#Transgenic mice produce both omega-3, omega-6 fatty acids on carbohydrate dietmassachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators have developed a transgenic mouse that synthesizes both the omega-3 and omega-6 essential
Called essential because they are necessary to maintain important bodily functions omega fatty acids cannot naturally be synthesized by mammals
Introducing into mammals the capacity to convert nonessential nutrients into essential fats could lead to new sustainable
Our study also provides a mouse model for addressing research questions about the true health impacts of these essential fatty acids.
and in 2004 Kang's group reported that mice transgenic for a c. elegans gene called fat-1 converted omega-6s into omega-3s in their tissues.
The current study describes how crossbreeding the fat-1 mouse with another strain transgenic for the c. elegans gene fat-2
which converts monosaturated fats into omega-6s can produce mice expressing both c. elegans genes.
The crossbreeding protocol produces four different strains within the same litter--Omega mice that express both fat-1 and fat-2 strains that express only one of the c. elegans genes
Since our 2004 report on the fat-1 mouse our lab and many others have been working towards the generation of larger omega-3-producing animals--including pigs sheep
and supplements and the new Omega mouse model will help us better understand the true importance of the omega-6/omega-3 ratio for human health.
#Over 100 new species discovered by team in drive to document biodiversitya 5-million-year-old saber-toothed cat the world's oldest grape
fossil mammals and one fossil bird among others. Thirty-one additional species were identified in the museum's collections by visiting researchers.
Florida Museum vertebrate paleontology collections manager Richard Hulbert described the 5-million-year-old fossils of Rhizosmilidon a carnivorous saber-toothed cat from the same lineage as the famous
By moving their proboscises in a certain manner the bees appear to concentrate the sugar solution that they are drinking.
Animals such as white-tailed deer the Florida panther and migratory birds that depend on native vegetation such as mangrove for food
Using plants as factories to generate bioactive medicines would be far cheaper than the current methods that rely on cell cultures from mammals he said.
Stretching from Alaska to Newfoundland the boreal forest--the circumpolar woods that circle the upper Northern hemisphere--provides habitat for up to 3 billion nesting and migratory birds according to the report Boreal Birds Need Half:
When it comes to urging young children to eat healthy foods most parents know the drill:
I am fascinated about the possibility of using imaging methods developed for mice and rats to see what is going on inside a shrimp or a snail.
I am convinced that imaging the chemical distribution inside aquatic species in general holds great promise to better understand their sensitivity to pesticides and other chemicals.
I am fascinated about the possibility of using imaging methods developed for mice and rats to see what is going on inside a shrimp or a snail.
I am convinced that imaging the chemical distribution inside aquatic species in general holds great promise to better understand their sensitivity to pesticides and other chemicals.
The researchers say the self-fumigation method may help endangered birds and even some mammals.
The same method might be used for the black-tailed prairie dog--removed from the endangered species list
Knutie says permethrin-treated cotton has been used in the Northeast to get mice to incorporate it in their nests to kill Lyme disease-carrying ticks.
whose kernels stay on the cob instead of falling off. Early agriculturalists also shortened flowering time for crops necessary in shorter growing seasons as in Canada.
Howler monkeys wake him every morning. I learned I have to carry a camera with me 24/7 because you never know what you're going to find
#Involvement of gene in lentivirus infections of sheep, goats has been establishedin her Phd thesis Helena Crespo-Otano has studied the mechanism of the action of the small ruminant lentivirus (SRLV) a type of virus
lentivirus de pequeã os rumiantes Role of the mannose receptor and the polarization of macrophages due to lentivirus infection in small ruminants.
As Helena Crespo explained what is observed in the flocks infected by the small ruminant lentivirus is a fall in productivity an increase in mortality caused by secondary infections
Although their research has been performed in a weed called'Arabidopsis thaliana'the work horse of plant geneticists the team is confident that their discovery can be used for the protection of crops from their enemies.
The flow of nutrients was defined by taking samples from the cow's rumen and omasum.
By means of nutrient flow it is possible to study the processes inside the cow's rumen in the first place
The physiology of the rumen did not limit the intake of forage so the limitation must derive from pasture management factors.
The NHLBI group was fortunate to have access to GE pigs through close collaboration with Revivicor Inc. Experiments using these GE pig hearts transplanted in the abdomen of baboons
and B cell immune responses investigators were able to prolong the graft survival in baboons to over one year.
The researchers'next step is to use hearts from the same GE pigs with the same immunosuppression utilized in the current experiments to test their ability to provide full life support by replacing the original baboon heart.
In laboratory experiments Zhang and her colleagues were able to restore Nrf2 levels in cirrhotic liver tissue by inactivating Hrd1 effectively reversing liver cirrhosis in mice.
The current scarcity of dwarf birch seems to be a combination of the effects of global warming deer grazing and burning plants and trees on moors.
#Take the bat, leave the candy: The food environment of youth baseballâ#Take me out to the ballgameâ##doesnâ##t exactly conjure up images of apple slices and kale chips.
donkeys and cats. Olsen studies rice and cassava and is interested currently in rice mimics weeds that look enough like rice that they fly under the radar even
Anyone familiar with the huge variety of dog breeds all of which belong to the same subspecies of the gray wolf has some appreciation of the power of selective breeding to alter appearance and behavior.
We used to think cats and dogs were real outliers in the animal domestication process
because they were attracted to human settlements for food and in some sense domesticated themselves. But new research is showing that other domesticated animals may be more like cats
and dogs than we thought. Once animals such as donkeys or cattle were caught Marshall said the changes humans sought to make were pretty minimal.
Really it just came down to culling a few of the males and breeding all of the females.
Even today she points out African pastoralists can afford to kill only four out of every 100 cows
In the donkeys and other transport animals it's not affiliative tame behavior the herders want Marshall said.
One example is the terra preta in the Amazon basin which bears silent witness to the presence of a Pre-columbian agricultural society in
Corn stover--the stalks leaves and cobs in cornfields after harvest--has been considered a ready resource for cellulosic ethanol production.
The study focused on bat populations within a mosaic of forest fragments and farmland in Costa rica and on islands in a large lake in Panama.
The researchers also did a meta-analysis of 29 studies of more than 700 bat species to bolster
For example the island theory predicted that the Costa rican coffee plantations would have inadequate habitat to sustain a single species of bat.
In reality plantations in the countryside typically supported 18 bat species compared to the 23 to 28 supported by tropical forest fragments and nature reserves.
and livestock we know today--dogs chickens horses cows--are probably radically different from the ones our great-great-grandparents knew he added. â#They are subjected to the whim of human fancy
People say the greatest animal in Africa is the lion or the elephant but honeybees are more essential
and their decline would have profound impacts across the continent. In 2010 the researchers conducted a nationwide survey of 24 locations across Kenya to evaluate the numbers
Recent research on the domestication of donkeys camelids (which includes dromedaries Bactrian camels llamas and alpacas) pigs cattle sheep and goats suggests that neither intentional breeding nor genetic isolation were as significant as traditionally thought the scientists said.
Our findings show little control of breeding particularly of domestic females and indicate long-term gene flow
So for example Beja herders in Northeastern Africa intentionally bred their donkeys with African wild asses in order to produce stronger transport animals.
Even today in the Gobi researchers report that domestic camels sometimes join wild herds after becoming separated from their own.
Wild and domestic camels meet at shared oases and wild males also can become extremely aggressive
In the Andes Capriles said wild and domestic camelids have interbred in such complex ways that alpacas are maternally related to both wild vicunas
and guanacos and the same is true for llamas. Artificial selection was probably weakest and gene flow highest in the case of pack animals such as donkeys or camelids.
But even in the case of pigs or cattle interbreeding between domestic and wild animals has created long and complex evolutionary and domestication histories that challenge assumptions regarding genetic isolation and long-held definitions of domestication.
and dogs and Darwin then uses artificial selection as a springboard to introduce the theory of natural selection.
#Chimpanzees prefer firm, stable bedschimpanzees may select a certain type of wood Ugandan Ironwood over other options for its firm stable and resilient properties to make their bed according to a study published April 16 2014 in the open-access
Chimpanzees use tree branches to build beds or nests in trees. They select certain tree species to sleep in more frequently than others
and bending strength of 326 branches from the seven tree species most commonly used by the chimps.
or architecture of each of the seven species. Of 1844 nests sampled chimpanzees selected Ugandan Ironwood for 73.6%of the nests
The authors suggest that chimpanzees select trees like the Ugandan ironwood due to these properties as they may provide protection from predators
Dr. Samson added Chimpanzees like humans are highly selective when it comes to where they sleep.
This suggests that for apes there is something inherently attractive about a comfortable bed down to what kind of wood you use to make it.
#Wolves at the door: Study finds recent wolf-dog hybridization in Caucasus regiondog owners in the Caucasus mountains of Georgia might want to consider penning up their dogs more often:
hybridization of wolves with shepherd dogs might be more common and more recent than previously thought according to a recently published study in the Journal of Heredity.
Dr. Natia Kopaliani Dr. David Tarkhnishvili and colleagues from the Institute of Ecology at Ilia State university in Georgia and from the Tbilisi Zoo in Georgia used a range of genetic techniques to extract
and examine DNA taken from wolf and dog fur samples as well as wolf scat and blood samples.
They found recent hybrid ancestry in about ten percent of the dogs and wolves sampled. About two to three percent of the sampled wolves
and dogs were identified as first-generation hybrids. This included hybridization between wolves and the shepherd dogs used to guard sheep from wolf attacks.
The study was undertaken as part of Dr. Kopaliani's work exploring human-wolf conflict in Georgia
. Since the 2000s the frequency of wolf depredation on cattle has increased in Georgia and there were several reports of attacks on humans.
Wolves were sighted even in densely populated areas she explained. Reports suggested that unlike wild wolves wolf-dog hybrids might lack fear of humans
so we wanted to examine the ancestry of wolves near human settlements to determine if they could be of hybrid origin with free-ranging dogs such as shepherds she added.
The research team examined maternally-inherited DNA (MITOCHONDRIAL DNA) and microsatellite markers to study hybridization rates.
Microsatellite markers mutate easily as they do not have any discernible purpose in the genome
and are highly variable even within a single population. For these reasons they are used often to study hybridization.
We expected to identify some individuals with hybrid ancestry but it was quite surprising that recent hybrid ancestry was found in every tenth wolf
and every tenth shepherd dog said study co-author Tarkhnishvili. Two dogs out of the 60 or so we studied were inferred to be first generation hybrids he added.
The study also found that about a third of the dogs sampled shared relatively recent maternal ancestry with local wolves not with wolves domesticated in the Far east where most experts believe dogs were domesticated first.
The research team used several alternate methods to confirm their results and came to the same conclusions with each approach.
The shepherd dogs studied are breed a local used to guard livestock. Ironically their sole function is to protect sheep from wolves
or thieves Kopaliani explained. The shepherd dogs are free-ranging largely outside the tight control of their human masters.
They guard the herds from wolves which are common in the areas where they are used
but it appears that they are also consorting with the enemy. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by American Genetic Association.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. Journal Reference e
#Genetically modified tobacco plants as an alternative for producing bioethanoltobacco a high-density crop which is mown several times throughout its cycle can produce as much as 160 tonnes of fresh matter per hectare
and become a source of biomass suitable for producing bioethanol. As Jon Veramendi head of the plant Agrobiotechnology research group explained tobacco plants as a source of biomass for producing bioethanol could be an alternative to traditional tobacco growing
The zoo has identified already several species like the huge monkey-eating Philippine eagle that are endangered at once distinct
In addition to songbirds and woodpeckers boreal wetlands provide critical habitat for other park icons like moose loon and marten.
#Camels emit less methane than cows or sheepwhen digesting ruminants exhale methane. Their contribution to this global greenhouse gas is considerable.
So far the assumption had been that camels with similar digestion produce the same amount of the climate-damaging gas.
However researchers at the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich have shown now camels release less methane than ruminants.
Ruminant cows and sheep account for a major proportion of the methane produced around the world. Currently around 20 percent of global methane emissions stem from ruminants.
In the atmosphere methane contributes to the greenhouse effect--that's why researchers are looking for ways of reducing methane production by ruminants.
Comparatively little is known about the methane production of other animal species --but one thing seems to be clear:
Ruminants produce more of the gas per amount of converted feed than other herbivores. The only other animal group that regularly ruminates like ruminants are camels.
This includes alpacas llamas dromedaries and Bactrian camels. They too have chambered multi forestomachs. They too regurgitate food from the forestomach
in order to reduce it in size through renewed chewing. That's why people assumed up to now that camels produce a similar amount of methane to ruminants.
Researchers at the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich have examined now this assumption in a project sponsored by The swiss National Science Foundation
in absolute terms camels release less methane than cows and sheep of comparable body size.
To calculate the proportion of methane produced different estimated values should be used for camels than those used for ruminants explains Marcus Clauss from the Vetsuisse Faculty of the University of Zurich.
Lower metabolism--less feed--less methanethe modified calculation of the methane budget may be important for those countries with lots of camels--like the dromedaries in the middle East and in Australia or the alpacas and llamas in various South american countries.
In cooperation with Zurich Zoo and private camel keepers scientists from the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich have measured methane production in three types of camelids.
The results show us that camels have a lower metabolism. Hence they need less feed
and release less methane than our domestic ruminants says the vet Marcus Clauss. The lower metabolism of camels could explain why they thrive particularly in areas with a shortage of food--desert and barren mountain regions.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of Zurich. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Their next step was to add tomatidine to the diet of mice. They found that healthy mice supplemented with tomatidine grew bigger muscles became stronger
and could exercise longer. And most importantly they found that tomatidine prevented and treated muscle atrophy.
Interestingly although mice fed tomatidine had larger muscles their overall body weight did not change due to a corresponding loss of fat suggesting that the compound may also have potential for treating obesity.
what we gave the mice. We also don't know if such a dose of tomatidine will be safe for people
or if it will have the same effect in people as it does in mice Adams says.
An international research team including scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig Germany has counted now chimpanzees and other large mammals living in Liberia.
The census revealed that this country is home to 7000 chimpanzees and therefore to the second largest population of the Western subspecies of chimpanzees.
in order to protect the chimpanzees more effectively. Following the complete wartime collapse of the country's economy Liberia's government has been trying to fuel economic growth by selling large amounts of its rich natural resources including rubber timber and minerals.
To close this data gap researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig Germany The Wild Chimpanzee Foundation in Abidjan CÃ'te d'Ivoire
a survey of chimpanzees and other large mammals across the entire country of Liberia. For two years the survey teams searched for the presence of chimpanzees and other large mammals in more than 100 locations throughout the country.
This project was logistically very challenging says corresponding author Jessica Junker who also supervised all data collection in the field.
With an estimated population of more than 7000 individuals Liberia now officially holds the second largest population of West African chimpanzees after Guinea.
Even more excitingly for conservation due to its relatively wide and continuous distribution within the country the chimpanzee population of Liberia is also probably one of most viable chimpanzee populations in West Africa making it a regional conservation priority.
Surprisingly the survey results showed that more than 70 percent of the chimpanzees as well as some of the most species-diverse communities of large mammals occurred outside the fully-protected areas
and selection in this ongoing process says lead author Clement Tweh of the Wild Chimpanzee Foundation in Liberia.
Our survey makes it clear that this action has saved also a large number of West african chimpanzees says co-author Menladi Lormie Max Planck researcher and FDA ecologist of the President's decision.
Additional study co-authors include Xingli Wang Yongji Gong Gang Shi Kunttal Keyshar Gonglan Ye Robert Vajtai and Jun Lou all of Rice and Wai Leong Chow
#What bank voles can teach us about prion disease transmission and neurodegenerationwhen cannibals ate brains of people who died from prion disease many of them fell ill with the fatal neurodegenerative disease as well.
On the other hand transmission of prions between species for example from cows sheep or deer to humans is--fortunately--inefficient and only a small proportion of exposed recipients become sick within their lifetimes.
bank voles appear to lack a species barrier for prion transmission and their universal susceptibility turns out to be both informative and useful for the development of strategies to prevent prion transmission.
Trying to understand the unusual susceptibility of bank voles to prions from other species Stanley Prusiner Joel Watts Kurt Giles
and colleagues from the University of California in San francisco USA first tested whether the susceptibility is an intrinsic property of the voles'Prp
or whether other factors present in these rodents make them vulnerable. The scientists introduced into mice the gene that codes for the normal bank vole prion protein thereby generating mice that express bank vole Prp but not mouse Prp.
When these mice get older some of them spontaneously develop neurologic illness but in the younger ones the bank vole Prp is in its normal benign folded state.
The scientists then exposed young mice to toxic misfolded prions from 8 different species including human cattle elk sheep and hamster.
They found that all of these foreign-species prions can cause prion disease in the transgenic mice
and that the disease develops often more rapidly than it does in bank voles. The latter is likely
because the transgenic mice express higher levels of bank vole Prp than are naturally present in the voles.
The results show that the universal susceptibility of bank voles to cross-species prion transmission is an intrinsic property of bank vole Prp.
Because the transgenic mice develop prion disease rapidly the scientists propose that the mice will be useful tools in studying the processes by
which toxic prions convert healthy Prp and thereby destroy the brain. And because that process is similar across many neurodegenerative diseases better understanding prion disease development might have broader implications.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by PLOS. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
WCS projects working with local people and government agencies have shown that human-elephant conflict can be reduced dramatically without using fences in countries as different as Indonesia and Tanzania.
and using different types of drill seeding equipment. Reseeding burns with local varietals or close genetic matches could improve recruitment.
They found that one particular type of antioxidant in cocoa prevented laboratory mice from gaining excess weight
The scientists fed groups of mice different diets including high-fat and low-fat diets and high-fat diets supplemented with different kinds of flavanols.
They found that adding one particular set of these compounds known as oligomeric procyanidins (PCS) to the food made the biggest difference in keeping the mice's weight down
In studies with mice the researchers found that the administration of the elafin molecule protects the intestinal lining of the upper gut that is damaged by gluten.
Forest harvest creates a temporary opening that is needed by forest species such as butterflies and some birds and deer before it regrows to large trees.
and protect mice against a lethal dose challenge of West Nile virus--even as late as 4 days after the initial infection.
and protect mice from exposure. MABS target proteins found on the surface of West Nile virus
and neutralize West Nile virus. Mice were infected with a lethal dose of West Nile virus and increasing amounts of a MAB therapeutic were delivered as a single dose the same day of infection.
In each case they protected up to 90 percent of the mice from lethal infection. This is the first instance of such an effect
Besides charismatic species such as the orangutans that the students encounter every day in the forest the tropical ecosystem consists of scores of unseen organisms
This tiny new spider is a nice counterpoint to the large-mammal work we're doing
#Peaches inhibit breast cancer metastasis in micelab tests at Texas A&m Agrilife Research have shown that treatments with peach extract inhibit breast cancer metastasis in mice.
Cancer cells were implanted under the skin of mice with an aggressive type of breast cancer cells the MDA-MB-435 and
when the mice were consuming the peach extract said Dr. Luis Cisneros-Zevallos a food scientist for Agrilife Research in College Station.
Furthermore after determining the dose necessary to see the effects in mice it was calculated that for humans it would be equivalent to consuming two to three peaches per day.
Fortunately Perumal was able to obtain the human breast tissue he needed free of charge through the Lions Eye
%East Carroll Parish LA 0. 7%Wheeler County GA 0. 6%Benson County ND 0. 5%Claiborne County MS 0
what Earth habitable for mammals and destruction of forests will lead to the ultimate destruction of mammals--including humans.
Trees are one of the few things which live longer than humans--a true intergenerational gift.
#Excessive deer populations hurt native plant biodiversitytoo much garlic mustard growing in the forests of Pennsylvania?
Actually the problem may be too many deer. A new study published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concludes that an overpopulation of deer is the primary reason garlic mustard is crowding out native plants such as trillium
which are preferred food for wild deer. Our findings show that there is a link between disruption of the native animal community
and invasion by nonnative plant species says Carol Horvitz professor of ecology in the University of Miami College of Arts
Deer density in the U s. is about four to 10 times what it was prior to European settlement of North america.
The study was initiated in 2003 at the Trillium Trail Nature Reserve in Fox Chapel Pa. by a team of researchers from the University of Miami and University of Pittsburgh.
and Asia and is inedible by deer standards. It was brought to the United states--Long island N y. specifically--in the 1860s for use as a kitchen herb.
To study the effect of rampant deer on trillium and garlic mustard populations the researchers established multiple 196-square-meter plots in the forest.
Half were fenced to exclude deer. Years of observation and hours of statistical analysis later the team found that in plots where deer were excluded the trillium population is increasing
and the garlic mustard population is trending toward zero. This demonstrates that the high population growth rate of the invader is caused by the high abundance of deer says Susan Kalisz professor of evolutionary ecology in the University of Pittsburgh's Department of Biological sciences and principal investigator of the study.
This effect is reversible with deer exclusion. The team's results support an ecological theory that native species in communities can exert biotic resistance.
This means that native plants as a group can successfully compete against invaders. If the native plants are allowed to thrive rather than being consumed by deer the combined natural competitive advantages of those plants--including trillium--allow them to repel the outsiders.
When people walk in the woods where deer are overabundant they don't realize what's missing Kalisz says.
They don't know what used to be growing there. They don't know that species are being lost
Reduce deer populations restore natives and prevent invasion. It's not simple Kalisz says. Deer management policies vary from state to state
and deer don't respect political boundaries. Some states keep deer populations low while others prefer to maintain higher populations to appeal to groups such as hunters.
Yet deer exact a toll not only on forest species but also farms orchards and even your car and your car insurance rate Kalisz says.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of Miami. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
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