Smoking Gun on Evolution

Researchers at Harvard University and U.C. Berkeley have produced a study on the color differentiation observed in the deer mice that inhabit the sand dunes of Nebraska. Most of the species are gray and earthen in color (so as to blend in with their surroundings better), but the mice found on the sand dunes are much lighter (more of a tan or light brown). According to the BBC article, this difference in color is from a mutation that occurred most likely around 4,000 years ago. How do they know this, well, as the scientists put it,"most animals known to quickly evolve new features do so by expressing a variation of a gene that already exists, rather than evolving a new type of gene altogether." These dune mice evolved a new single gene that is called Agouti. Through a series of genetic tests on these mice they found that the gene did not exist prior to the time frame suggested above; furthermore, they were able to quantitatively predict the survival edge this gave the Agouti mice living on the dunes, 0.5%. To sum it up team member Professor Hopi Hoekstra puts it best when he says, "It's a two part process. First the mutation has to occur and second, selection has to increase its frequency." Pretty cool, huh!?!

Missing frogs' legs solved, sort of.

Scientists believe they have solved the quandary of the enormous amount of adult frogs seen around the globe with missing limbs, and believe it or not they don't think it is being caused by toxic pollution! Contrary to popular belief the culprit is purported to be the Dragonfly Nymph. These little critters and young frogs inhabit in the same areas as they develop into mature adults. Scientists have observed the Dragonfly Nymphs in action! As Biologist Stanley Sessions describes, from this BBC article, "Once they grab the tadpole, they use their front legs to turn it around, searching for the tender bits, in this case the hind limb buds, which they then snip off with their mandibles." Mystery solved, pretty neat!

Kid takes on meteor, and wins!

Gerrit Blank is a 14 year old kid from Germany. One day when he was on his way to school he saw a bright light flash in front of him and noticed a pain in one of his hands. Seconds later he then heard an eardrum rattling kaboom and a foot wide crater appeared in the ground near where he was standing. Gerrit had been struck by a pea sized asteroid traveling approximately 30,000 mph and survived! The odds of this happening are one in a million. Scientists retrieved the pea sized meteorite from the crash site and confirmed that it was not of this world. Now Gerrit sports a cool little scar on his hand and one heck of a story. Talk about lucky, here's a link to the original story.

One girl, two hearts!

This is pretty amazing if you ask me. Fourteen years ago young Hannah Clark (she was two) was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy and had to have open heart surgery to save her life. However, the doctors that performed the surgery did not simply remove her heart and implant the donor, instead they grafted the new heart right on to her old one (see original story for diagrams). Because she was a transplant recipient she had to take lots of drugs to suppress her immune system so that her body would not reject/devour the new organ. This eventually led to her developing a certain form of cancer that is common for people with organ transplants, so the doctors removed her donor heart in order to get her off the immune suppressing drugs and treat her for the cancer. When they did this, they found that her original heart had managed to heal itself during the time that the donor was doing most of the work. Amazing!