Science

Laurent Formery, a biologist from Stanford University, published the results of a study of sea stars, which poses a new mystery for scientists. Most living things on planet Earth have bilateral symmetry, and at the larval stage sea stars in this respect do not differ from other animals. But then, for unknown reasons, they take the form of radial symmetry, growing what people mistakenly call “legs” or “rays”.

RNA tomography works wonders, for example, it can be used to trace which genes take part in the creation and development of certain parts of a living creature’s body. In the case of starfish, it turns out that their entire body has genes for “head”. In other words, these creatures have no body, per se. All we see is a very strange sprawling head, which has also for some reason split into several offshoots.

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Studying chinstrap penguins, employees of the Lyon Neurobiological Research Center found out that these birds sleep quite differently from humans. If for people a short-term dip in sleep indicates serious fatigue, then for penguins it is completely normal. It turned out that during the day these birds fall asleep up to a hundred thousand times, indulging in sleep for an average of 4 seconds. This allows them to “gain” physiologically necessary sleep duration of 11 hours.

The article about it was published in the journal Science. The authors of the study believe that such “sleep tactics” in penguins due to the need to always be vigilant. Penguins have to keep an eye on laid eggs while their partners are foraging for food. They may be absent for several days, and during this time the nest must be reliably guarded – neighbors can easily encroach on the materials from which it is made.

During the experiment, 14 penguins in the King George Island colony were implanted with special electrodes. Sensors recorded electrical activity in the muscles of the neck and brain, and accelerometers gave an idea of the birds’ location and movements. By comparing the data with video recordings and live observations, the scientists revealed a host of curious features inherent in penguins – including their special sleep tactics.

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China imports about 80% of the protein it consumes in any available form, including soy. It is therefore not surprising that it was the Chinese Academy of Sciences that proposed a way to produce proteins from fossilized raw materials, namely coal. The technology is not new, but Chinese scientists have refined it to the level of practical application on an industrial scale.

Most of the world’s crops are fed to livestock, whose meat is the main source of protein for people in developed countries. However, the efficiency of this process leaves much to be desired: today, 29% of developed land or 40% of the Earth’s inhabited area is devoted to pastures or fields. Simply increasing livestock numbers will not solve the protein shortage because there is nowhere to keep them.

At the same time, according to various forecasts, mankind will have enough coal reserves for 200 years and more, so it makes sense to turn some of it into food. For this purpose, coal is converted into methane, and this methane is fed to the yeast Pichia Pastoris, the product of which is a single-celled protein. This protein is saturated with various useful and nutritious substances and is quite suitable for use as a feed additive for growing livestock.

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Scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences celebrated the second “birthday” of the rhesus macaque ReTro, which is a cloned organism. This is a unique achievement, an exception, as cloning primates almost always fails because of the many complexities involved. 113 embryos were used to create ReTro, but only 11 of them proved suitable for implantation into surrogate mothers, and there were only two pregnancies in the end. One was a miscarriage, the second was ReTro.

The movement of biological materials in cloning is too complex and unpredictable a process, especially in the case of primates. Each success, like ReTro’s, is a consequence of overcoming another fundamental problem. In his case, it was a defect in the development of the placenta when placing an egg with clone material into the uterus of a surrogate mother.

While working on the problem, Chinese scientists replaced the trophoblast layer from which the placenta is formed with a man-made analog. To do this, they took material from another embryo obtained by in vitro fertilization. It was more “healthy” than the original, allowing the fetus to develop normally.

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