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No need to taste the fish if you swallow it whole
Cultura Science/Brett Phibbs/Getty
in Brief Kill desk bugs with sticky tape
No need to taste the fish if you swallow it whole PITY poor penguins’ paltry palates. All they can taste, it seems, is saltiness or sourness. Lost is their ability to savour the sweet, bitter or umami flavours enjoyed by most animals. The receptors for these tastes may simply not work at the chilly temperatures in their habitat. Researchers discovered the birds’ taste deficits after screening their DNA for genes associated with taste buds. They drew a blank when looking for those that code for proteins usually used in detecting sweet, bitter and umami tastes (Current Biology, DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2015.01.026).
“As far as we know, penguins are the only birds that have lost three of the five basic tastes,” says Jianzhi George Zhang of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, who led the study. The key, he believes, is the absence of the gene that makes TRPM5, a protein vital for the three lost taste types, but not the surviving two. Previous studies showed that TRPM5 doesn’t function at low temperature, so the cold Antarctic may have made the three tastes unusable. Another possibility is that they became redundant because penguins often swallow their prey whole, so have little need for them. The two remaining tastes may allow them to avoid rotten food and keep track of their salt intake. “It’s likely that having sour and salty tastes is still beneficial to penguins,” Zhang says.
Common mouth bug helps colon cancer WHAT do your mouth and your behind have in common? The answer may be a cancerenhancing bacterium. Fusobacterium nucleatum can cause gum disease, but until recently it was assumed to be just one of many relatively harmless bacteria that live on our bodies. But the bacterium may have a darker side. It has recently been identified in high numbers in 18 | NewScientist | 21 February 2015
human colorectal tumours. Now researchers have shown that it seems to enhance colon cancer, by inhibiting the cancer-killing ability of natural killer cells, the first line of our immune defence against infection and cancer. Gilad Bachrach at the Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Dental Medicine in Jerusalem and his colleagues found that a bacterial protein called Fap2 binds
to a receptor on the surface of natural killer cells, helping tumour cells evade the immune system (Immunity, doi.org/z8r). “By activating this receptor, F. nucleatum prevents the killing of cancer cells by the natural killer cells,” Bachrach says. The bacterium-tumour relationship is probably mutually beneficial. F. nucleatum likes to grow in low-oxygen conditions, and tumours often provide such environments.
WANT to keep bacteria at bay? Reach into your desk drawer. A roll of transparent adhesive tape can be turned into a nifty antibacterial sheet. Depositing metal nanoparticles on a film’s surface can give it remarkable properties: silver turns it antibacterial and copper anti-fungal, with gold making it conduct electricity. The tricky bit is getting the film to accept nanoparticles: a harsh chemical bath is the usual way to break its surface bonds. But sticky tape comes ready for the job. Just unpeeling it breaks chemical bonds in the adhesive, priming it to react with metals, say Bartosz Grzybowski of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and his colleagues (Journal of the American Chemical Society, doi. org/zzn). To coat the tape, unpeel, soak it in a solution of metal salts, and you’re done.
Orion sports a giant dust hula hoop A BAND of stars may have blown enormous smoke rings in Orion. Eddie Schlafly of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, and his colleagues observed the Orion nebula complex, a huge starforming region that has its centre in the constellation. They analysed some 23 million stars to create a 3D map, and found a dust ring about 330 light years wide (Astrophysical Journal, doi.org/z8t). The team thinks that massive stars, which spew enormous amounts of energy, carved a bubble in the region’s gas and dust, pushing dust to the bubble’s edge to form a ring. These stars have since burned out, but finding their lower mass siblings could confirm the idea.
in Brief Kill desk bugs with sticky tape
No need to taste the fish if you swallow it whole PITY poor penguins’ paltry palates. All they can taste, it seems, is saltiness or sourness. Lost is their ability to savour the sweet, bitter or umami flavours enjoyed by most animals. The receptors for these tastes may simply not work at the chilly temperatures in their habitat. Researchers discovered the birds’ taste deficits after screening their DNA for genes associated with taste buds. They drew a blank when looking for those that code for proteins usually used in detecting sweet, bitter and umami tastes (Current Biology, DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2015.01.026).
“As far as we know, penguins are the only birds that have lost three of the five basic tastes,” says Jianzhi George Zhang of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, who led the study. The key, he believes, is the absence of the gene that makes TRPM5, a protein vital for the three lost taste types, but not the surviving two. Previous studies showed that TRPM5 doesn’t function at low temperature, so the cold Antarctic may have made the three tastes unusable. Another possibility is that they became redundant because penguins often swallow their prey whole, so have little need for them. The two remaining tastes may allow them to avoid rotten food and keep track of their salt intake. “It’s likely that having sour and salty tastes is still beneficial to penguins,” Zhang says.
Common mouth bug helps colon cancer WHAT do your mouth and your behind have in common? The answer may be a cancerenhancing bacterium. Fusobacterium nucleatum can cause gum disease, but until recently it was assumed to be just one of many relatively harmless bacteria that live on our bodies. But the bacterium may have a darker side. It has recently been identified in high numbers in 18 | NewScientist | 21 February 2015
human colorectal tumours. Now researchers have shown that it seems to enhance colon cancer, by inhibiting the cancer-killing ability of natural killer cells, the first line of our immune defence against infection and cancer. Gilad Bachrach at the Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Dental Medicine in Jerusalem and his colleagues found that a bacterial protein called Fap2 binds
to a receptor on the surface of natural killer cells, helping tumour cells evade the immune system (Immunity, doi.org/z8r). “By activating this receptor, F. nucleatum prevents the killing of cancer cells by the natural killer cells,” Bachrach says. The bacterium-tumour relationship is probably mutually beneficial. F. nucleatum likes to grow in low-oxygen conditions, and tumours often provide such environments.
WANT to keep bacteria at bay? Reach into your desk drawer. A roll of transparent adhesive tape can be turned into a nifty antibacterial sheet. Depositing metal nanoparticles on a film’s surface can give it remarkable properties: silver turns it antibacterial and copper anti-fungal, with gold making it conduct electricity. The tricky bit is getting the film to accept nanoparticles: a harsh chemical bath is the usual way to break its surface bonds. But sticky tape comes ready for the job. Just unpeeling it breaks chemical bonds in the adhesive, priming it to react with metals, say Bartosz Grzybowski of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and his colleagues (Journal of the American Chemical Society, doi. org/zzn). To coat the tape, unpeel, soak it in a solution of metal salts, and you’re done.
Orion sports a giant dust hula hoop A BAND of stars may have blown enormous smoke rings in Orion. Eddie Schlafly of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, and his colleagues observed the Orion nebula complex, a huge starforming region that has its centre in the constellation. They analysed some 23 million stars to create a 3D map, and found a dust ring about 330 light years wide (Astrophysical Journal, doi.org/z8t). The team thinks that massive stars, which spew enormous amounts of energy, carved a bubble in the region’s gas and dust, pushing dust to the bubble’s edge to form a ring. These stars have since burned out, but finding their lower mass siblings could confirm the idea.