After The Four New Additions, Here’s A Look At The Origins Of All The Element Names In The Periodic

Why scientists are rooting for mushrooms

Mushrooms are the organisms that keep on giving. They grow and feed the soil by breaking down organic matter. For centuries, they’ve also been a staple in our diet. 

Recently, people have started taking a closer look at mushrooms, and more specifically, mycelium — the hidden root of mushrooms — as an engineering material to produce goods like surfboards, packaging materials, furniture and even architecture.

As far as natural materials go, there’s never been anything as versatile and cost-effective as fungi, says Sonia Travaglini, a doctoral candidate in mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley, who is collaborating with artist and mycologist Philip Ross to unlock the seemingly infinite potential of fungi.

Mycelium can grow into any shape or size (the largest in the world blankets an entire forest in Oregon). They can be engineered to be as hard and strong as wood or brick, as soft and squishy as foam, or even smooth and flexible, like fabric. 

Unlike other natural materials, mushrooms can rely on their recycling properties to break down organic matter so you can grow a lot of it very quickly and cheaply just by feeding it biodegradable waste. In as little as two weeks, you can cultivate a hunk of mushroom that’s brick-sized.

That mycelium actually takes in waste and carbon dioxide as it grows (one species of fungi even eats plastic trash) instead of expelling byproducts makes it far superior to other forms of production.

Plus, when you’re done with mushroom, you can compost it or break up the material to grow more mycelium from it.

“And, unlike forming synthetic materials, which have to be made while very hot or under pressure, all of which takes a lot of energy to create those conditions, mycology materials grow from mushrooms which grow in our normal habitat, so it’s much less energy-intensive,” said Travaglini.

In the lab, Travaglini and other researchers crush, compress, stretch, pull and bend mycelium to test the amount of force the material can tolerate.   

They found that mycelium is incredibly strong and can withstand a lot of compression and tension.

Most materials are only strong from one direction. But mycology materials are tough from all directions and can absorb a lot force without breaking. So it can withstand as much weight as a brick, but won’t shatter when you drop it or when it experiences a hard impact, said Travaglini. 

As one of the newer organisms receiving an application in biomimetics, a field of science that looks to imitate nature’s instinctive designs to find sustainable solutions and innovation, we might be getting merely a glimpse of what fungi is capable of.

“Mycology is still a whole new field of research, we’re still finding more questions and still really don’t know where it’s going to go, which makes it really exciting,” said Travaglini.

Image sources: Vice UK/Mazda & Pearson Prentice Hall

Trillion-Ton Iceberg Breaks Off Antarctica

Even though the towering berg weighs more than 1.1 trillion tons (1 trillion metric tons), it won't have a direct impact on sea-level rise. That's because the ice was already floating on the sea. Even so, when an iceberg like this one calves, it can speed up the collapse of the rest of the ice shelf.

One of the largest icebergs ever recorded, packing about a trillion tons of ice or enough to fill up two Lake Eries, has just split off from Antarctica, in a much anticipated, though not celebrated, calving event.

A section of the Larsen C ice shelf with an area of 2,240 square miles (5,800 square kilometers) finally broke away some time between July 10 and today (July 12), scientists with the U.K.-based MIDAS Project, an Antarctic research group, reported today.

Continue Reading.

8 of the world’s most bizarre flowers:

1.) Swaddled Babies

2.) Flying Duck Orchid

3.) Hooker’s Lips Orchid

4.) Ballerina Orchid

5.) Monkey Orchid

6.) Naked Man Orchid

7.) Laughing Bumblebee Orchid

8.) White Egret Orchid

Molecule of the Day: Limonene

d-Limonene (C10H16) is a naturally occurring, chiral cyclic hydrocarbon with an orangey scent, and is found in citrus peels and citrus essential oils. It is a colourless liquid that is immiscible with water at room temperature and pressure. 

Limonene undergoes reactions typical of an alkene, such as electrophilic addition and oxidative cleavage. It is biosynthesised from geranyl pyrophosphate in plants, and is classified as a terpene.

While limonene can be synthesised in the lab, as shown below, it is produced industrially from the steam distillation of citrus peels due to its natural abundance. Furthermore, citrus peels are a by-product of orange juice manufacturing, which makes it environmentally-friendly.

Limonene is commonly used in perfumes, soaps, and foods due to its fresh, citrus-like scent, and can also act as a pesticide. It is gaining prominence as an environmentally-friendly solvent and paint stripper. However, it is also a skin sensitiser, as it can dissolve the oils and fat underneath the skin!

Links:

Extraction of limonene from orange peels - YouTube

Dissolving styrofoam using limonene - YouTube

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Crystals of the female hormone oxytocin

In women this hormone is secreted naturally by the pituitary gland. Oxytocin causes contractions of the uterus during labour, and it also stimulates the flow of milk in women who are breast-feeding.

Thorny life of new-born neurons

Even in adult brains, new neurons are generated throughout a lifetime. In a publication in the scientific journal PNAS, a research group led by Goethe University describes plastic changes of adult-born neurons in the hippocampus, a critical region for learning: frequent nerve signals enlarge the spines on neuronal dendrites, which in turn enables contact with the existing neural network.

Practise makes perfect, and constant repetition promotes the ability to remember. Researchers have been aware for some time that repeated electrical stimulation strengthens neuron connections (synapses) in the brain. It is similar to the way a frequently used trail gradually widens into a path. Conversely, if rarely used, synapses can also be removed – for example, when the vocabulary of a foreign language is forgotten after leaving school because it is no longer practised. Researchers designate the ability to change interconnections permanently and as needed as the plasticity of the brain.

Plasticity is especially important in the hippocampus, a primary region associated with long-term memory, in which new neurons are formed throughout life. The research groups led by Dr Stephan Schwarzacher (Goethe University), Professor Peter Jedlicka (Goethe University and Justus Liebig University in Gießen) and Dr Hermann Cuntz (FIAS, Frankfurt) therefore studied the long-term plasticity of synapses in new-born hippocampal granule cells. Synaptic interconnections between neurons are predominantly anchored on small thorny protrusions on the dendrites called spines. The dendrites of most neurons are covered with these spines, similar to the thorns on a rose stem.

In their recently published work, the scientists were able to demonstrate for the first time that synaptic plasticity in new-born neurons is connected to long-term structural changes in the dendritic spines: repeated electrical stimulation strengthens the synapses by enlarging their spines. A particularly surprising observation was that the overall size and number of spines did not change: when the stimulation strengthened a group of synapses, and their dendritic spines enlarged, a different group of synapses that were not being stimulated simultaneously became weaker and their dendritic spines shrank.

“This observation was only technically possible because our students Tassilo Jungenitz and Marcel Beining succeeded for the first time in examining plastic changes in stimulated and non-stimulated dendritic spines within individual new-born cells using 2-photon microscopy and viral labelling,” says Stephan Schwarzacher from the Institute for Anatomy at the University Hospital Frankfurt. Peter Jedlicka adds: “The enlargement of stimulated synapses and the shrinking of non-stimulated synapses was at equilibrium. Our computer models predict that this is important for maintaining neuron activity and ensuring their survival.”

The scientists now want to study the impenetrable, spiny forest of new-born neuron dendrites in detail. They hope to better understand how the equilibrated changes in dendritic spines and their synapses contribute the efficient storing of information and consequently to learning processes in the hippocampus.

Solidification of liquid Gallium 

Gallium is a chemical element with symbol Ga and atomic number 31. Gallium is a soft, silvery metal, and elemental gallium is a brittle solid at low temperatures, and melts at 29.76 °C (85.57 °F) (slightly above room temperature). Elemental gallium is not found in nature, but it is easily obtained by smelting.

Gallium metal expands by 3.1% when it solidifies, and therefore storage in either glass or metal containers are avoided, due to the possibility of container rupture with freezing. Gallium shares the higher-density liquid state with only a few materials, like water, silicon,germanium, bismuth, and plutonium.

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Plantibodies and Plant-Derived Edible Vaccines

Throughout history, humans have used plants in the treatment of disease. This includes more traditional methods involving direct consumption with minimal preparation involved and the extraction of compounds for use in modern pharmaceuticals. One of the more recent methods of using plants in medicine involves the synthesis and application of plantibodies and plant produced antigens. These are recombinant antibodies and antigens respectively, which have been produced by a genetically modified plant (1, 2).        

Antibodies are a diverse set of proteins which serve the purpose of aiding the body in eliminating foreign pathogens. They are secreted by effector B lymphocytes which are a type of white blood cell that circulate throughout the body. An antigen is a molecule or a component of a molecule, such as a protein or carbohydrate, which can stimulate an immune response. The human body is capable of producing around 1012  different types of antibodies, each of which can bind to a specific antigen or a small group of related motifs (3). When an antibody encounters the antigen of a foreign pathogen to which it has high affinity, it binds to it which can disable it or alert the immune system for its destruction (4).

Figure 1: Each type of antibody has the ability to bind to a specific antigen or group of antigens with high affinity.

Plants do not normally produce antibodies and thus must be genetically modified to produce plantibodies as well as foreign protein antigens. Plantibodies produced in this manner function the same way as the antibodies native to the human body (1). The main ways to do this are to stably integrate foreign DNA into a host cell and place it into a plant embryo resulting in a permanent change of the nuclear genome, or to induce transient gene expression of the specified protein (5). In both cases, the genetic material introduced to the plant codes for the protein of choice. Several of the methods used to induce permanent transgene expression include agrobacterium-mediated transformation, particle bombardment using a gene gun, or the transformation of organelles such as chloroplasts. Transient transgene expression can be done using plant viruses as viral vectors or agroinfiltration (2). Once the genetic material has been inserted, the specified protein is produced via the plant endomembrane and secretory systems, after which it can be recovered through purification of the plant tissue to be used for injection (1). The production of these proteins can also be directed to specific organs of the plant such as the seeds using targeting signals (2). Stable integration techniques are generally used for more large scale production and when the gene in question has a high level of expression, while transient techniques are used to produce a greater yield in the short term (5).

Figure 2: A gene gun being used to introduce genetic material into the leaves of a plant.

Now how can plantibodies and plant produced antigens help us as humans? The primary purpose of producing plantibodies is for the treatment of disease via immunotherapy. Immunotherapy is a method of treatment in which one’s immune response to a particular disease is enhanced. Specific plantibodies can be produced in order to target a particular disease and then be applied to patients via injection as a means of treatment (6). Doing so provides a boost to the number of antibodies against the targeted disease in the patient’s body which helps to enhance their immune system response against it. An example of this is CaroRx, the first clinically tested plantibody which has the ability to bind to Streptococcus mutans. CaroRx has been shown to be effective in the treatment of tooth decay caused by this species of bacteria (1). More recently, a plantibody known as ZMapp has shown potential in the treatment of Ebola. A study by Qiu et al showed that when administered up to 5 days after the onset of the disease, 100% of rhesus macaques that were administered the drug were shown to have recovered from its effects while all of the control group animals perished as a result of the disease (7). In addition, it has been experimentally administered to some humans who later recovered from the disease, although its role in their recovery was not fully ascertained (8).

Plant produced antigens on the other hand can be used to produce oral vaccines (9). Vaccines are typically biological mixtures containing a weakened pathogen and its antigens. Injection of this results in priming of the body’s adaptive immune system against the particular pathogen so that it can more easily recognize and respond to the threat in the future (4). By producing the antigens of targeted pathogens in plants through transgenic expression, edible vaccines can be created if the plant used is safe to eat. Tobacco, potato, and tomato plants have typically been used in past attempts to create them, showing success in both animal studies and a number of human trials. The advantages of using an oral vaccine include ease of administration and lower costs since specialised personel are not required for administration (9). In addition, oral vaccines are more effective in providing immunity against pathogens at mucosal surfaces as they can be directly applied to the gastrointestinal tract (1). The primary issue with the usage of oral vaccines is that protein antigens must avoid degradation in the stomach and intestines before they can reach the targeted sites in the body. Several solutions to this dilemma include using other biological structures such as liposomes and proteasomes as a means of delivery. This helps to prevent the proteins from being degraded by digestive enzymes and the acidic environment of the stomach before they can reach their destination (1, 9).

Figure 3: An overview of one method of producing an edible vaccine using a potato plant. A gene coding for the protein of a human pathogen is used in agrobacterium-mediated transformation to produce a transgenic potato plant. The potatoes from this plant can then serve as an edible vaccine against pathogen from which the protein originated.

There are a number of advantages to using these plant based pharmaceuticals. First of all, they can be produced on a large scale at a relatively low cost through agriculture and are convenient for long-term storage due to the resiliency and size of plant seeds (5). There is also a low risk of contamination by mammalian viruses, blood borne pathogens, and oncogenes which can remove the need for expensive removal steps (1). In addition, purification steps can be skipped if the plants used are edible and ethical problems that come with animal production can be avoided (5). The disadvantages include the potential for allergic reactions to plant antigens and contamination by pesticides and herbicides. There is also the possibility of outcrossing of transgenic pollen to weeds or related crops which would lead to non-target crops also expressing the pharmaceutical.This could lead to public concern along with the potential that other species which ingest these plants may be negatively affected (9).  While plantibodies and plant produced antigens have not yet been extensively tested in clinical trials, going forward they represent a new treatment option with great promise.

References

1. Jain P, Pandey P, Jain D, Dwivedi P. Plantibody: An overview. Asian journal of Pharmacy and Life Science. 2011 Jan;1(1):87-94.

2. Stoger E, Sack M, Fischer R, Christou P. Plantibodies: applications, advantages and bottlenecks. Current Opinion in Biotechnology. 2002 Apr 1;13(2):161-166.

3. Alberts B, Johnson A, Lewis J, Raff M, Roberts K, Walter P. Molecular Biology of the Cell. 4th Edition. New York: Garland Science; 2002.

4. Parham P. The immune system. 4th Edition. New York: Garland Science; 2014.

5. Ferrante E, Simpson D. A review of the progression of transgenic plants used to produce plantibodies for human usage. J. Young Invest. 2001;4:1-0.

6. Smith MD. Antibody production in plants. Biotechnology advances. 1996 Dec 31;14(3):267-81.

7. Qiu X, Wong G, Audet J, Bello A, Fernando L, Alimonti JB, Fausther-Bovendo H, Wei H, Aviles J, Hiatt E, Johnson A. Reversion of advanced Ebola virus disease in nonhuman primates with ZMapp. Nature. 2014 Aug 29.

8. Sneed A. Know the Jargon. Scientific american. 2014 Dec 1;311(6):24-24.

9. Daniell H, Streatfield SJ, Wycoff K. Medical molecular farming: production of antibodies, biopharmaceuticals and edible vaccines in plants. Trends in plant science. 2001 May 1;6(5):219-26.