Terrestrial Biodiversity hotspots and marine populations

I read a General Article in Current Science twice. I was to write an invitation to read it. The content was significant. But the style was horrible.
Anyway, what fascinated me about the article was a map of biodiversity hotspots in the world. I kept looking at it again, to distract myself from the painfully didactic text and kept wondering - what is common between these sites, so far apart geographically?
I could not take the picture from the article. So here is one from commons.wikimedia.org/

One hypothesis presented itself - these are new kinds of land forming...
After I finished writing the page in Current Science, I sat back to relax. And then I come across this paper in PNAS - "Geomorphic controls on elevational gradients of species richness" by Enrico Bertuzzo et al. in  PNAS  vol. 113  no. 7  1737–1742  February 16, 2016.
Not bad. My instincts were right when I wrote the invitation to read the paper on Biodiversity in Current Science.
Another paper that I had to introduce in the next issue of Current Science dealt with fish populations in the sea. So I could not help wondering whether the claims of this PNAS paper  - based on simulations - is true for the sea also.
So I went back to look at the PNAS paper again. At the end of the paper there is acknowledgement of funds received from... - the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology!
Not bad. The way content from diverse papers connect up. 

A sigh of relief: peptide that controls sighs found

It is not only relief, but often sadness or exhaustion may also cause sighing - a long breath. And, of course, there are also sighs without any of these - a spontaneous sigh that helps to reinflate the alveoli of your lungs. So what is the most proximal cause of sighing?

The center in the brain that controls breathing (retrotrapezoid nucleus) sends signals to the respiratory rhythm generator in the brain (preBötzinger Complex). These signals consist of two peptides: neuromedin B and gastrin-releasing peptide. A shot of these peptides elicits sighing. Blocking either of these peptides reduces sighing and blocking both peptides eliminates it altogether.

Whether it is relief from tension, emotions, tiredness or any other distal causes, this is the peptide that ultimately sets off a sigh.

A report in the recent issue of  Nature - 8th February 2016 - looks into the peptidergic control circuit for sighing.

Are you a morning person or a night owl?

Sleep researchers have been identifying genes that determine whether you get up early and go to bed early or lead a hectic life late at night, finding it easier to sleep into the morning hours. The first clock gene found was per in drosophila a few decades ago. The gene influences the circadian rhythm. And then a few more followed, one by one. Now in a fell swoop, using genome wide association studies, of self reported morning persons, scientists have identified 15 loci that contribute to the habit of rising early in the morning.

Interestingly, getting up early and going to bed early does not necessarily make you healthy, wealthy and wise. Excess body weight, depression etc have also been implicated for the tendency to rise early. But these factors do not seem to figure in the genetic analysis. Yet.

Nature Communications has open access report. Take a look.

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160202/ncomms10448/full/ncomms10448.html

New clues in the genetics of Schizophrenia

There is a paper in the latest issue of Nature that spells the development of a new perspective on schizophrenia. The paper by Aswin Sekar and others identifies the genetic risks for schizophrenia.

It was well known that the Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC), the genetic system that forms the basis for the distinguishing of self and the other by the immune system, has a strong association with schizophrenia. But the genes and molecular mechanisms for this had not been identified. The recent paper in Nature does exactly that.

There are many structurally diverse alleles of the complement component 4 (C4) genes of the Major Histocompatibility Complex in Chromosome 6. These alleles produce widely varying levels of C4A and C4B proteins in the brain. In schizophrenia, there is more of the C4A protein.

The C4 proteins are localized mainly in neuronal synapses, dendrites, axons, and cell bodies. They are responsible for synapse elimination during postnatal development. The over expression of C4A proteins thus explains the reduced numbers of synapses in the brains of individuals with schizophrenia.

The findings are significant since now one can focus on genetically modifying the expression of the C4A allele. I predict that there will be more papers in this direction this year itself.

Aswin Sekar et. al. Schizophrenia risk from complex variation of complement component 4, 

Nature (2016) doi:10.1038/nature16549

Current Science, December 10th

Here is the link to the pdf file of the column that invites readers to three key papers in the 10th December issue of Current Science:
http://www.currentscience.ac.in/Volumes/109/11/1906.pdf

This one page pdf is equivalent to three postings - as per the earlier standard of this blog.

I went to Bangalore to meet the editorial board members. They had organised a series of talks by the members of the editorial board.
I've not sat through lectures even in my student days. Never had the patience. It was faster to read and understand. So I used to spend more time in the library than in lecture halls. But this was different. I sat through all of them. A fantastic series of talks for one and a half days!

And thus I had a chance to meet a classmate, a senior and a Professor from my JNU days. More than 25 years have passed since I met them. But it felt like it was only yesterday. I guess we all looked slightly older.

Then there was a short meeting of the editorial board.

It looks as if my goal of changing the look and feel of the journal may soon be realised. 

A new life line for this blog

Having moved from IISER Pune to freelance work again, I was feeling rather hopeless about this blog. No time to read papers let alone writing about them.

But now it will get a new breath of life. Current Science has called me in to be a science writing consultant for them. A part of the work will be to highlight three scientific papers/articles in each issue - in the very first page of the journal! More or less what I have been doing here in this blog. So instead of quoting Nature, PNAS or Science, I will be pointing out some interesting papers in Current Science. And I can post more regularly.

Of course, the style will change a little to suit the column titled In This Issue. But hope I will be able to entertain you at least once or twice a week with tidbits from science.

Thanks to all the readers of this blog who encouraged me by peeping in.

A microphone that selects the speaker

Human beings are wonderful creatures. They can have a conversation in busy streets and other noisy areas. We select what we want to listen to.

But a microphone? Believe me, I have a tough time recording interviews in such situations. I spend effort in selecting the microphone. Should I use a gun mike, a collar mike, ....?

And at the end of the exercise I have to spend time cleaning up the audio track and ultimatly end up with a bad sound track.

A recent paper in PNAS (August 25, 2015 | vol. 112 | no. 34 | 10595–10598) gives me hope that, one day, I will carry a microphone that is as selective as I am.

The cocktail-party-listener prototype was fabricated with a metamaterial - acrylonitrile butadiene styrene plastics using fused filament fabrication 3D printing technology.

Guys, are you listening or what?