Shipworms eat with their gills?

A recent study on shipworms, sea-dwelling clams that look like worms has found that their digestive process actually starts in their gills! This is quite unusual because pretty much all animals ingest the food through some sort of mouth-like orifice and then proceeds to be digested in a gut of some sort with the aid of digestive enzymes that get secreted by symbiotic bacteria that live there. In the case of the shipworm however, those bacteria have taken residence in their gills, and the enzymes they produce somehow survive the journey down to the gut. Scientists are hoping to find out exactly how the enzymes survive and what makes the bacteria so good and breaking down cellulose into ethanol, because there is a hope that ethanol could be a potential biofuel.

Some questions I still have about this is how helpful would these bacteria really be in producing ethanol? And would we just use the bacteria or the shipworm as well, and if we did would they be treated humanely? 

Light refracting cells!

Clams have a symbiotic relationship with photosynthetic algae. This algae lives within the fleshy mantle of clams, growing into pillar like formations. In order to expose this helpful algae to just the right amount and kind of sunlight, clams have developed a special cell called iridocytes that refract the sunlight and split it up so that only the types of light that the algae photosynthesizes best, red and blue light, gets through! Because the iridocytes reflect green and yellow light, it causes the clams to have an iridescent glow. There are studies on these cells that are looking into ways to utilize these cells so that we can farm algae in layered pads to produce biofuels! Some questions I have about this would be how much energy would the biofuels from the algae produce? Would we be able to use these biofuels in conjunction with solar panels to replace fossil fuels all together? 

Bacteria's energy parasite cousins

As most of us know; mitochondria are the "powerhouses" of cells in plants and animals. The big question surrounding these organelles is how did they come about? Older theories suggest that they were just simple bacteria swallowed by host cells that were later integrated into the cells dna as part of the cell itself. However new studies suggest that mitochondria actually used to be parasitic bacteria that used to latch knot host cells and steal energy, and that somewhere along the way the flow of energy got switched around and they became beneficial to cells. I found this interesting because I never thought that mitochondria weren't always a part of cells, because how else did they get energy? But the whole parasite thing is very interesting considering they are now helpful to our cells. Some questions I have about this are how did the energy flow get switched? And how did they get integrated  into cells dna in the first place?

Save the microbes!

This The article I read was about how when mice get sick, they produce a substance called L-flucose; a sugar that has been shown to affect gut microbiota. This is significant because there was a study done to see if L-flucose had an effect on the mice's health. First the mice were exposed to a organism that mimicked systemic infection, and when the mice started to show signs of being sick, such as not eating or drinking, (which is a way for the mice to prevent the pathogen from getting nutrients.) it was found that every inch of the lower intestine was covered in L-flucose, and that this only happened during systemic infections. They then performed the same experiment on genetically altered mice that lacked the gene to produce L-flucose, in those mice it was found that the mice regained weight and recovered much slower than there L-flucose producing counterparts. This shows that L-flucose is the body's way of protecting our helpful microbiota while we ourselves are battling infection, while at the same time preventing ourselves from being exposed to even more harmful pathogens. We humans also produce the same substance when experiencing systemic infection, and 20% lack the gene to produce it, and this lack of ability has been linked to Chrons's disease. These experiments will help start more to try and figure out how to treat Chron's disease. I'm wondering whether or not treatment for Chron's will be a sort of gene therapy or maybe even a way to administer L-flucose directly to people's lower intestines. 

Artificial sweeteners are changing your gut microbiota!

Recent studies have shown that artificial sweeteners could actually hasten the development of glucose intolerance and metabolic disease. One of the experiments that was done was that mice were given water laced with the three most commonly used artificial sweeteners. The result was that the mice developed glucose intolerance, but when they were given antibiotics to get rid of most of their gut microbes, they could digest sugars normally again. The next thing they did was transfer some of the microbiota from the mice that had consumed artificial sweetener into sterile mice, and it produced the same effects. Upon closer examination of the mice's gut microbiota, it was apparent that there was a great change in bacterial populations. The sweeteners also caused the bacteria to secrete a substance that cause a inflammatory response similar to that of glucose intolerance. Because the sweetener affects the body's ability to process sugar, it is believed to contribute to diabetes. These findings are important because of the fact that the use of artificial sweeteners is so wide spread that it is going to be hard to warn people of th risks. The article wasn't specific as to what kinds of foods are sweetened artificially but I know that a common one is diet sodas. Now I for one don't drink diet sodas, but this article makes me wonder what other foods that could be putting me at risk for developing glucose intolerance.

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250-million-year-old bacteria?!

My article was called "Rock of Ages", and it talked about a microbe that was found trapped in some fluid in a 250-million-year-old formation of salt in New Mexico! This microbe was given the name Bacillus, and was then changed to. Virgibacillus species 2-9-3. There was a lot of skepticism because biological chemists doubted that nuclei acids could last that long, an even if it had managed to hibernate as a spore, it's DNA should've broken down in 250 million years from the barrage of earths natural radiation over the extended period of time. It was argued that more recent fluid had found it's way into the rock, and that it's DNA sequence was far too similar to that of a modern strain. So eventually a team from Nature magazine joined a team from Geology to test the theory that the fluid is newer than the surrounding rock. So they took the temperature of the same part of rock the original sample came from and the temperature ranges from 63-99 degrees Fahrenheit, a distribution that suggests seasonal climate change. They also did a test to measure the ions in the fluid to compare it to the seawater changes over time, and the sample matched the ions of the Permian period. The last criticism is that of the bacteria DNA being the same as that of a strain from the Dead Sea, but a member of the team challenged the models that predict that these strains came about tens of thousands instead of millions of years ago.
As for questions I have, one is that if there's another test that would prove the validity of Virgibacillus' age. I also wonder if, like the article says, if the strain found in the Dead Sea really didn't come about millions of years ago. This article was really interesting to me specifically because I'm surprised that there is no set method for determining the age of microbes.