us. It is surprising to me that I neglected to think of birth control. The invention of the birth control pill is one of the biggest most mind blowingly EPIC inventions ever! Consider that before the pill, women had many crude ways to prevent pregnancy and even cruder ways to abort them. Being yoked with carrying the next generation meant that women were seen as not able to hold important jobs because they could leave at any moment to create babies.

 The pill changed everything. Now, sexy, young women could do important work on par with that of a man and not have to worry about stopping because of accidental pregnancy (unless she was not consistent in taking the pill). Women were suddenly able to attend colleges in larger numbers because they didn't fear getting pregnant and having to drop out.

 If you want to take enslaved peoples, I can think of none more enslaved than women. Slaves to biology and the, now fading, social pressure to be mothers. If you look at any important woman, outside of the extremely religious, it is pretty much a given that she has taken the pill for at least several years of her life. Not months, but YEARS!!

 Most of your mothers take the pill....unless you come from a non-western country. If you ask around, you will find that most of the women you interact with take the pill. It is like in the new Star Trek movie when Spock was talking to the crew of the Enterprise about how the Romulans went back and time a changed history and every crew member took a moment to absorb the fact that their lives were vastly different because of the those EVIL, FUTURE ROMULANS!!