A Caribbean sun anemone (Stichodactyla helianthus)FLICKR, OMAR SPENCE PHOTOGRAPHYResearchers are mining venom from snakes, spiders, and other poisonous creatures for drug candidates to treat autoimmune diseases and pain. So far, only a handful of venom-derived drugs, most of which target the cardiovascular system, have received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration. Now, advances in proteomics and transcriptomics are allowing researchers to screen the hundreds of thousands of venom compounds for therapeutic potential.
The JOIDES Resolution drilling vesselIODP-USIOTwo studies this week found microbial life deep below the Earth’s surface. Researchers measuring oxygen uptake in the deepest known spot in the ocean, the Mariana Trench, found signs of an active microbial community. Despite pressures 1,000 times greater than at sea level, the microbes were metabolizing organic matter faster than organisms at a shallower site nearby. Meanwhile, an independent group found evidence of chemosynthetic microbial life below 300–400 meters of basalt rock, 265 meters of sediment, and 2.6 kilometers of ocean off the coast of British Columbia.
Colonies of altruistic and selfish E. coliDOMINIK REFARDTCertain strains of Escherichia coli can, upon infection with a deadly virus, help save their communities by committing suicide to prevent viral spread. And, according to a study published this week in The Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, such altruistic tendencies can evolve even when the population contains distantly related individuals that benefit from the martyrs’ deaths.
WIKIMEDIA, VMENKOVA graduate student from the Philippines urges researchers to take the open-access movement into their own hands by submitting their work to open-access repositories. Not only would this expand the articles’ reach into the developing world where institutions often cannot supply their researchers with access to pay-walled content, it would also increase the visibility, audience, and impact of the research.
FLICKR, ALEX PROIMOSRichard Resnick, CEO of genomic software company GenomeQuest, argues that next-generation sequencing diagnostics are not science fiction, but rather science fact. Some tests have already been implemented in a clinic setting, and more are on the immediate horizon.
HeLa cellsFLICKR, GE HEALTHCAREThe latest edition of our regular Genome Digest includes the sequences for a pair of bats that yield clues about the evolution of flight and the flying mammals’ role as disease reservoirs, an analysis of the popular HeLa cell line that questions its use as a model for human physiology, a red alga that appears to have gotten much of its genome through horizontal gene transfer from prokaryotic organisms, and more.
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