Virus Pattern From Macrovector_official (source). Stay Safe Everyone!

[March, 2023] culture stains & snow days

Microcosms (2023)

linocuts on colored paper

(diatom species pictured: Stauroneis acuta, Pleurosigma inflatum, Triceratium pentacrinus, Actinoptychus heliopelta)

A mushroom cultivated in a petri dish on Agar Agar shows it’s actual shape, the essential part of the mushroom - the Mycel, is usually hidden from the eye. By Aimee Cornwell

Can a bat protein treat human inflammation?

A protein from bats shows promise for fighting inflammatory diseases in humans.

“Bats have attracted great attention as a likely reservoir of the SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic,” says Professor Wang Lin-Fa of the Duke-NUS Emerging Infectious Diseases (EID) Programme and senior author of the study in the journal Cell. “But this unique ability to host yet survive viral infections could also have a very positive impact on human health if we can understand and exploit how they achieve this.”

The research is focused on multi-protein complexes called inflammasomes that are responsible for the overactive inflammation that causes serious symptoms in many diseases. Inflammasomes are also implicated in functional decline in aging.

The researchers discovered that a bat protein called ASC2 has a powerful ability to inhibit inflammasomes, thereby limiting inflammation.

“This suggests that the high-level activity of ASC2 is a key mechanism by which bats keep inflammation under control, with implications for their long lifespan and unique status as a reservoir for viruses,” explains Matae Ahn, first author and co-corresponding author of the study and an adjunct research fellow with the EID Programme and the SingHealth Duke-NUS Medicine Academic Clinical Programme.

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Slime Molds and Intelligence

Okay, despite going into a biology related field, I only just learned about slime molds, and hang on, because it gets WILD.

This guy in the picture is called Physarum polycephalum, one of the more commonly studied types of slime mold. It was originally thought to be a fungus, though we now know it to actually be a type of protist (a sort of catch-all group for any eukaryotic organism that isn't a plant, animal, or a fungus). As protists go, it's pretty smart. It is very good at finding the most efficient way to get to a food source, or multiple food sources. In fact, placing a slime mold on a map with food sources at all of the major cities can give a pretty good idea of an efficient transportation system. Here is a slime mold growing over a map of Tokyo compared to the actual Tokyo railway system:

Pretty good, right? Though they don't have eyes, ears, or noses, the slime molds are able to sense objects at a distance kind of like a spider using tiny differences in tension and vibrations to sense a fly caught in its web. Instead of a spiderweb, though, this organism relies on proteins called TRP channels. The slime mold can then make decisions about where it wants to grow. In one experiment, a slime mold was put in a petri dish with one glass disk on one side and 3 glass disks on the other side. Even though the disks weren't a food source, the slime mold chose to grow towards and investigate the side with 3 disks over 70% of the time.

Even more impressive is that these organisms have some sense of time. If you blow cold air on them every hour on the hour, they'll start to shrink away in anticipation when before the air hits after only 3 hours.

Now, I hear you say, this is cool and all, but like, I can do all those things too. The slime mold isn't special...

To which I would like to point out that you have a significant advantage over the slime mold, seeing as you have a brain.

Yeah, these protists can accomplish all of the things I just talked about, and they just... don't have any sort of neural architecture whatsoever? They don't even have brain cells, let alone the structures that should allow them to process sensory information and make decisions because of it. Nothing that should give them a sense of time. Scientists literally have no idea how this thing is able to "think'. But however it does, it is sure to be a form of cognition that is completely and utterly different from anything that we're familiar with.

plants that never ever bloom

FOTD #074 : slimy green waxcap! (gliophorus/hygrocybe graminicolor)

the slimy green waxcap is an agaric fungus from the family hygrophoraceae. it is found in australia & aotearoa :-) not much else is known about this mushroom.

the big question : can i bite it?? the edibility is unknown.

g./h. graminicolor description :

"the light green cap & stem of this small agaric are covered with a thick, slimy, glutinous coating. a waxy, grey-green, glutinous thread runs along the edges of white waxy gills. the convex cap becomes centrally depressed & ages to brown."

[images : source & source] [fungus description : source]

"GREEN BABY !! i couldn't find an exact measurement, but she's *small*. i love this mushroom so so so much<3"

Botox is made with botulinum toxin,, ok.

clostridium botulinum is anaerobic bacteria. form spores that release neurotoxin. cause paralysis

can be evident in honey. home canned foods. no oxygen

Paleontologists Discover 52-Million-Year-Old Bat

The fossil represents the earliest-known species of the flying mammal

The fossil record is biased against bats. The flying mammals are small, making their fossilized remains very hard to find. And their light skeletons—ideal for flying around—mean it takes special circumstances for their bodies to be preserved. And yet, against these odds, paleontologists recently uncovered the exceptionally complete skeleton of what now stands as the earliest known bat.

To date, the most complete early bat fossils have come from an area paleontologists call Fossil Lake in Wyoming. The rock layers are world-famous for containing beautifully preserved fish, birds, mammals and other organisms that lived in the area about 52 million years ago. Among the stunning fossils recovered from these rocks, Naturalis Biodiversity Center paleontologist Tim Rietbergen and colleagues report Wednesday in PLOS One, are fossils of a new bat species the researchers have named Icaronycteris gunnelli. By comparing this new species with other early bats, paleontologists are beginning to develop a deeper understanding of how bats spread around the world in that period.

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