Al parecer, diversos factores ambientales influencian el resistoma de los microorganismos que habitan en el intestino de los infantes.
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Geologists do not know with certainty the age and characteristics of its geological structure. According to a new tectonic model, the Red Sea is twice as old as previously assumed.
Traditionally, the golden rice, because it is a genetically modified organism, has entailed fierce activist resistance from a certain ideological spectrum.
You will have to ask them what do you think about this: yeast pills designed with genetic engineering that settle in your intestine and They synthesize vitamin A from what you eat (something that could happen soon given the results obtained in mouse models).
Transgenic yeasts in mice
Most yeast species cannot survive in the intestine of mammals: Heat and acidity are beyond your tolerance limits. But Saccharomyces boulardii It not only grows easily in the intestine of mammals, but also inhibits pathogenic intestinal infections in the mammalian host.
Like golden rice, it is a transgenic variety that can fill vitamin A deficiencies, maybe one day this yeast can do it more effectively.
In a new step for synthetic biology, a group of researchers has opened new biosynthetic pathways in S. boulardii that allow the production of vitamin precursors (such as beta-carotene, a precursor of vitamin A) and drugs (such as violacein, a natural drug with anti-inflammatory properties) in the intestine of mice. They thus demonstrated CRISPR-mediated genome editing with high efficiency (95%) in this yeast strain..
The researchers reported that S. boulardii formed stable colonies in germ-free mice for more than 30 days, competing for space with other gut-resident microbes.
The researchers then tested the modified S. boulardii in the mouse model and found that the yeast cells successfully synthesized beta-carotene in the intestine of mice. By comparing the total mass of additional beta-carotene recovered in feces to the beta-carotene present in the initial dose of probiotics, the authors estimated that the germ-free mice produced 194 micrograms of beta-carotene in approximately 14 days.
This proof-of-concept study inspires further questions about the amount of beta-carotene absorbed by the mice, the biological relevance of the amounts produced, and, most importantly, If the process can be replicated in humans. Be that as it may, I'm sure Greenpeace is against it..
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The news
If you don't like golden rice to produce vitamin A, you may prefer transgenic yeast that settles in your intestines
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.
Un plástico modificado se descompone casi por completo en agua caliente. Es así gracias a unas enzimas introducidas en el material sintético.
Las investigaciones apuntan a que los anticuerpos se diversifican para contrarrestar las nuevas versiones de este virus cambiante.
Una visualización de la NASA recrea un sistema binario de agujeros negros supermasivos y muestra como distorsionarían la luz emitida por sus respectivos discos de acreción.
Fly is the common name of various species of flying insects belonging to the order Diptera (Diptera): there are more than 120,000 different species.
But, despite their size and the fact that they usually only constitute a nuisance during the summer, These creatures are much more exceptional than they seem.
A homely and elusive creature
- Flies can travel 6 million times their body length in one flight, according to a recent study. Fruit flies can fly up to 15 kilometers in a single trip, 6 million times the length of your body, or the equivalent of more than 10,000 kilometers for the average human being. Compared to body length, this is more than many species of migratory birds can fly in a day.
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Under the influence of alcohol, flies too They are sexually similar to humans. What was found is that alcohol consumption did not affect the duration of copulation, but it reduced female choice and weakened the strength of mate preference, since females mated more quickly and with more males after consuming alcohol, potentially reducing the strength of sexual selection.
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The molecular motors that make wings flap repeatedly They have an energy efficiency rate of up to 40%. That is to say, by doing some calculations we can answer a curious question: How many flies would be necessary to pull a car? 200 million.
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Flies, depending on the species, They can live for very different times. But there is a myth that we must debunk: Mayflies don't live only 24 hours, dedicated exclusively to sex. Depending on the species, it can even live less than a day, or more. But that's just the final stage of life: mayflies spend most of their existence as aquatic nymphs, a period that can last anywhere from several months to four years.
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There is a very special type of fly in scientific studies. The fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, is a small insect about 3 millimeters long that grows on ripe fruit. Every week there is news of new scientific contributions that start from studying this small organism. It is small in size, with a life cycle of about two weeks, affordable maintenance and produces very numerous offspring. Numerous mutations also arise in its genes and its complete genome has already been sequenced.
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It consists of 3 pairs of legs that act as limbs that have adhesive pads that allow them to walk on smooth surfaces such as glass, even upside down.
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A great reaction speed. Flies are able to process what they see and react to it incredibly quickly, to put it in perspective: our brain processes around 60 images per second, while a fly can process up to 250 per second.
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These insects have been revered by different cultures over the centuries, with the Egyptian culture being one of those that paid the most tribute to flies. In fact, flies were seen by the pharaohs as synonymous with bravery and resistance to the enemy.
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He tries things through his paws. Flies have taste pupils in the last sections of their legs, so they can taste the taste of anything just by landing, from animal feces to your food.
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The head is small compared to the abdomen, and there are large, red eyes composed of thousands of individually light-sensitive facets (ommatidia) that they constantly clean by rubbing their legs, arranged in circles and that are connected directly to the brain.
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The house fly practically vomits digestive juices on solid food, these juices are capable of dissolving your plate into small parts allowing you to now use your mouth to take food, a process called "proboscis." This can be perfectly seen in a terrifying scene from the movie The Fly.
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A single fruit fly can lay 500 eggs in its lifetime, and the life cycle from egg to adulthood only lasts about a week.
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Since house flies usually feed on feces, garbage and decaying animals and lay eggs there and in other disgusting places, the common house fly is believed to transmit at least 65 diseases to people, including diarrhea, dysentery or cholera.
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The news
12 extraordinary curiosities about flies, one of the most repudiated animals
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.
In Shark Bay, Western Australia, male bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus) form a complex hierarchy of social alliances. These alliances show a complexity like almost no other in the animal kingdom, almost comparable to that of humans.
Thus, at the first level, pairs or trios of unrelated males cooperate to raise individual females. Several first-order alliances cooperate in teams (second-order alliances) in searching for and defending females, and several teams also work together (third-order alliances).
Complex social hierarchy
However, It is unknown how dolphins classify these nested alliance relationships.. So in a new study published in Nature, 30 years of behavioral data combined with 40 contemporary sound playback experiments were used for 14 allied males, recording responses with drone-mounted videos.
It was thus shown that males form a first-person social concept of cooperative team membership at the second-order alliance level, regardless of the history of the first-order alliance and the strength of the current relationship at the three levels of alliance. alliance. Such associative concepts develop through experience.
This behavior can help reduce tension between males in a situation that requires them to cooperate successfully. This synchronized and coordinated behavior between allied males may therefore promote cooperative behavior and regulate stress, as has been shown to happen in humans.
These results provide evidence that cooperation-based concepts are not unique to humans., and occur in other animal societies with extensive cooperation between non-kin or nepotistic networks.
It is not the first evidence of the social complexity of these dolphins: Unrelated bottlenose dolphins have been observed teaching yourself a new way to use a tool, a behavior that until now had only been discovered in humans and other great apes. In a practice called "shelling."
Shark Bay, a World Heritage-listed area of Western Australia, is home to an iconic population of Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins. Only in this place have these cetaceans been observed using marine sponges, probably to protect their snout while they search for prey in the sand on the ground.
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The news
The social complexity of Shark Bay dolphins is much more human-like than we had imagined
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.
In a few days, the first module of the satellite will take off, which will host various scientific investigations and whose assembly will conclude in 2022, after another ten launches.
En América, la dedalera común ha evolucionado para acoger a un nuevo grupo de polinizadores.