#Genetics

[company-focus]

https://nicole-534.tengp.icu/i/aYEd3rg

[hellenic-whore]

I thought this was funny

[underthehedge]

CTVT and a weird niche theory I fell down the rabbit hole about - giant transforming retroviruses???

This is a story about how a single line on a wikipedia page sent me down a rabbit hole of finding one scientist's fringe theory that's juuuust plausible enough to make me question everything while almost certainly being absolute fucking bunk.

Some background

So, on parts of tumblr at least we all know about Canine Transmissible Venereal Tumour, aka The Immortal Cancer Dog. For those who don't know, it's a cancer dogs get, usually on their junk, that unlike most other cancers, isn't made up of their own cells. The cells are actually all descended from this one dog or wolf that lived like 11,000 years ago and are, arguably, all technically that one dog. A dog that became a single-celled infectious disease.

We have a wealth of genetic, histological and observational evidence for this. As in, we know it what population of canids it came from, we know it's got a weird chromosomal structure compared to normal dogs, we know it's genetically distinct from the hosts. We also know it's not the only one out there: There's a similar thing in Syrian hamsters and also the famous Tasmanian Devil Facial Tumour Disease (DFTD).

Which made me pause when I was reading something on wikipedia about the devil facial tumour and saw a line mentioning that it was now known to be caused by a giant virus, much like CTVT. Which...huh? Oh I hadn't heard that afore.

Giant viruses

Ok so giant viruses are a thing and they're fuckin cool. They're a relatively recent discovery and comparatively huge, i.e. bigger than a bunch of bacteria. They were only discovered in 1981 and we still don't know an enormous amount about them but they're big and have large genomes and because of the way viruses are they're not easy to detect unless you're specifically looking for them.

They show up under microscopy (sometimes) and you can find them with genetic probes but you gotta already be looking for them to see that really. Current research though basically says they're more common than we think, just overlooked, and there's software out there that scans through genomic data to find sequences that might indicate their presence. There's even a possibility that one group might be involved in some cases of pneumonia in humans, though I need to stress that that's extremely not confirmed right now.

The "wait, what?" moment

So I mentioned that it was a line in the wiki article for DFTD that had me going "wait, really?", the line in question was this:

A study found evidence for an infectious agent resembling a giant virus that was capable of turning heathy cells into cancer cells. It was found to be a huge retrovirus with similar viruses being found in human and canine cancer cells.

Big If True.

So of course I check the source, which was a 2020 paper by Lusi et al. titled "A transforming giant virus discovered in Canine Transmissible Venereal Tumour: Stray dogs and Tasmanian devils opening the door to a preventive cancer vaccine".

Hang on, CTVT not DFTD? This is where some alarm bells went off because uh, as mentioned at the start, we know a shit ton about CTVT. Including the fact that it's all one specific dog. Which doesn't fit at all with the idea that it's caused by a virus transforming host cells into cancer cells.

So what fucking gives? What is this research that fully overturns decades of pretty conclusive research to the contrary?

Is this another case of Dr Barbara McClintock? Who spent decades being ridiculed by the scientific community over her wild theory that was, in fact, 100% right even if it seemed to fly in the fact of all prior evidence?

Or is this a Dr Donald I. Williamson situation wherein a scientist with appropriate training is just wildly but extremely vehemently wrong?

[dk-thrive]

What do parents pass on to their kids if not all of their wounds?

— Gbenga Adesina, from "Multitude Child" in Poets House, 2017 (via Read a Little Poetry)

[hellsitegenetics]

Are.. are there any matches for Smash Mouth All Star full lyrics? I need to know. For science!!!

String identified:

c t T ga a't t at t t a g t g a t t a a a

, t a tat cg A t 't t cg t t a t t g g 't a t t a gt at t a gt

c t , c t at' g t tag t ac tt? ' 't g ' 't g

, ' a a ta Gt ga , g a , ' a c ta Gt t , gt a A a tat gtt g tg ta a t

t' a c ac a t a t gt c ' t at t gt t t t g t gg t t att ct

T c at gttg tt t T at gttg a gt a ' , at ? Tat' t a t A gt

, ' a a ta Gt ga , g a , ' a c ta Gt t , gt a A a tat gtt g tg ta a t

, ' a a ta Gt ga , g a , ' a c ta Gt t , gt a A a tat gtt g tg ta

c a C a cag ga? t gt aa t ac a: , at a cct c a tt A c a a tt cag

t a tat cg A t 't t cg t t a t t g g 't a t t a gt at t a gt

c t , c t at' g t tag t ac tt ' 't g (g!) ' 't g

, ' a a ta Gt ga , g a , ' a c ta Gt t , gt a

A a tat gtt g tg ta a t A a tat gtt g tg ta a t

Closest match: Ennomos fuscantarius genome assembly, chromosome: 3 Common name: Dusky Thorn Moth

[wolverinequeen]

Unusual cat gene that seems to occur naturally in Poland and Romania. This gene is called Karpati. More can be read here 

[garden-of-willows]

made these studying cat genetics over the past 2 weeks!

i felt like there weren't enough visual guides of cat genetics so i went ahead and made some simple ones, my main references were Sparrow's Garden the website, Sparrow's Garden the blog, Messybeast, and The Little Carnivore.

[todaysbird]

this green honeycreeper exhibits a genetic mutation known as bilateral gynandromorphism, where one half of the body is male and one half is female. the bird was spotted in the wild in columbia; researchers suspect the bird is not able to reproduce, but appears to be in good health. they are the second known example of a bilateral gynandromorph green honeycreeper; the last was recorded over 100 years ago.

[cannedpeachess]

No because the way I get so VISCERALLY angry when someone refers to an animal as albino when they’re actually leucistic, erythristic, or xanthochromatic is both deeply irrational and greatly unhealthy

ALBINISM

Total loss of melanin in the body, i.e. skin, hair/fur/feathers, and eyes (the eyes look pink/red because the lack of melanin in the eye exposes the blood vessels within it to light, which then reflects their red hue)

LEUCISM

Partial loss of melanin in the body; the pattern of melanin distribution is unique in each case, so some people or animals with this condition may have patches of typically-colored skin/hair/fur in addition to pigmented eyes, while others may only have the aforementioned ocular pigmentation

ERYTHRISM

Abnormal prevalence of reddish pigment in the skin/hair/fur/feathers of an animal; concentration of this pigment varies case by case, so humans/animals with the condition can present anywhere from only slightly pink to intensely red in color; to my knowledge, the condition does not affect the eyes

XANTHOCHROMISM

Abnormal prevalence of yellow pigment in the skin/hair/fur/feathers of an animal; similar to erythrism, color intensity can vary from light golden hues to deep yellows; again, to my knowledge, the condition does not affect the eyes

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk

[wolf-pearl]

Ok so I'm taking a genetics class right now and in lab we've been given fruit flies with different mutations that we need to breed over the course of the semester.

Now, first thing I learned: fruit flies don't eat fruit. They eat yeast. They eat the yeast on fermenting fruit. They can not actually eat fruit. Their name is a lie.

Secondly, one of the two mutant lines I was given to cross are flies with the apterous mutation, aka they're wingless. I feel so bad for them, they can't do the one thing they're named for, they cant fly.

And then I realized. My fruit flies are in truth insects that eat yeast and can't fly.

Anyways, I've been calling them my yeast crawls and I am their god now.

[beakers-and-telescopes]

With the fast fashion industry… how it is… finding sustainable ways to make fabric is super important.  Fibers from synthetic fabrics make up 35% of the microplastics that make their way to the ocean.  Natural fibers sourced from plants or animals are much more environmentally sound options, including silk.

Currently, the only way to get natural silk on a large scale is to harvest it from silkworms.  You’ve probably heard about the strength and durability of spider silk (it is 6x stronger than Kevlar!) but as of yet there hasn’t been a good way of getting it.  Raising spiders the way people do silkworms isn’t really an option.  Spiders need a lot of room to build their webs compared to silkworms, and individual spiders don’t produce that much silk.  Plus, when you put a whole bunch of spiders in captivity together, they tend to start eating each other.

Attempts to artificially recreate spider silk have also been less than successful.  Spider silk has a surface layer of glycoproteins and lipids on it that works as a sort of anti-aging “skin”- allowing the silk to withstand conditions such as sunlight and humidity.  But this layer has been very tricky to reproduce.

However, as scientists in China realized, silkworms produce that same kind of layer on their silk.  So what if we just genetically modified silkworms to produce spider silk?

That is exactly what the researchers at Donghua University in Shanghai did.  A team of researchers introduced spider silk protein genes to silkworms using CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing and microinjections in silkworm eggs.  In addition to this, they altered the spider silk proteins so that they would interact properly with the other proteins in silkworm glands.  And it worked!  This is the first study ever to produce full length spider silk proteins from silkworms.

The applications of this are incredibly exciting.  In addition to producing comfortable textiles and new, innovative bulletproof vests, silkworm generated spider silk could be used in cutting edge smart materials or even just to create better performing sutures.  In the future, this team intends to research how to modify this new spider silk to be even stronger, and they are confident that “large-scale commercialization is on the horizon."

[antifainternational]

TFW when you're a white supremacist and science keeps disproving that your European ancestors were white.

[fuckyeaharchaeology]

The reconstructed face of the “Cheddar Man” (c. 7,000 BCE) compared to his living descendant, Adrian Targett    

The Cheddar Man is a Mesolithic skeleton that was recovered from England’s Cheddar Gorge in 1903. At around 9,000 years old, the Cheddar Man is the oldest complete skeleton ever discovered in the UK, and has long been hailed as the “first Briton.” DNA analysis on the Cheddar Man from 2018 indicated that he was lactose intolerant, had light-colored eyes, dark brown or black hair, and had a dark to black skin tone. Although the discovery of the Cheddar Man’s dark skin tone was surprising for both scientists and the public alike, it corresponds with recent research suggesting that genes linked to lighter skin only began to spread into Europe about 8,500 years ago - approximately 32,000 years later than what was previously believed.  

In addition to the development on his skin tone, the Cheddar Man surprised scientists in 1997 when DNA analysis revealed that he had a living descendant - a retired history teacher named Adrian Targett. Targett and the Cheddar Man share the same mtDNA, which is inherited through the mother. In other words, they share a common maternal ancestor. What is even more remarkable is that Targett lives in Cheddar, only a half mile away from where his 9,000-year-old ancestor was discovered.

Targett was not invited to the initial reveal of his ancestor’s new facial reconstruction, but he has since seen it and has commented on the family resemblance. “I do feel a bit more multicultural now,” he once joked in an interview “And I can definitely see that there is a family resemblance. That nose is similar to mine. And we have both got those blue eyes.”

The development of the Cheddar Man’s skin tone has generated resistance, especially among far-right and white supremacist circles. Targett, however, is unbothered by it, stating that it is “marvelous what scientists can reconstruct once they sequence the DNA.” When asked if he thought whether the findings affected the way people think about race, Targett responded: “Yes, I do think it’s significant. Not many people in Cheddar mind it. But the lesson is that we’re all immigrants, whether you’ve been in a place for 10 minutes or 9,000 years. We’ve all come from somewhere.”

[serawis]

So I noticed that a lot of the CC looks rather odd on infants and that's because a lot of them don't have any babyfat, and there's something uncanny (although funny!) about an infant with chiselled cheeks. The same goes for toddlers and children - so I made this. This was intentionally made for infants in mind but also works for toddlers and children too, especially the other swatches as they have just a little less babyfat on them. Now your kids can really look like kids! I also included a little blush that adds a natural redness to the face. ♥

- SERAWIS - Puppyface (overlay + blush)

HQ Compatible

Unisex

I-T (overlay)

I-E (blush)

Maxis Match

Download under the cut! (free, no ads)

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@maxismatchccworld @mmoutfitters @emilyccfinds @coffee-cc-finds @alwaysfreecc @public-ccfinds

[annasellheim]

Next part- MRI shenanigans