I recently read that trees planted in an alpine environment benefit twice. Once from the tree's normal metabolic habits, and twice because the roots reach into previously sealed rock, exposing oliveine and similar minerals to weathering. This gives me an idea.
We dig massive holes into the mountains. After a year's time, we fill the hole back up, ending with a sapling. This maximizes weathering, resulting in the best possible carbon sink for the area.
Showing posts with label Biology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Biology. Show all posts
Monday, March 3, 2014
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Garbage eating Pigeons
The pigeon is ubiquitous in the world's cities due to a similarity to the native habitat of these birds -- seaside cliffs in the middle east. We humans went and built these cliffs everywhere, and even leave around half-eaten sandwiches for sustenance. If there weren't cars and cats and predatory hawks, pigeons would think cities were perfect.
One thing that annoys me about the city is litter. I often see little bits of garbage thrown into some corner where it will just kind of sit around for all eternity. Occasionally I've gathered it up and thrown it away myself, but within a week's time, it's back. This gave me an idea.
Using the de-extinction technology I mentioned earlier, I make an artificial variant of the pigeon. This species will have digestive enzymes that can consume paper, plastic, and styrofoam. I'd like to include glass, but glass is made of pretty much pure silicon dioxide, and there are limits to what protein can accomplish. I engineer 20 of these, and release them in a major city, ideally one with an extreme litter problem.
The garbage eating pigeons will clear the streets quite handily. While existing pigeons will go to extreme lengths to grab old bits of bread and discarded lunch things, such as jumping into dumpsters, charging across five lanes of traffic, and I even saw a pigeon try to divebomb a sandwich out of someone's hands once. (This failed.)
So when pigeons can eat stuff that's just lying around, I imagine it'll be snapped up in a matter of weeks. At which time they will move on to dumpsters and landfills, lowering disposal costs.
Of course, there's a catch. No organism is 100% efficient, and birds poop. Birds in fact have an annoying instinct to poop into puddles to disguise their trail from predators, and when airborne often confuse shiny cars with puddles. This is going to mean a greatly increased bird population in the city, and with it, greatly increased car washing will be required. I may be able to breed a new instinct into them to poop into grass instead, which would fertilize the grass.
And if they get too numerous, there's another creature from their native habitat that also does well in cities, the Peregine falcon. This is the fastest moving bird on earth, and exclusively eats other birds. It enjoys pigeons for dinner the way that I enjoy a medium-well steak. Each released falcon will eat a minimum of five pigeons a day.
One thing that annoys me about the city is litter. I often see little bits of garbage thrown into some corner where it will just kind of sit around for all eternity. Occasionally I've gathered it up and thrown it away myself, but within a week's time, it's back. This gave me an idea.
Using the de-extinction technology I mentioned earlier, I make an artificial variant of the pigeon. This species will have digestive enzymes that can consume paper, plastic, and styrofoam. I'd like to include glass, but glass is made of pretty much pure silicon dioxide, and there are limits to what protein can accomplish. I engineer 20 of these, and release them in a major city, ideally one with an extreme litter problem.
The garbage eating pigeons will clear the streets quite handily. While existing pigeons will go to extreme lengths to grab old bits of bread and discarded lunch things, such as jumping into dumpsters, charging across five lanes of traffic, and I even saw a pigeon try to divebomb a sandwich out of someone's hands once. (This failed.)
So when pigeons can eat stuff that's just lying around, I imagine it'll be snapped up in a matter of weeks. At which time they will move on to dumpsters and landfills, lowering disposal costs.
Of course, there's a catch. No organism is 100% efficient, and birds poop. Birds in fact have an annoying instinct to poop into puddles to disguise their trail from predators, and when airborne often confuse shiny cars with puddles. This is going to mean a greatly increased bird population in the city, and with it, greatly increased car washing will be required. I may be able to breed a new instinct into them to poop into grass instead, which would fertilize the grass.
And if they get too numerous, there's another creature from their native habitat that also does well in cities, the Peregine falcon. This is the fastest moving bird on earth, and exclusively eats other birds. It enjoys pigeons for dinner the way that I enjoy a medium-well steak. Each released falcon will eat a minimum of five pigeons a day.
Monday, June 24, 2013
De-Extinction
One of the great tragedies of animal conservation is that a lot of animals are threatened with extinction -- the death of the last of them, causing their species to forever become absent from the face of the earth. Remarkable animals like the Carolina parakeet, the Aurochs, the Dodo, and the Moa, are extinct, and will never be seen again. Anything relying on them is also gone. And anything that relies on that goes away quite quickly too. Some of them have surviving relatives, like the modern Cow's relationship to the Aurochs, the Ostritch to the moa, and the nicobar pigeon to the Dodo. One scientist is aiming to change that:
Essentially, the extinct species will, from what few remaining scraps we have of their DNA, be cloned into a genetically modified parent. A modified chicken will birth small extinct birds, a modified cow will produce extinct bovines, and what was once gone forever, will cease to be gone. The first generation of these will be sickly, as the modification process has certain complications, but their children will turn out normally. And then the cold hand of death will have to release it's hand on certain animals.
Or to put it more mad-scientistly, IT'S ALIVE, IT'S ALIVE, MAKE MY CREATION LIVE!!!!
BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA!
Monday, September 3, 2012
Insane in the Chromatophores
Our musical world is transmitted mostly by electricity. If you use headphones, then you're using electricity to vibrate little magnets to copy the sounds that your favorite rock band made in the recording studio. If you're using speakers, then you have somewhat larger magnets in a rectangular case, again vibrated by electricity. Also, the bodies of us and other animals use electricity to transmit signals from our brain to tell our body how to behave. A biologist realized that a squid's elaborate color-changing skin is controlled by the squid's brain, electrically. Having a dead squid handy, he hooked it up to a handy iPod to make probably the strangest automated music visualization ever:
Yes, that's seriously the squid's skin's response to the electrical signals made to play the biologist's favorite rap song.
Yes, that's seriously the squid's skin's response to the electrical signals made to play the biologist's favorite rap song.
Thursday, August 2, 2012
Radiation Pigeons
When the Chernobyl nuclear plant near Pirpyat, in what is now the Ukraine, melted down in 1986, it was a worldwide disaster. Radiation spread as far away as Kansas, and Pirpyat is now massively radioactive, and judged uninhabitable. A few very stubborn people live there, and made an incredible discovery. A type of yeast there developed the ability to eat gamma radiation. As food. This species of yeast is also universally found in pigeon feces.
Gamma radiation is the lowest-mass type of radiation produced from radioactive decay. It takes several feet of lead to stop it due to its high energy,and it's absolutely hazardous to human health in the same way as touching a red hot stove would be. Also, outer space is absolutely full of it, which is a hazard to would-be space travelers.
These two facts can be combined to form two mad inventions, and I'm not sure which one is crazier.
One, we can clean up radioactive spills by spreading bread all over the affected area and then releasing some pigeons, which can easily be caught in most major cities in North America and Europe. When these pigeons poop all over the place, the yeast will get right to work eating up all the radiation, making the area inhabitable years sooner than it would otherwise.
Two, we can keep a thin layer of pigeon poop in the outer hull of space going vehicles. In the depths of space, the yeasts will absolutely feast on the radiation, and only very little would reach the astronauts. Space travel would be lighter, cheaper, and safer.
Gamma radiation is the lowest-mass type of radiation produced from radioactive decay. It takes several feet of lead to stop it due to its high energy,and it's absolutely hazardous to human health in the same way as touching a red hot stove would be. Also, outer space is absolutely full of it, which is a hazard to would-be space travelers.
These two facts can be combined to form two mad inventions, and I'm not sure which one is crazier.
One, we can clean up radioactive spills by spreading bread all over the affected area and then releasing some pigeons, which can easily be caught in most major cities in North America and Europe. When these pigeons poop all over the place, the yeast will get right to work eating up all the radiation, making the area inhabitable years sooner than it would otherwise.
Two, we can keep a thin layer of pigeon poop in the outer hull of space going vehicles. In the depths of space, the yeasts will absolutely feast on the radiation, and only very little would reach the astronauts. Space travel would be lighter, cheaper, and safer.
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Curing AIDS
Since it first appeared in America in 1985, there has been an intensive amount of interest in a treatment of some sort of the Auto ImmunoDeficiency Syndrome, or AIDS. Other countries may have been interested when first exposed as well. And according to Slashdot, we may now have it. Supposedly, 3 people have been completely cured of the disease, which was previously minimally treatable and guaranteed fatal.
This is still tentative and prone to additional testing, since case #1 apparently has some radical differences with cases #2 and 3, covered in the article. The theory relies upon bone-marrow transfer immunity. When you receive a bone-marrow transplant, you inherit with it the donors immune system capabilities, including all vaccinations. In this case, one of the rare people who was completely immune to AIDS (for genetic reasons mostly) donated bone marrow to these two patients, who inherited the immunity.
If this can be confirmed, this will mean a radical new hope for the world's suffering. Still no cure for the common cold or herpes, though.
This is still tentative and prone to additional testing, since case #1 apparently has some radical differences with cases #2 and 3, covered in the article. The theory relies upon bone-marrow transfer immunity. When you receive a bone-marrow transplant, you inherit with it the donors immune system capabilities, including all vaccinations. In this case, one of the rare people who was completely immune to AIDS (for genetic reasons mostly) donated bone marrow to these two patients, who inherited the immunity.
If this can be confirmed, this will mean a radical new hope for the world's suffering. Still no cure for the common cold or herpes, though.
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Heart Jellyfish
Via Slashdot, I have learned of the world's first artificial animal -- a jellyfish made of plastic and rat heart cells. The benefits are surprising and unexpected.
This jellyfish like thing starts to "swim" when exposed to electric currents, just as hearts beat in time to electric currents. Put this thing in a tank of sugar water and attach a pacemaker, and you have the perfect environment for testing heart drugs.
Traditionally, heart drugs had to be tested by breeding rats with sick hearts, injecting some rats with the drug and some with a placebo (saline solution to make sure that results aren't just some weird side effect of injections in general), and noting their recovery or death. Then human clinical trials were required because rats don't respond quite the same as humans. (Doing the original testing with humans would be condemning some humans to die, which people won't put up with.) All of this was expensive and took a lot of time.
So instead, we could make a human heart cell jellyfish, put it in the tank, and expose it to drugs dissolved in the water. The effects of the drug become apparently relatively quickly, suggesting which drugs, if any, are good candidates for a successful clinical trial.
The rat version? Proof of concept.
This jellyfish like thing starts to "swim" when exposed to electric currents, just as hearts beat in time to electric currents. Put this thing in a tank of sugar water and attach a pacemaker, and you have the perfect environment for testing heart drugs.
Traditionally, heart drugs had to be tested by breeding rats with sick hearts, injecting some rats with the drug and some with a placebo (saline solution to make sure that results aren't just some weird side effect of injections in general), and noting their recovery or death. Then human clinical trials were required because rats don't respond quite the same as humans. (Doing the original testing with humans would be condemning some humans to die, which people won't put up with.) All of this was expensive and took a lot of time.
So instead, we could make a human heart cell jellyfish, put it in the tank, and expose it to drugs dissolved in the water. The effects of the drug become apparently relatively quickly, suggesting which drugs, if any, are good candidates for a successful clinical trial.
The rat version? Proof of concept.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Artificial Plant Environment
A coalition of studies between biologists and marijuana junkies have given me something that several of my previous posts have relied upon -- a way to grow plants without the sun. Biologists have the same interests that I do, growing more food and in more places to feed an ever growing population. The marijuana people are mostly trying to conceal the fact that they have any, as it is highly illegal. Either way, the light needs of plants have been discovered, allowing some previously impossible biology feats to occur, and increasing the potential efficiency of farming.
Plants need mostly red light, with a small amount of blue. The studies showed that the best ratio is 90% red, 8% blue, and 2% ultraviolet and other colors. Without the blue light, growth becomes misshapen, and seed production also malfunctions. Without red light, the plant starves. Since LEDs can be made to efficiency manufacture light of a certain color, if somewhat dimly, plants can be grown in a box that has a ceiling covered in LEDs, which are mostly red, with an occasional blue or ultraviolet LED. The total electricity use for a square meter is about the same as running an incandescent bulb, but the plant functions so much better.
The only way this could get more efficient is if some sort of artificial plant that can directly knit together a nutritious nectar from air and electrical energy could be invented, and I'm pretty sure that if I ever invented that, people would refuse to eat the nectar and constantly protest it as an unnatural abomination.
Friday, March 2, 2012
Bodyswaps
A common element in fiction is to have two characters exchange bodies. Guy A and Guy B swap, so now Guy A's body has Guy B's personality and mind, and Guy B's body has Guy A's personality and mind. How does this happen? It's hand waved away as inexplicable magic, usually, and the plot usually revolves around developing a greater respect for each other, with various comedic misunderstandings along the way, as no one seems to recognize the abrupt changes in behavior and knowledge, or any of the other clues that this has happened. Sometime before the end of the story, they get to swap back.
The closest real life version of this is a brain transplant, or more pedantically, a body transplant. After millions of attempts, we finally succeeded with monkeys, transferring the brain of one monkey into another, and vice versa. This was significantly harder than it sounded, mostly due to the difficulties in reconnecting the nerves, and both monkeys were thereafter paralyzed below the neck for the rest of their lives due to the insufficient reconnection of nerves. But what if there was a cheap, reversible, reliable, consequence free means of completely seizing another person's body, which most realistically will be done by putting your brain in their skull and reconnecting every single nerve. (Again, way harder than it sounds. Especially because a living brain is about the consistency of a raw egg yolk, and every severed nerve is basically going to stay severed forever.)
I'm imagining that this actually has commercial potential for a lot of people. A body builder and I go down to the transplant center, and we swap bodies. I am now a muscular 25 year old man, and he is now a 31 year old fat bespectacled nerdy man. We also have to register this for security and legal purposes, which I will get into later. Surprisingly, we can both get something out of this.
My benefit is more obviously immediate. I'm no longer fat, I can run for miles at a time, I have huge muscles and the strength to lift small cars, or at least motorcycles. I can easily climb the stairs to the top of my workplace without breaking a sweat. However, on the downside, our bodybuilder has also heavily into steroids. This has taken a major toll on his body, and he can no longer work out, his favorite pastime, without breaking his arms. He also may have developed hormonal issues, which can lead to such strange issues and gynecomastia, in which he's developed a case of awkward, teen-esque breasts (likely misshapen) and will need to wear a bra. His body has bizarre pimples and random hair growth from a case of puberty that eternally mutates into a worse version. His genitals no longer function, much to the annoyance of him and anyone he's seeing romantically. Since I had neither the inclination to use steroids, nor the knowledge of where to find them, my body does not have these issues.
For him, he regains the ability to work out, and while we should probably remain celibate for the duration lest we cause extremely awkward feelings with our respective loves, he can enjoy some alone time, if you know what I mean. I will also care similarly for his body, and while he'll lose muscle mass and probably gain weight, I won't do steroids, and his body will become more fit for exercise over time, and his hormonal issues will subside as his body, under my control, returns to equilibrium. Under my direction, his body will repair injured muscles as well. He will have significantly better gains when he regains it.
With my body, he'll have to start over from scratch, exercise wise, but his exercise hobby will lead to him pushing it quite hard. I anticipate easily losing 10 to 20 pounds from his anaerobic exercise alone, and that's assuming that he doesn't also do cardio exercises such as bicycling, swimming, and other sports popular with weightlifters. We'll remain swapped for two weeks to a month.
When we trade back, his body is weaker than before the swap, but still very muscular and strong, fully repaired, fed a balanced diet, and ready for some seriously awesome exercise. His hormonal issues are gone, which his girlfriend will surely appreciate. After just two weeks of exercise (which will be both fun and easy for him), he will be able to show off his body proudly, and people will be able to enjoy looking at it.
For me, under his direction, my body has lost weight, and gained serious muscle mass. If he hasn't done steroids while using my body, then my body is now looking quite nice. If he has, then I can treat it the way I treated his body, and the issues will fade. I look quite nice, and my girlfriend will surely appreciate it.
I imagine other people will also quite cheerfully swap bodies to handle mutual issues. A cancer patient who can't keep weight down can swap bodies with an obese gourmand. A person who loves a food they are allergic to swaps bodies with someone who has no allergies, but doesn't like that food. (or could live without it.) A person who's too ill to leave the house swaps bodies with a shut-in who didn't want to leave the house in the first place. All sorts of benefits could happen.
However, on the security angle, this would have to be tightly controlled. Say I, in a fit of nefariousness, swap bodies with a hobo, and use the hobo's body to commit lots and lots of crime. After the end of my crime spree, I then swap back and leave the country. The police swiftly arrest the hobo, who was seen on camera robbing banks, breaking into houses and stealing from them, punching people that I didn't like, and other highly illegal things. If he's particularly illucid or incoherent, he'll find it quite impossible to defend himself, and spend years and years and years behind bars for my evil deeds. I meanwhile live off my ill gotten gains where they'll never find me. The only way I could be caught would be if there was a record of the body swaps, showing that I was the actual identity of the man on camera committing all that crime. They would also have to catch me before I left the jurisdiction in favor of one with no extradition treaty. There's also the issue of property. The hobo now looks like the man in my wallet, and unless my wallet is taken out of my pants and moved to the hobos at the time of the surgery, he could very easily take it and my credit cards to whatever store he felt like, and I'd have a real hard time arguing that it wasn't me.
Of course, Neurology is currently way too primitive to pull this off yet, so this is all moot, at least within my lifetime. The possibilities are truly crazy.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Artificial Plants II
Some time ago, I wrote about the idea of using artificial plants, machines that would strip the carbon from carbon dioxide in closd areas. What if I took this idea one step further, and have complete photosynthesis?
The artificial plant would use energy to use carbon dioxide and water into glucose and oxygen. It would then dispense the glucose into a small container for later collection. The energy would not need to be solar, as is for natural plants. Being a machine and not an organism, it would not suffer disease, die when the water supply runs out, or rot. It would just be, sustaining animal life whenever it could.
This and a large amount of energy could sustain civilizations to flourish in places where it is currently impossible, like the depths of the ocean, underground, or in space. However, it would also need to add nitrogen from the air to the glucose to make basic proteins, because animals can't live on sugar alone.
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Ant Hunting
I've had a long running war against ants. They're an annoyance that seeks to steal my food, damages the house foundation, and occasionally bites me during the night. The usual way to deal with them involves dumping neurotoxins disguised as food on their nests. They eat it, share it, and all collectively die. Especially the queen ant, who is more literally "mommy ant." Without her, the last ant of the colony dies of old age, squishing, or being eaten in short order.
A big annoyance, however, is that I can only really find their nests after they've built up a bit. A small ant nest goes completely unnoticed. Until they build up to extreme irritation levels.
Biologists have successfuly reverse engineered the chemical signals that ants use to navigate, so I'm tempted to get their "ant pencil," which traces lines not of graphite, but of "food" signal, and leading them to a big pile of the neurotoxin. They won't be able to resist. Muahahahaha!!!
A big annoyance, however, is that I can only really find their nests after they've built up a bit. A small ant nest goes completely unnoticed. Until they build up to extreme irritation levels.
Biologists have successfuly reverse engineered the chemical signals that ants use to navigate, so I'm tempted to get their "ant pencil," which traces lines not of graphite, but of "food" signal, and leading them to a big pile of the neurotoxin. They won't be able to resist. Muahahahaha!!!
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Synthetic Hair
A number of charities allow you to donate hair. You wouldn't think hair would be useful, but the most common use is making wigs for little girls who have cancer. The treatment for cancer costs them their natural hair, and having a wig makes them feel more...normal...about the whole thing. For this reason, they want long hair pretty much exclusively. If the hair is too long for the recipient, she can always cut it. If the hair's too short...well, not much can be done about that. If hair isn't long enough for that, it's also proven well at absorbing oil slicks. Or it can be made into brushes.
All hair use, however, is just a little insufficient. We get a lot from haircuts, and from Indian widows who are required, for religious reasons, to shave their heads when their husbands die, but we need so much more. So it's time to look into substitutes. Doll hair uses nylon fibers, and kind of resembles hair good enough for a paint brush. Not quite good enough on a human being.The texture is vaugely wrong, and not quite bouncy enough. A better substitute can be found in animal hair. Horses have some very good hair for this purpose in their manes and tails, and angora rabbit's hair would be perfect if it could be gotten long enough. Either would be fine with being shaven in hot weather. In fact, horses often prefer it, as their natural mane has a way of getting dirty and tangled, requiring vigorous brushing. Ask a parent with a toddler what their child thinks of being brushed, horses are about the same about it.
I think the best solution, however, would be reverse-engineering the way that horse and rabbit hair grows, and producing an artificial version of the same, be it chemical or biological (grown in a vat). Then we'd have all the hair we want. Wigs? One for everybody. Insulation? Now with hair for extra creepiness! Oil slick? We'll drown it in nylon hair bags!
All hair use, however, is just a little insufficient. We get a lot from haircuts, and from Indian widows who are required, for religious reasons, to shave their heads when their husbands die, but we need so much more. So it's time to look into substitutes. Doll hair uses nylon fibers, and kind of resembles hair good enough for a paint brush. Not quite good enough on a human being.The texture is vaugely wrong, and not quite bouncy enough. A better substitute can be found in animal hair. Horses have some very good hair for this purpose in their manes and tails, and angora rabbit's hair would be perfect if it could be gotten long enough. Either would be fine with being shaven in hot weather. In fact, horses often prefer it, as their natural mane has a way of getting dirty and tangled, requiring vigorous brushing. Ask a parent with a toddler what their child thinks of being brushed, horses are about the same about it.
I think the best solution, however, would be reverse-engineering the way that horse and rabbit hair grows, and producing an artificial version of the same, be it chemical or biological (grown in a vat). Then we'd have all the hair we want. Wigs? One for everybody. Insulation? Now with hair for extra creepiness! Oil slick? We'll drown it in nylon hair bags!
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Cockroach Hunter
Cockroaches are the blight of many an urban area. They feast on our food and garbage, and quite sturdy against many biological threats, and few things are willing to eat them. Also, they're gross and they smell bad. So, they proliferate, to our great annoyance. Usually, we try to poison or trap them, with some tricks proving more effective than others.
I'm imagining either a robot, or a specifically bred animal, that seeks out and consumes cockroaches for power. If it were a robot, it would need a bacterial digester to turn the roaches into power. (Animals have a digestive system that turns what they eat into ATP and carbohydrate chains that they can burn for energy.) If it were a robot, it would be programmed with roach-like habits, like avoiding light, and tracking pheromones. If it gets too much power, probably it can go plug itself into the wall, and save you a few cents on your electricity bill. An animal version would, if it fed well, attempt to breed, which we clearly want to encourage. Answers.com suggests that a good starting point for a professional cockroach predator would be the gecko, a small lizard with an immense hunger for insects.
I would want to make this cheap enough to drive roaches into near extinction in cities that expressed interest in this. Cockroaches would continue to survive, if they learned to avoid human settlements. (Already cockroaches know to avoid flickering lights, as this means that a human is coming with things like squishy shoes, poisons, and possibly assistant animals like cats and geckos.)
I'm imagining either a robot, or a specifically bred animal, that seeks out and consumes cockroaches for power. If it were a robot, it would need a bacterial digester to turn the roaches into power. (Animals have a digestive system that turns what they eat into ATP and carbohydrate chains that they can burn for energy.) If it were a robot, it would be programmed with roach-like habits, like avoiding light, and tracking pheromones. If it gets too much power, probably it can go plug itself into the wall, and save you a few cents on your electricity bill. An animal version would, if it fed well, attempt to breed, which we clearly want to encourage. Answers.com suggests that a good starting point for a professional cockroach predator would be the gecko, a small lizard with an immense hunger for insects.
I would want to make this cheap enough to drive roaches into near extinction in cities that expressed interest in this. Cockroaches would continue to survive, if they learned to avoid human settlements. (Already cockroaches know to avoid flickering lights, as this means that a human is coming with things like squishy shoes, poisons, and possibly assistant animals like cats and geckos.)
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Kidney Cloning
Organ donation is an interesting thing. You can donate some things while you're still alive. A large portion of your liver, which will grow back. One of your two kidneys. One of your two lungs. (Those don't typically grow back.) Other things, you can donate when you die. Your heart. Other things, you'll probably want to wait until your death to donate, like your skin or your corneas.
I was reading earlier this week about how scientists have rebuilt lungs to improve compatibility. Essentially, your own diseased lung is rebuilt from scratch using your own stem cells, then reimplanted. They reported that this will save hundreds of lives every year, because hundreds die while waiting on donor lungs. You can also use a donor who would otherwise be incompatible, which saves even more lives.
And I was thinking, you know what other organ could benefit from this? Kidneys. Millions worldwide depend on dialysis, because their kidneys have totally failed. There's a limited number of machines, and we can't seem to build more fast enough. But if we rebuilt the patient's own kidneys, they would no longer need dialysis. It would be merely a stopgap measure to get them through the failed period, which is no longer "the rest of your short life." In fact, the more organs we could apply this to, the better the organ donation works out. Incompatibility would cease to exist, making every donated organ more useful.
But the best aspect of all was suggested by a reader of the original article who called himself "dancupid." He suggests using 3d printing techniques to lay out an artificial extracellular matrix. If that could be done, then we never need organ donation again. Each person could have an organ bank of 5 or so of their own organs, grown from a printed extracellular matrix and their own stem cells, and kept alive in life support machines. If I get stabbed in the kidneys, I can have my loved ones take a kidney from my organ bank to the hospital, where they implant it. The stabbed one can be donated to someone who couldn't afford the printed organs (and will have its cells replaced with their own), and when I get home, I print a new one in case this happens again. If my lungs should develop cancer from all the air pollution, I have a printed replacement ready to go. If my heart should give out, as happened to many of my ancestors, I have spares. In all cases, I'd cheerfully donate the old one.
....dear God, we'd be nearly immortal. We'd last as long as our brains. (You could print a new one, I suppose, but would it still be you?)
I was reading earlier this week about how scientists have rebuilt lungs to improve compatibility. Essentially, your own diseased lung is rebuilt from scratch using your own stem cells, then reimplanted. They reported that this will save hundreds of lives every year, because hundreds die while waiting on donor lungs. You can also use a donor who would otherwise be incompatible, which saves even more lives.
And I was thinking, you know what other organ could benefit from this? Kidneys. Millions worldwide depend on dialysis, because their kidneys have totally failed. There's a limited number of machines, and we can't seem to build more fast enough. But if we rebuilt the patient's own kidneys, they would no longer need dialysis. It would be merely a stopgap measure to get them through the failed period, which is no longer "the rest of your short life." In fact, the more organs we could apply this to, the better the organ donation works out. Incompatibility would cease to exist, making every donated organ more useful.
But the best aspect of all was suggested by a reader of the original article who called himself "dancupid." He suggests using 3d printing techniques to lay out an artificial extracellular matrix. If that could be done, then we never need organ donation again. Each person could have an organ bank of 5 or so of their own organs, grown from a printed extracellular matrix and their own stem cells, and kept alive in life support machines. If I get stabbed in the kidneys, I can have my loved ones take a kidney from my organ bank to the hospital, where they implant it. The stabbed one can be donated to someone who couldn't afford the printed organs (and will have its cells replaced with their own), and when I get home, I print a new one in case this happens again. If my lungs should develop cancer from all the air pollution, I have a printed replacement ready to go. If my heart should give out, as happened to many of my ancestors, I have spares. In all cases, I'd cheerfully donate the old one.
....dear God, we'd be nearly immortal. We'd last as long as our brains. (You could print a new one, I suppose, but would it still be you?)
Friday, October 8, 2010
Y Chromosome tinkering
There are two genetic things in our biology that are very gender specific. Your mitochondria came strictly from your biological mother. Mitochondria are little structures in your cells that function as their power plants of sorts, and have completely different DNA than the rest of you. (It's speculated that they were a completely different organism that incorporated into our ancestors symbioticly.) If you're a man, your Y chromosome had to come from your father. I bring this up on the heels of many news stories about the mitochondrial Eve and the Y chromosome Adam. No, these are not backings for creationism, and there's a logical reason for this.
As you may be aware, people have 2 biological parents, which means that for ever n generations, they had 2n ancestors. However, not all of these were unique, as merely 250 is greater than the entire population of the earth. Some people had more than one child, (often way more in the past, when it wasn't clear that many of them could survive) and only some people went on to have their own children. (Some where infertile, killed, or just never got a mate in the first place.) Also, with a limited pool, family trees aren't perfectly branching. Some people married (usually distant) cousins, and basically, everyone on earth is at least 50th cousins with each other. Also, there were numerous bottlenecks in human genetic history. Disasters wiped entire civilizations off the map. At the most imperiled time of our species history, there were only 10,000 living humans on the planet.
So, while the mitochondrial Eve, a woman who lived some 200,000 years ago, is the ancestor of basically every human alive today, she was not the only living woman of her time. The other women's mitochondrial lines died out when either they had only sons (who would not pass on the mitochondrial DNA) or no children at all, leaving only hers. Same for the Y chromosome Adam, an ancestor of all men alive today who lived 60,000 years ago. He was not the only man alive, but the other men's lines all ended across the 60,000 years when they either had only daughters (who do not have a Y chromosome) or no children at all. This was further sped up by Genghis Khan, a Mongolian ruler who had a lot of children, who in turn had many more children. He is the ancestor of 16 million people today. Being a powerful Emperor probably did have a part of the ladies interest in him, as did his reputation for being wealthy and benevolent.
However, some signs show that our genetic bottlenecks may be disastrous for us. The Y chromosome has been shrinking over time, which may slowly damage male fertility (should those genes, located in the Y chromosome, be lost), or perhaps even end altogether, leading to an all-female humankind. (We could technically survive, but it would be...inconvenient.) The shrinkage is mostly due to interference from the Y chromosome's rival, the X chromosome, which you need to live. The most critical of the Y chromosome's genes are a group called SRY, which is responsible for 99% of what people think of when they think of men. In some species, the Y chromosome has been destroyed, but their SRY migrated out, so they still have males.
So to improve the genetic state of humankind, I would like to see some volunteers, dissatisfied with the genes they inherited, undergo a retrovirus-based retooling of their genome. This would hopefully prove helpful to them, in some way or other, and their new genomes would make them genetically unrelated to anyone on earth, and thus the best person to marry if you want to avoid inbreeding.
There is one particular group of pacific islanders, I can't remember their name right now, who would be the most interested, as their tribes have a tradition of marrying passing sailors as a way of avoiding incest on their tiny, historically isolated, island. (Children of an outsider are less genetically related members of the tribe, and thus more eligible for marriage, see?)
As you may be aware, people have 2 biological parents, which means that for ever n generations, they had 2
So, while the mitochondrial Eve, a woman who lived some 200,000 years ago, is the ancestor of basically every human alive today, she was not the only living woman of her time. The other women's mitochondrial lines died out when either they had only sons (who would not pass on the mitochondrial DNA) or no children at all, leaving only hers. Same for the Y chromosome Adam, an ancestor of all men alive today who lived 60,000 years ago. He was not the only man alive, but the other men's lines all ended across the 60,000 years when they either had only daughters (who do not have a Y chromosome) or no children at all. This was further sped up by Genghis Khan, a Mongolian ruler who had a lot of children, who in turn had many more children. He is the ancestor of 16 million people today. Being a powerful Emperor probably did have a part of the ladies interest in him, as did his reputation for being wealthy and benevolent.
However, some signs show that our genetic bottlenecks may be disastrous for us. The Y chromosome has been shrinking over time, which may slowly damage male fertility (should those genes, located in the Y chromosome, be lost), or perhaps even end altogether, leading to an all-female humankind. (We could technically survive, but it would be...inconvenient.) The shrinkage is mostly due to interference from the Y chromosome's rival, the X chromosome, which you need to live. The most critical of the Y chromosome's genes are a group called SRY, which is responsible for 99% of what people think of when they think of men. In some species, the Y chromosome has been destroyed, but their SRY migrated out, so they still have males.
So to improve the genetic state of humankind, I would like to see some volunteers, dissatisfied with the genes they inherited, undergo a retrovirus-based retooling of their genome. This would hopefully prove helpful to them, in some way or other, and their new genomes would make them genetically unrelated to anyone on earth, and thus the best person to marry if you want to avoid inbreeding.
There is one particular group of pacific islanders, I can't remember their name right now, who would be the most interested, as their tribes have a tradition of marrying passing sailors as a way of avoiding incest on their tiny, historically isolated, island. (Children of an outsider are less genetically related members of the tribe, and thus more eligible for marriage, see?)
Monday, October 4, 2010
Curing ALS
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, known as ALS in most of the world, and "Lou Gehrig's disease" in the United States, (after a famous baseball player who died of it), is a motor neuron disease that slowly kills off the part of your brain that tells your body how to move. The result being that a person suffering from it slowly becomes more and more paralyzed until they can't breathe anymore, at which point they die. The rest of the brain is unaffected. A similar condition is Locked-in Syndrome, in which a person abruptly becomes paralyzed, usually after a stroke. (In which case the motor-control cortex of the brain probably died in the stroke.)
Motor-cortex conditions are rather baffling to treat. The muscles are technically fine, but the person can't move them. The muscles then deteriorate from a lack of moving. The problem lies in the brain, which we know the least about and are the most afraid of messing around with, lest we make it worse.
I think, in the circumstances, I would want to try to invent a cybernetic motor-cortex replacement. This would take 100 years of neurology research, and the best electronic-communication experts known to man. And having done so, no one would ever be paralyzed for brain-reasons again. If this research also found a good way to reconnect severed nerves, then all paralysis would thereafter be treatable.
Motor-cortex conditions are rather baffling to treat. The muscles are technically fine, but the person can't move them. The muscles then deteriorate from a lack of moving. The problem lies in the brain, which we know the least about and are the most afraid of messing around with, lest we make it worse.
I think, in the circumstances, I would want to try to invent a cybernetic motor-cortex replacement. This would take 100 years of neurology research, and the best electronic-communication experts known to man. And having done so, no one would ever be paralyzed for brain-reasons again. If this research also found a good way to reconnect severed nerves, then all paralysis would thereafter be treatable.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Artificial Animal
It's been established to me that biologists can, technically, recreate animals or bacteria from only a description of DNA. (By manually sequencing genes, which I'm sure is more difficult than it sounds.) This means, among other things, that we can recreate extinct animals, from taxidermied models, or even possibly from bones. Given enough wildlife preserves and biology labs, "extinct" and "endangered" would be things of the past.
A second possibility is that we create an animal that never has been. We would need greater knowledge of protein-folding, proteins in general, and DNA. We would also need some sort of artificial-womb technology, as this new animal wouldn't be guarenteed to gestate properly in any animal that currently exists. (I've heard we have this, but I've learned only innuendo that it exists, with no technical details, which makes me dismiss such claims.)
We need protein knowledge because DNA does not code traits, but proteins. Proteins and their foldings gave you and me the shape of our bodies, our hands, face, and eyes, and establishes every difference between you and me, us and monkeys, monkeys and dogs, and dogs and bananas. Different only by DNA, and therefore protein.
We would also need a seriously dedicated team of biologists. Biologists artificially sequencing up a bacteria was major news -- even though it was a copy of a bacteria that exists naturally. This would not only need that level of sequencing, but would also be coded from scratch. A defective code would produce no useful results, and we'd be programming with a language that we don't yet understand. A difficult proposition.
But in theory, we could have any animal we want. A chicken with 8 sets of legs, so drumsticks are plentiful? Sure. A draft animal stronger than a tank, but eats grass instead of gasoline? We can. An ant sized animal that can reproduce human speech, used as an espionage device? It'd be hard to train, but I'm confident it could be done. Farm animals with strong disease immunity? Goodbye antibiotics! An ultimate pet with the traits of all the best companion animals? Can do.
Only a mountain, no, a planet, no, a solar system of work is in our way. And some of that can be automated away.
A second possibility is that we create an animal that never has been. We would need greater knowledge of protein-folding, proteins in general, and DNA. We would also need some sort of artificial-womb technology, as this new animal wouldn't be guarenteed to gestate properly in any animal that currently exists. (I've heard we have this, but I've learned only innuendo that it exists, with no technical details, which makes me dismiss such claims.)
We need protein knowledge because DNA does not code traits, but proteins. Proteins and their foldings gave you and me the shape of our bodies, our hands, face, and eyes, and establishes every difference between you and me, us and monkeys, monkeys and dogs, and dogs and bananas. Different only by DNA, and therefore protein.
We would also need a seriously dedicated team of biologists. Biologists artificially sequencing up a bacteria was major news -- even though it was a copy of a bacteria that exists naturally. This would not only need that level of sequencing, but would also be coded from scratch. A defective code would produce no useful results, and we'd be programming with a language that we don't yet understand. A difficult proposition.
But in theory, we could have any animal we want. A chicken with 8 sets of legs, so drumsticks are plentiful? Sure. A draft animal stronger than a tank, but eats grass instead of gasoline? We can. An ant sized animal that can reproduce human speech, used as an espionage device? It'd be hard to train, but I'm confident it could be done. Farm animals with strong disease immunity? Goodbye antibiotics! An ultimate pet with the traits of all the best companion animals? Can do.
Only a mountain, no, a planet, no, a solar system of work is in our way. And some of that can be automated away.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Combating AIDS
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, or "AIDS," is a disease that throws entire populations into panic. It's sexually transmitted, assuredly fatal, and rather miserable to have. I had to endure many public services about it in school, because it wigged people out so severely that the department of education felt compelled to step in to inform us that no, you cannot get it from toilet seats, or handshakes, or really anything that doesn't involve other people's bodily fluids going into you.
AIDS is caused by a retrovirus, HIV. (Human Immunodeficiency Virus.) I know people who deny this, but they have no evidence for that belief. Retroviruses are one of the hardest to fight, because of how they work. I had to go into a bit of biology to explain this.
Our cells are made of protein, which are controlled by our DNA. To operate DNA, it's copied into RNA, which arranges proteins into complex structures, and folds them into their final shape. Most viruses are RNA-only, because they exist to endlessly replicate themselves, and try to convert your cells into virus factories. Retroviruses, however, know how to convert their RNA back into DNA, and replace chunks of your cell's DNA with its DNA, so the next time you copy that cell, you copy that virus too. Even if you purge all the viruses out of your body, the virus can reemerge from that cell, which is the scary thing about retroviruses. However, they can also be used for good. Genetic therapies exist in which a benign retrovirus is modified to inject beneficial genes into yours, and then the virus malfunctions and "dies" afterwards. (Well, it's debatable if viruses count as "alive," as they are just chunks of RNA and protein, but it malfunctions such as to be nonfunctional.)
So, AIDS is quite prevalent in some parts of the world, and immensely terrifying even in places were infection is rare. And yet, no part of the world is totally free of infection. Is there any surprise that there's an immense demand for a cure?
We've made a lot of progress, but aren't there yet. HIV has proven quite polymorphic, responding to all attempts to fight it by rearranging itself until it is immune to what we throw at it. And yet this strength is also now its biggest weakness. One can literally mutate it to death. Unfortunately this doesn't help medically, because the virus tends to reemerge from older, more effective forms, stashed away in a random cell's DNA.
Another discovery is that a small percentage of the population is immune to bubonic plague, which ravaged Europe in the 1300s. These people are also immune to AIDS, for reasons that we don't readily understand. (This mutation assuredly developed from the plague, in which the non-immune population of Europe was devastated, leaving only those unexposed or immune to reproduce.) I see no possible connection: bubonic plague is caused by a bacteria, and AIDS by a virus. There must be some sort of third-party connection, in that some aspect of the bubonic plague immunity also makes it harder, or impossible, for HIV to gain a foothold. More research is required.
So if a person with AIDS asked me for a treatment, I think I would start with a bubonic plague innoculation, and extremely agressive genetic therapy. Along with the traditional anti-viral drugs like AZT. I would hope to reconfigure their genes until the existence of retroviruses in their body is impossible. This would also mean that any children they had would not resemble them in the slightest, but it's a small price to pay in the face of miserable death.
Also, AIDS does not kill you directly. It just destroys your immune system so that the first other disease to come along rages through your body unopposed until you die.
AIDS is caused by a retrovirus, HIV. (Human Immunodeficiency Virus.) I know people who deny this, but they have no evidence for that belief. Retroviruses are one of the hardest to fight, because of how they work. I had to go into a bit of biology to explain this.
Our cells are made of protein, which are controlled by our DNA. To operate DNA, it's copied into RNA, which arranges proteins into complex structures, and folds them into their final shape. Most viruses are RNA-only, because they exist to endlessly replicate themselves, and try to convert your cells into virus factories. Retroviruses, however, know how to convert their RNA back into DNA, and replace chunks of your cell's DNA with its DNA, so the next time you copy that cell, you copy that virus too. Even if you purge all the viruses out of your body, the virus can reemerge from that cell, which is the scary thing about retroviruses. However, they can also be used for good. Genetic therapies exist in which a benign retrovirus is modified to inject beneficial genes into yours, and then the virus malfunctions and "dies" afterwards. (Well, it's debatable if viruses count as "alive," as they are just chunks of RNA and protein, but it malfunctions such as to be nonfunctional.)
So, AIDS is quite prevalent in some parts of the world, and immensely terrifying even in places were infection is rare. And yet, no part of the world is totally free of infection. Is there any surprise that there's an immense demand for a cure?
We've made a lot of progress, but aren't there yet. HIV has proven quite polymorphic, responding to all attempts to fight it by rearranging itself until it is immune to what we throw at it. And yet this strength is also now its biggest weakness. One can literally mutate it to death. Unfortunately this doesn't help medically, because the virus tends to reemerge from older, more effective forms, stashed away in a random cell's DNA.
Another discovery is that a small percentage of the population is immune to bubonic plague, which ravaged Europe in the 1300s. These people are also immune to AIDS, for reasons that we don't readily understand. (This mutation assuredly developed from the plague, in which the non-immune population of Europe was devastated, leaving only those unexposed or immune to reproduce.) I see no possible connection: bubonic plague is caused by a bacteria, and AIDS by a virus. There must be some sort of third-party connection, in that some aspect of the bubonic plague immunity also makes it harder, or impossible, for HIV to gain a foothold. More research is required.
So if a person with AIDS asked me for a treatment, I think I would start with a bubonic plague innoculation, and extremely agressive genetic therapy. Along with the traditional anti-viral drugs like AZT. I would hope to reconfigure their genes until the existence of retroviruses in their body is impossible. This would also mean that any children they had would not resemble them in the slightest, but it's a small price to pay in the face of miserable death.
Also, AIDS does not kill you directly. It just destroys your immune system so that the first other disease to come along rages through your body unopposed until you die.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Plants Renew Gasoline?!?!
Petroleum is a limited resource. Only so much was made, and as our use of it goes on, only the more expensive to get, and harder to get, stuff remains. To claim otherwise is to deny thermodynamics. (And yes, people have denied thermodynamics to my face.) Petroleum is also the source of gasoline, and when gasoline gets expensive, people get really, really freaky about it.
Discovery News is reporting today that a source can be found in our agricultural fields. Well, with a little chemical modification. Apparently nitrogen fixing bacteria, the kind that favors the roots of legumes and provides a major organic boost to nitrogen in the soil, can produce propane if exposed to carbon monoxide.
But carbon monoxide is a deadly poison, and propane isn't quite energy-dense enough to power your car. (Though you can cook with it, or heat with it.) So, biochemists are hoping to extract this process, and modify it to turn carbon dioxide into bio-buteral, which would function like gasoline in your car's engine. Not only would such a process be endlessly renewable, but it would leech carbon from the air. (Okay, admittedly that carbon would come right back when you drove, but it would change a carbon-producing process into a carbon-neutral one.)
I'm not entirely clear on what the energy source of this process would be. Bacteria use their stored ATP (the fuel of biological life) to fix the nitrogen, as a way of making protein for themselves, and feeding the plants that house and shelter them. If we used genetically engineered bacteria to produce gasoline, they would need to be fed. Probably with sugar. If we used a chemical process, energy would probably have to be added by some means. Which, knowing this economic environment, would be coal. In both cases, no longer carbon neutral. Sugar has to be grown, and shipped, with, you guessed it, gasoline. And coal? Coal is basically purified fossil carbon.
Discovery News is reporting today that a source can be found in our agricultural fields. Well, with a little chemical modification. Apparently nitrogen fixing bacteria, the kind that favors the roots of legumes and provides a major organic boost to nitrogen in the soil, can produce propane if exposed to carbon monoxide.
But carbon monoxide is a deadly poison, and propane isn't quite energy-dense enough to power your car. (Though you can cook with it, or heat with it.) So, biochemists are hoping to extract this process, and modify it to turn carbon dioxide into bio-buteral, which would function like gasoline in your car's engine. Not only would such a process be endlessly renewable, but it would leech carbon from the air. (Okay, admittedly that carbon would come right back when you drove, but it would change a carbon-producing process into a carbon-neutral one.)
I'm not entirely clear on what the energy source of this process would be. Bacteria use their stored ATP (the fuel of biological life) to fix the nitrogen, as a way of making protein for themselves, and feeding the plants that house and shelter them. If we used genetically engineered bacteria to produce gasoline, they would need to be fed. Probably with sugar. If we used a chemical process, energy would probably have to be added by some means. Which, knowing this economic environment, would be coal. In both cases, no longer carbon neutral. Sugar has to be grown, and shipped, with, you guessed it, gasoline. And coal? Coal is basically purified fossil carbon.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Biochemical Cleanup
Plants have an amazing ability in polluted environments: They tend to concentrate pollution into their bodies, which then concentrates more in the bodies of things that eat them, and so on. This is normally bad. You don't want cadmium, mercury, or lead in your food. But, this same principle, applied intelligently, can lead to cleaner soil so that this ceases to be a problem. I think I read about this idea in a magazine before, but like most things I read, I cannot for the life of me remember where.
The original article suggested growing key plants (different species prefer to absorb different chemicals), then burning the plants to recover the pollution. The recovered pollution is disposed of, safely this time.
But I think modern chemists can do better than just burning. I think they can mash the plants (say, with a pestle), and chemically separate the plant from the pollution, siphon the pollution off into some safe (or at least safely disposable) form, and compost the organic parts.
As an example of this in action, chocolate plants have a major affinity for airbourne lead. They concentrate this in their shells. Bad news for chocolate fans, because some half the world's supply of chocolate is grown in countries that have legal leaded gasoline, and hence a rich supply of lead in their air, which winds up in the chocolate pods, and some of it leaches into the final chocolate. Good news for cleaning that lead, since you can grow sacrificial chocolate to remove the lead already in the air.
This could even have economic benefits. Lead may be the cheapest heavy metal, but people still mine for it, because it's useful as a cheap radiation absorber, in certain dyes, and a few other safe uses. Lead claened from the air not only ceases to poison humans, but can be sold to the medical scanner company as a radiation shield.
(I have a nagging feeling like I wrote this before. )
The original article suggested growing key plants (different species prefer to absorb different chemicals), then burning the plants to recover the pollution. The recovered pollution is disposed of, safely this time.
But I think modern chemists can do better than just burning. I think they can mash the plants (say, with a pestle), and chemically separate the plant from the pollution, siphon the pollution off into some safe (or at least safely disposable) form, and compost the organic parts.
As an example of this in action, chocolate plants have a major affinity for airbourne lead. They concentrate this in their shells. Bad news for chocolate fans, because some half the world's supply of chocolate is grown in countries that have legal leaded gasoline, and hence a rich supply of lead in their air, which winds up in the chocolate pods, and some of it leaches into the final chocolate. Good news for cleaning that lead, since you can grow sacrificial chocolate to remove the lead already in the air.
This could even have economic benefits. Lead may be the cheapest heavy metal, but people still mine for it, because it's useful as a cheap radiation absorber, in certain dyes, and a few other safe uses. Lead claened from the air not only ceases to poison humans, but can be sold to the medical scanner company as a radiation shield.
(I have a nagging feeling like I wrote this before. )
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