Microbe that rejuvenates every time it reproduces discovered

ANI | Sep 14, 2013, 12.45 PM IST

READ MORE Schizosaccheromyces pombe|microbe

WASHINGTON: Researchers have discovered a microbe that is able to stay young forever by rejuvenating every time it reproduces itself.

In general, even dividing microbes symmetrically does not split it into two exactly identical halves. Detailed investigations revealed that there are mechanisms in place that ensure that one half receives older, often defective, cell material, whereas the other half is equipped with new fully-functional material.

So microbes produce offspring that is younger than the parent - like is the case with humans.

The research team showed that, unlike other species, the yeast Schizosaccheromyces pombe is immune to ageing when reproducing under favourable growth conditions. When the yeast is treated well, it reproduces by splitting into two halves that both inherit their fair share of old cell material.

As both cells get only half of the damaged material, they are both younger than before.

Once subjected to negative influences like chemicals or heat, the yeast cells started splitting into a younger and an older half just like other cells. While the older cells eventually died, their offspring survived long enough to reproduce even in the harsh environments.

Sexiest parts of body revealed

ANI | Sep 14, 2013, 01.58 PM IST

comments

Share More

LONDON: A new study by neuroscientists has measured just how erotic our body bits are.

The research found that the feet were not considered sexually attractive by the 800 people, mostly from Britain and sub-Saharan Africa, surveyed.

75 per cent people gave their feet the lowest, zero rating - alongside knee caps, the Observer reported.

Professor Oliver Turnbull of Bangor University's School of Psychology and the scientists from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg saw that there were 'remarkable levels of correlation' between the ratings for all the people who responded.

Men and women listed the 41 body parts they were asked to rate in remarkably similar order.

The obvious bits of genitalia were at the top of the rankings, as were lips, ears and inner thighs, followed closely by shoulder blades.

There were a few major differences between the sexes - the back of the leg was barely acknowledged by women, for instance, while men rated it as important as their ears. Hands were also more erotic for men than for women, researchers found.

of Bangor University's School of Psychology and the scientists from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg saw that there were 'remarkable levels of correlation' between the ratings for all the people who responded.

Men and women listed the 41 body parts they were asked to rate in remarkably similar order.

The obvious bits of genitalia were at the top of the rankings, as were lips, ears and inner thighs, followed closely by shoulder blades.

There were a few major differences between the sexes - the back of the leg was barely acknowledged by women, for instance, while men rated it as important as their ears. Hands were also more erotic for men than for women, researchers found.

comment

Professor Oliver Turnbull's bull shit research .waste of money on weird research

Earth's wobble provides marine organisms with food

ANI | Sep 14, 2013, 03.58 PM IST

comments

Share More

READ MORE Swiss Institute of Technology in Zurich|marine organisms|cyclic wobble

Earth's wobble provides marine organisms with food

Axial precession occurs on a cycle of roughly 26,000 years and arises because the Earth wobbles slightly as it rotates, similar to the wobble of a toy top.

WASHINGTON: The cyclic wobble of the Earth on its axis helps control the production of a nutrient that is essential to ocean's health, a new study has revealed.

Researchers from Princeton University and the Swiss Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH) said that during the past 160,000 years nitrogen fixation rose and fell in a pattern that closely matched the changing orientation of Earth's axis of rotation, or axial precession.

Axial precession occurs on a cycle of roughly 26,000 years and arises because the Earth wobbles slightly as it rotates, similar to the wobble of a toy top.

Second author Daniel Sigman, Princeton's Dusenbury Professor of Geological and Geophysical Sciences, said that the finding that nitrogen fixation is determined by precession-driven upwelling appears to indicate that the ocean's fixed nitrogen reservoir is resilient and that the ocean biosphere can recover from even the most dramatic ecological changes.

The researchers tracked changes in nitrogen fixation in the North Atlantic Ocean by measuring the fixed nitrogen contained in the shells of marine animals recovered from sediment in the Caribbean Sea.

Working in Sigman's lab, the investigators measured the amount of two types of nitrogen known as 14N and 15N contained in the shells of tiny marine animal plankton called foraminifera. The ratio of 15N to 14N was then used to reconstruct the rate of nitrogen fixation.

The pattern of nitrogen fixation measured in foraminifera matched the historical record of axial precession and the resulting ocean upwelling.

The new study has been published in the journal Nature.