Nature Imitating…Nature.

Last week I shared a bit of information about some noteworthy sea creatures, which all looked pretty strange. What I also find amazing is when animals or plants look exactly like something else that already exists in nature. Their shapes come about mostly as adaptations that allow these creatures to blend into their environment. But what about mushrooms that look like tiny stick figure people, or seed pods that look like skulls? In addition to these weird examples, I will tell you about two that are for camouflage: seahorses that look just like floating plants, and stick bugs (guess what they look like).

The first two seem to be coincidental. The small human-like mushroom, or Geastrum britannicum, discovered in the United Kingdom by Jonathan Revett, was just recognized as a new species of mushroom. He first spotted this mushroom, which doesn’t always look like a person, in 2000. Another mushroom, G. fornicatum is also human-like in appearance. The new species, G. britannicum (pictured below) has been found in about 15 locations in Southern Britain. See more information here.

Another strange resemblance is that of a Snapdragon seed pod to a tiny skull (weird, yet interesting). Check out the picture.

                                               

Left: A pink and orange (alive) Snapdragon. Right: A stem of Snapdragon seed pods, skull-like.

There are other resemblances that clearly came about to allow creatures to hide and blend in with their environments. One amazing example is the Leafy Seadragon, or Phycodurus These seahorses have leafy appendages, and a branch like body. One “leaf” even serves as a fin. Their color and shape make them look just like floating seaweed. This helps the seahorses to blend in and avoid predators. The natural habitat of the Leafy Seadragon is off the coast of Australia.

A Leafy Seadragon. It’s even green like seaweed.

Lastly, stick insects, or Phasmatodea, look just like…you guessed it! Sticks! Their camouflage allows them to hide into trees and bushes, since they are very hard to spot. They are located throughout the tropical regions of the world and vary in shape and size. They can be quite small, starting just over a centimeter, to a little over a foot in length. The largest stick bug (also the world’s longest insect) is 14 inches long.

                

Two examples of stick bugs. 

Stay tuned for a strange tale of Siamese twins coming up. Check back soon for more amazing animal and plant adaptations, stories, and behaviors.

Strange Sea Creatures: Purple sails, Blobfish, and Pacu fish

There is certainly no lack of strange and mysterious creatures living in our oceans. Deep sea fish have amazing adaptations to let them live without sunlight or in freezing cold waters, and there are undoubtedly many species in the deep seas that are as yet unknown to us. Here, I will highlight three ocean creatures that I find interesting.

The first, Velella also known as “purple sails”, were in the news recently. Velella are jellyfish-like creatures that use their poisonous tentacles to “sting” and capture small prey, such a plankton, floating in the water. The top half of their bodies resemble a ballon-like sail and catch the wind, allowing them to be carried by it.  It is estimated that a billion of them washed up along the West Coast of the Unites States over the past few weeks. It is common that Vellela wash up on the shore and die each year due to unfavorable winds, but the staggering numbers seen recently, blown ashore by sustained Pacific winds, is particularly astonishing (for more information, go here).

         

Left: Velella in the water. Its “sail” sits atop a purple body, with small tentacles in the water. Right: Extremely large numbers of Velella washed up on the Pacific shore.

Next up was voted the world’s ugliest animal, the blobfish. These fish live in the deep sea off the coast of Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand. They are currently in danger, because they are often caught in deep sea trawling nets. In the water, blobfish look pretty normal, but their low density flesh make them collapse into a jelly like heap outside of the water (hence the name). Their low density allows them to float just above the ocean floor and catch prey as it floats by.

      

Left: Blobfish out of water. Cute, huh? Right: Another view of Blobfish out of the water.

Finally, Pacu fish. At first glance these fish seem pretty unremarkable. That is, until they open their mouths. The Pacu fish is related to the Piranha, which is fairly small and has a set of razor sharp pointy teeth. The Pacu fish, on the other hand, is larger (growing up to three feet in length) and has teeth that closely resemble human teeth! They inhabit rivers and streams of the Amazon and Orinoco river basins and are popular in the aquarium trade.

          

Left: A Pacu fish seems pretty normal in with its mouth closed. Right: Holy carp! Look at those human-like teeth!

See you next week. (So long, and thanks for all the fish!)

Giant Viruses!

Don’t worry, giant is a relative term. Most virus are about 20-300 nanometers (nm) in diameter. To put that in perspective, one nanometer is equal to 0.0000008 of an inch. Two examples of giant viruses are Mimivirus and Pithovirus, which are about 500nm in diameter each, larger than some bacteria, and can be seen under a light microscope (which has relatively low magnification). There are currently 10 types of giant viruses, and even more are likely out there, just waiting to be found. The giant viruses typically infect amoebae (simple one cell organisms), and are not capable of infecting humans. The recently discovered Pithovirus is about 1500 nm in length, making it the largest virus currently known. One species of Pithovirus, Pithovirus sibericum, was discovered in 2013, by Chantal Abergel and Jean-Michel Claverie of Aix-Marseille University in France. The virus was recovered and re-animated from a sample of frozen soil from Siberia…that was 30,000 years old!

         

Left: Mimivirus, 500nm in diamter. Right: Pithovirus, 2.5 times the length of Mimivirus

So, other than their size, why are these viruses interesting? One reason is that they could redefine certain aspects of what viruses are. One is the nature of their genomes. The research team who found Pithovirus also discovered Pandoravirus, which has the largest genome of any virus, even though Pithovrus is larger in size. Most viruses have very small genomes, made up of only several genes, but Pithovirus has 500 genes and Pandoravirus has about 2,500 (!). Even more interesting, these viruses have the ability to copy their own genome, or replicate, within a cell they want to infect. Typically, when a virus infects a cell, it needs to enter the cell’s DNA storage facility, or nucleus, and use materials it finds there (such proteins and enzymes) in order  to replicate and start an infection. The accepted dogma was that viruses do not have the ability to make copies without using materials in the cells they infect, but giant viruses are challenging this. Once the virus enters the cell, they can use their own proteins to replicate themselves outside of the nucleus, in the fluid thats surrounds it (and houses other cell parts) called the cytoplasm. Moreover, the genes of the giant viruses are not similar to other virus genes. In fact, 90 percent of the genes in Pandoravirus resemble no other know genes, anywhere.

Another reason giant viruses are so interesting is that their characteristics are leading some researchers wonder if perhaps viruses predated cellular life, instead of the other way around. Since it was thought that viruses needed to take over portions of cells in order to replicate, the cells must have come first. However, with the discovery of the strange and large genomes of the the giant viruses, and their ability to replicate on their own, using their own materials inside the cell, maybe the viruses came first and lost their ability to replicate somewhere along the way. It would be interesting to think that we may need to redefine how life evolved on Earth. The jury is still out on which came first, viruses or cellular life, but most scientists still agree that cellular life evolved before viruses. What do you think?

For more information:

Could Giant Viruses be the Origin of Life on Earth? (National Geographic)

Thirty-thousand-year-old distant relative of giant icosahedral DNA viruses with a pandoravirus morphology (PNAS)

Until next week!

First human head transplant may be on the way (not really)

An Italian neurosurgeon, Dr. Sergio Canavero of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group, claims he will be able to perform a successful human head transplant as soon as 2016. Perhaps even more unbelievable is that he has a volunteer wiling to undergo the surgery, 30 year old Valery Spiridonov, a Russian man suffering from the terminal muscle wasting illness, Werdnig-Hoffman disease. This may sound a bit crazy, more science fiction than feasible medical practice, and might even conjure up an image like this:

Crazy as it seems, there are potential benefits if such a surgery proves to be successful. Patients afflicted by paralysis, muscle wasting diseases such as Mr. Spiridonov, or who have cancer spread throughout their bodies could find hope by having a their heads attached to a “new” body, donated by a brain dead patient. But, a human head transplant is highly unlikely to ever be successful.

So, how would the surgery work according to Dr. Cavanero? Briefly, the bodies of the recipient and the donor would be cooled down to be able to survive low oxygen conditions, tissues and muscle surrounding the spinal cord would be dissected, major blood vessels joined by small tubes, and spinal cords cut VERY cleanly. To aid in the joining of the spinal cords, Dr. Canavero proposes using polyethylene glycol, or PEG, a thick gel-like chemical which would help the fats in the cell membranes of the spinal cords fuse together. This technique has proven to aid in repairing spinal cord injury in several species including mice and guinea pigs, but this has not been tested in humans. The recipient would be placed a in a coma for several weeks, after having everything reconnected, with muscles and nerves electrically stimulated to aid in strengthening and recovery. It is estimated that up to 150 doctors and nurses may be needed to perform the surgery, and could take up to 36 hours to complete.

Sound a little more reasonable now? Nope. I remain very skeptical. Past attempts at head transplants were carried out on dogs and monkeys, with little success. The technique used in dogs was like grafting, aimed at creating two headed dogs, which surprisingly (not), didn’t go very well. The monkey head swap was technically successful, but the spinal cords were not fused and the head was rejected by the monkey’s immune system after about a week. There has been a more successful attempt at head transplant recently in a mouse. But, what if the spinal cord fusion doesn’t work? What are the dangers involved in the weeks-long induced coma? What if modern techniques aren’t enough to prevent rejection of the new body by the recipient’s immune system? Images of two-headed dogs and brain-dead monkeys are indeed nightmare material, and there are many risks. However, if a terminally ill person is willing to undergo this procedure and it is successful…it would be interesting to say the least. But, I don’t see this happening any time soon.

For more information, here is an article written by Dr. Cavanero about the procedure.

Until next week!