Sea Slug Blurs the Plant and Animal Kingdoms

By Jimmy Rogers (@me)
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

In the world of microbes, genetic material is free to move from organism to organism.  In more complex life, especially species that diverged on the tree of life long ago, this process becomes more and more rare.  Scientists can now take genes and manually transplant them from one species to another, but, until now, nature wasn’t known to take the same liberties with DNA.

A sneaky sea slug is now throwing all of that out the window.  Marine biologists once thought that Elysia chlorotica, a green marine slug, siphoned off chloroplasts from nearby algae to generate cellular power from the sun.  Now, using radioisotopes to track molecules of chlorophyll inside the slug, researchers have discovered evidence that the slug not only steals the chloroplasts, but also replenishes the chlorophyll with its own internal processes.

This finding means that the slug has not only taken up structural/functional parts of the algae, but also some of the genes responsible for the production of chlorophyll (a process usually restricted to plants and few varieties of prokaryotes).  While the exact nature of this cross-kingdom transformation has not been specified, the fact that evolution briefly “connected the tips” of two large branches of the living world may have important implications.

On the one hand, this kind of genetic cross-talk probably doesn’t happen very often – as kingdoms diverge they begin to take-up and use genes in more and more unique ways.  That being said, the fact that it CAN happen in cases of close symbiosis like this one, may open up new lines of inquiry all over the natural world.

The second, and possibly more interesting possibility, is that investigating the mechanisms involved in this genetic transformation may lead to novel techniques and new ways of manipulating more familiar organisms…including us!

Want to know more about this slimy sea-beastie? Check out the wikipedia article for all the care and feeding!

[Wired via Nerd Salad]


Name That Cable

Here’s a little quiz that should be right up your alley. Can you identify all ten cable connections in the Cable Connector Quiz? I’m almost ashamed to admit that my score was 80%, considering I’ve heard from so many others today who were proud to score 100%. Mind you, some of these are pretty old and some are quite recent. Good luck –as if you need it!

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Kick-Ass Trailer #2

After seeing the first trailer, I decided to stay neutral about this movie, but now that the second one is out, I must say that it looks quite promising. Check it out:

The plot of Kick-Ass concerns a teenage boy, Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson), who decides to become a real-life superhero after being inspired by the heroes of comic books. He soon encounters a mysterious vigilante called Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage), and his daughter Hit-Girl (Chloë Moretz), who are working to bring down the local drug baron Frank D’Amico. Source: Wikipedia

You Remind Me of the Babe: Bowie’s Birthday

Today is a good day for birthdays in the geek world. No, I’m not saying that David Bowie is a geek necessarily. He, however, has made a huge impact on geekery in general. A pusher of boundaries, an over-the-top-personality, and certainly a man with his own set of rules, he’s one of the people who has changed popular culture to an extent that we probably won’t be able to comprehend for another few decades or so.

But in spite of Mr. Bowie’s huge influence on music and culture from the 60s to today, there is one achievement of his that will be forever the pinnacle in my humble opinion: his (and his, um, spandex pants’) performance in Labyrinth as Jareth the Goblin King. Geeks of a certain age will know what I mean, as indicated by some of the Twitter responses from this morning, but I’m fairly sure that I’d never seen a man with eyeshadow before, let alone such tight fitting pants, until I saw Mr. Bowie. Let’s just say it made me ask a great many questions, and certainly contributed to my obsession with speculative fiction.

And yet, oddly enough, by the end of the film, I always kind of wanted Jareth the Goblin King to win. Because he was that awesome.

If you haven’t seen Labyrinth, you likely think I’m off my rocker. And I would tell you to go see the film now, except that I don’t think you can possibly recreate the feeling of experiencing it for the first time as a kid.

At very least, I will share with you the perhaps most often quoted songs of the film, “Magic Dance.”

And as a last fun tidbit: Bowie’s son Duncan Jones is also the director of the film Moon, which definitely riffs on his song “Space Oddity”. Can’t get much geekier than songs written about trips to the moon.

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“Mind-reading” airport security claims overblown

There are a host of stories today about mind-reading technology being the future of US airport security. But there’s no real suggestion the technology will ever be adopted in the country, and the system actually monitors the body rather than the brain.

The attention has come from a syndicated Associated Press story which has appeared in outlets such as the Los Angeles Times. It looks at a variety of new or improved techniques for improving security, an obvious hot topic in the wake of the failed attempt to bring down a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day.

The suggestions range from simply examining passengers and baggage in more detail, to privatizing security, to making more use of profiling to focus attention on the more likely suspects. But there are also some technological ideas, both stemming from Israel.

One, currently being studied by the Department of Homeland Security, is known as Future Attribute Screening Technology (or FAST), and involves scanning eye and facial movements as well as using Wii-style balance boards to detect uneasiness. Those behind the technology say it can detect physical signs of anxiety which are specific to those intending to do harm (as opposed to general nervousness). At the moment the system works by staff specifically pulling passengers out of line to use the equipment, but the plan is to develop it so it can be used on all passengers without causing disruption.

The most attention-grabbing suggestion is a system created by Israeli firm WeCU. Contrary to reports of “mind reading”, it instead uses cameras and sensors which can detect bodily changes such as temperature and heart rate. Staff then display images or text on visible surfaces as passengers are passing through security. The idea is to use images which only a terrorist would recognize, such as logos of their political group or even pictures of a suspected co-conspirator.

The theory is that this causes an involuntary physical reaction in the same way as a person would instantly respond to seeing a picture of their children. According to WeCU’s chief Ehud Givon, the system only detects a response where somebody has built up a strong psychological association with an image or text.

It’s worth noting that although the Department of Homeland Security has given research grants to WeCU, there are no current known plans to use the technology in the US.

(Picture courtest of Flickr user nedrichards.)