Some have to die, some can resurect
Everyone is talking about the Jade Rabbit's goodbye messages. China's first Moon rover is malfunctioning and most likely won't survive the night (they last 2 weeks and temperatures drop to -170oC). Like it is in style for the rovers now it has its own twitter feed where it gets personified so we would care. And now they make us watch it die. I blame xkcd with the Spirit cartoon Randall Munroe started the whole tearjerker thing.
But the real horror is happening in the deep. The starfish are suffering from a sickness that makes them rip themselves apart. The arms start crawling in the opposite directions until the body breaks and insides spill out. This is the scariest thing I have heard about and I read a lot about biology that includes parasites bursting out of bodies and zombiefying creatures. Or wearing bodies of your victims as armour. Or becoming sperm dispenser for the first female of your species you encounter. You know nature.
NewScientist has an interactive tool showing temperature changes all over the world. Spoiler alert - it's warmer almost everywhere. Excapt few ocean spots and some regions of Antarctic the planet just gets warmer. For most of Europe, including Poland, it's little over 1oC. The warmest places are Amazon jungle and all the very cold north - Siberia and Canadian Arctic. Poor polar bears.
Turning differentiated cells back into stem cells isn't easy. Stem cells can become any other type of cells even a whole new organism but once they become differentiated there are changes in the structure of chromatin that seal the cell fate. It changes shape, metabolism and can only divide a set amount of times before dying. So far making them go back to the stem cell pluripotent state has been mostly unsuccessful. This means that both cloning the adult organisms and getting stem cell therapies going has been very slow. Including the controversy about harvesting and using embryonic stem cells.
However, recently scientist in Japan crated a method of reversing cells to the stem cell state by placing them in place the cells in a stressful situation, such as an acidic environment. Cells was exposed to a "sub-lethal" acidic environment, with a pH of 5.7, for 30 minutes. Some cells died but the rest started, slowly, over time of several day to show genetic markers of pluripotency - many of which are also seen in embryonic stem cells. It was not only more successful but also faster that any previous method. The method so far worked on every type of cell - from liver to neurons - and on all tested mammals - including primates. What's more - if the cells are placed with growth hormones they can start multiplying exponentially and it may lead to a whole new organism in right conditions and be an alternative and more efficient method of cloning.
But the real horror is happening in the deep. The starfish are suffering from a sickness that makes them rip themselves apart. The arms start crawling in the opposite directions until the body breaks and insides spill out. This is the scariest thing I have heard about and I read a lot about biology that includes parasites bursting out of bodies and zombiefying creatures. Or wearing bodies of your victims as armour. Or becoming sperm dispenser for the first female of your species you encounter. You know nature.
NewScientist has an interactive tool showing temperature changes all over the world. Spoiler alert - it's warmer almost everywhere. Excapt few ocean spots and some regions of Antarctic the planet just gets warmer. For most of Europe, including Poland, it's little over 1oC. The warmest places are Amazon jungle and all the very cold north - Siberia and Canadian Arctic. Poor polar bears.
Turning differentiated cells back into stem cells isn't easy. Stem cells can become any other type of cells even a whole new organism but once they become differentiated there are changes in the structure of chromatin that seal the cell fate. It changes shape, metabolism and can only divide a set amount of times before dying. So far making them go back to the stem cell pluripotent state has been mostly unsuccessful. This means that both cloning the adult organisms and getting stem cell therapies going has been very slow. Including the controversy about harvesting and using embryonic stem cells.
However, recently scientist in Japan crated a method of reversing cells to the stem cell state by placing them in place the cells in a stressful situation, such as an acidic environment. Cells was exposed to a "sub-lethal" acidic environment, with a pH of 5.7, for 30 minutes. Some cells died but the rest started, slowly, over time of several day to show genetic markers of pluripotency - many of which are also seen in embryonic stem cells. It was not only more successful but also faster that any previous method. The method so far worked on every type of cell - from liver to neurons - and on all tested mammals - including primates. What's more - if the cells are placed with growth hormones they can start multiplying exponentially and it may lead to a whole new organism in right conditions and be an alternative and more efficient method of cloning.