Mendel’s peas, dog origins, covid “decoy” treatment and the diet of a giant prehistoric shark…

July marks the bicentenary of Gregor Mendel’s birth, the famous monk whose experiments in peas determined the means of inheritance of genetic traits long before we knew what genes or DNA were, leading to him being hailed as “the father of genetics”. This is the power of scientific methodology: that a careful and logical observation of natural processes (and selectively altering some of their conditions) can reveal fundamental truths about the natural laws underlying those processes, even when the mechanistic details are unknown. There’s a special issue in the Nature Reviews Genetics, the highlight of which is the accessible perspective piece here. There is a wonderful quote therein from Francois Jacob (a pioneer of molecular biology): “The process of experimental science does not consist in explaining the unknown by the known, as in certain mathematical proofs, it aims to give an account of what is observed by the properties of what is imagined”.

The evolution of dogs from grey wolves has fascinated researchers (and many others!) for a long time. Dogs were the earliest example of domestication of a wild species by humans, and uniquely occurred about 15,000 years ago, during the last Ice Age. It has always been a challenge proving where the first dogs were domesticated though, and whether there was one origin, or if it occurred in multiple times and places. Comparing the DNA of modern wolves and dogs, or looking at the archaelogical record, didn’t solve the mystery. So a big team of researchers has instead looked at DNA from over 70 ancient wolf remains from across Europe, Siberia and North America, spanning a time range of 100,000 years – and whole genomes too, not just snippets of DNA. Both early and modern dogs were most similar to ancient wolves from eastern Eurasia, but it’s not quite that simple.

As the figure below shows, dogs in the Near East and Africa also appear to have ancestry from a distinct population related to modern southwest Eurasian wolves. Either there were two separate domestication events, or one domestication event with early dog populations then interbreeding with a different population of grey wolves a second time. None of the analysed genomes was a direct match, meaning the exact local population is still to be determined. A good research summary from which the below figure is taken can be found here. Original research published in Nature here.

Figure 1 from “Ice Age wolf genomes home in on dog origins”| Two sources of ancestry for dogs. A map representing the ancestry of early dogs relative to ancient-wolf genomes. Pie charts show the proportion of each dog’s ancestry that derives from an eastern dog progenitor (blue) and a western one (yellow). Dogs from northeastern Europe, Siberia and the Americas (not shown) have a shared origin from an eastern source, whereas those from western Eurasia and Africa also have ancestry from a second, western, source. Black crosses indicate locations of ancient wolves (25,000 to 10,000 years old) that our analyses show are not progenitors of dogs. kyr, thousand years.Credit: Bergström, A. et al./Nature (CC BY 4.0) https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-01551-z

Following on from my last post, here is a good update on the child hepatitis outbreak. US cases seem to have stabilised (for now) but UK ones have not. A role for coronavirus infection still seems to be the most plausible explanation, particularly as the UK has been very slow to vaccinate children under 11 compared to other countries.

A novel approach to tackling Sars-CoV2 has been trialled in mice. Sars-CoV-2 virus binds to the ACE2 receptor on our cell surfaces to gain access. So the researchers engineered ACE2 protein “decoys” to bind up the virus instead, harmlessly neutralising it. The decoys showed good results against different covid variants, including Omicron, whereas 2 out of the 3 antibody treatments they compared the decoys to did not. This is potentially a good weapon that could be added to the anti-Sars arsenal. Published in Science Translational Medicine here.

Today’s fantastic animal is the sadly extinct megalodon, the largest shark that ever lived, at around 20 metres long (compare to the great white shark, which is around 6 metres). Researchers have used an analysis of nitrogen levels in fossilised shark teeth to determine what these apex predators ate. The answer agrees (more or less) with those glorious monster movies: it ate everything, including other top predators. Original research published in Science Advances here (for the technically minded). There’s a fun informative video about why megalodon went extinct on Youtube here. Or you could watch all the crazy videos of people who think it’s still around today!

Featured Image

Reconstrucción de un Megalodon a escala real (16 metros de largo) y una dentadura en el Museo de la Evolución de Puebla, photo by Luis Alvaz, Wikimedia Commons.

Figure 1 from “Ice Age wolf genomes home in on dog origins”. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-01551-z

Plague, long covid theories, covid hepatitis in kids, and plastic-chomping worms

(Guess which story in the headline will be the light relief one!)

As the Covid pandemic roars apace (no, it is not “endemic” now, and, plainly no, there is no lasting “herd immunity”!) increasing numbers of people are suffering from long-term symptoms collectively dubbed Long Covid. What exactly causes these symptoms is an urgent question for science, as effective treatments cannot be fully developed until we know what underlying pathology. A nice piece in Science magazine neatly summarises the three key hypotheses for this (which are not necessarily mutually exclusive): persistent viral infection, a dysregulated immune response, and damage and poor oxygenation caused by micro blood clots.

On the (admittedly depressing subject) of covid, an Israeli study is also pointing the finger at covid for the recent rises in cases of paediatric hepatitis and liver failure. Several countries have seen a rise in serious hepatitis (liver inflammation) in children, with unfortunately some children requiring transplants and even some deaths. One of the largest increases has been seen in the UK, with 240 cases as of 7th June (source: UKHSA here). Most are in children under 5 years old (so unvaccinated against covid, before the anti-vaxxers start frothing at the mouth). Should you go to the UKHSA website, you will note that they still list adenovirus as the leading suspect for the rise, but this has been hotly disputed – largely because this particular strain of virus has not been previously associated with hepatitis, and, whilst it’s sometimes being found in these children, it’s not really being found in the liver. In fact, several experts pointed out that it was a bizarre hypothesis with no real evidence to support it. I personally couldn’t understand this focus. Others suggested lockdowns leading to an “immunity debt” – which was frankly absurd, given that many countries with affected children didn’t even have lockdowns!

Several experts have pointed the finger at Sars-CoV2 – and notably, the UK was very late in approving the vaccine for 5-11 year olds, compared to other countries. Hepatitis has already been noted as a complication of serious covid. Now, an Israeli study has confirmed what everyone without their head in the sand knew: it’s a sequel of covid infection, caused by an autoimmune reaction. Importantly, this means it needs treating with steroids not anti-virals alone. Findings of adenovirus were likely coincidental, or an opportunistic infection after the children were already ill. “The scientists concluded that the most likely causes of the acute hepatitis were either a post-infection immune reaction like MIS-C or an abnormal immune response to the novel coronavirus which primed the body for other infectious agents like adenovirus.” The study is paywalled, but there is a good write-up in The Jerusalem Post here.

The persistent denial of reputable organisations like the UKHSA of this being covid-related is hugely concerning to see. There seems to be a vested interest in denying covid as the cause – possibly because that would mean admitting that we are letting an unknown virus rip through our largely unvaccinated children uncontrolled after saying it was “mild”.

So, sorry to bang on the same drum repeatedly, but I’m cross about this – especially as my own child just recently contracted covid in April, right after I was finally able to book a vaccine for him (which I then had to postpone). Covid is much more dangerous than flu, including to children, and multiple infections can only spell bad news – if not hepatitis, and the increased risk of other complications – then a big risk of developing long covid. What’s worse, it seems that vaccination may not significantly lower your risk of getting long covid. They are working on better vaccines – a key step up would be intranasal vaccines to stop transmission, but you can’t wait for that. So, vaccinate yourself and your children, wear a good quality (FFP2/N95) mask in indoor settings in public, and petition your schools and governments to install proper air filtration. There is a way out of this – and it’s not denial and pretending everything is fine now.

Had enough of viruses? How about a deadly bacterium? One of the worst ever, in fact: Yersinia pestis, the causative microbe of plague. The origins of the infamous Black Death of 1346-53, which has the distinction of being the worst pandemic in human history, wiping out some 60% of the population of Europe, have always been something of a mystery. It was known it came from somewhere in East Asia, before spreading throughout Europe, but never exactly where. Now, researchers have done a remarkable piece of detective work and traced its origins back to modern-day Kyrgyzstan. They examined skeletons from cemeteries near Lake Issyk-Kul, which had a sudden surge in the number of deaths in the 1300s. The graves described their owners as having died of the “pestilence”, and, sure enough, they found DNA from the bacterium in teeth from people that died in 1338-39. Not only that, but genomic analysis revealed it as the direct ancestor of the strain that caused the Black Death some 8 years later (and of modern day strains). The most probable means of its spread was therefore via trade routes that passed through the region. Full study in Nature here.

And finally, two piece of lighter news. Bones of the largest carnivorous dinosaur in Europe have been unearthed in the Isle of Wight in the UK, a treasure trove of dinosaur fossils. It seems to belong to a species of spinosaurus, and was up to 10 metres long – bigger than a T.rex.

This week’s Featured Image is Zophobas morio, the superworm, which is actually a beetle larva. Anyway, this cool little beastie will happily eat polystyrene for dinner – and even thrive on it. The larvae munches the plastic – a common staple of takeaway containers and packaging – into tiny bits, but the real work is done by bacteria in its gut, which have key enzymes able to break down the polystyrene. It’s hoped that these enyzmes can be engineered for use in plastics recycling. Full study in Microbial Genomics here (favourite quote: “the faeces changed from light brown to white”!)

Featured Image

The superworm, photo from University of Queensland.

Smart tech for diabetes, new improved human genome, and return of the beaver.

Firstly, smart tech starting to make a big impact in health. A new hybrid artificial pancreas system for type 1 diabetes makes it much easier to manage insulin doses and blood glucose, particularly for young children. Type 1 diabetes results from autoimmune destruction of the beta cells of the pancreas, which normally make insulin, a hormone that promotes glucose uptake from the blood. Long term, it is fatal if untreated. Insulin injections have been the standard therapy for years, but it’s difficult to manage well with the daily fluctuations in blood glucose that occur with food intake and activity levels, particularly overnight. The new system combines a glucose monitor, insulin pump and an app into a “closed loop hybrid system.” This means that insulin doses need to be administered manually at mealtimes, but all the rest of the time the system works by itself. This is particularly useful in young children, for whom it is difficult to manage peaks and troughs in blood glucose, especially given their highly variable activity levels, food intake and growth spurts. It showed much better results than a control group. Study published in the New England Journal of Medicine here.

Related to that, the NHS in England is rolling out a skin sensor to monitor glucose levels, as a trial showed that, paired with an app, it reduced the need for fingerprick blood tests by up to 50%. This is a big difference, and will significantly improve diabetics quality of life (and hopefully also their health, as good blood glucose management is key to preventing complications).

Regrettably, we can anticipate a substantial increase in type 1 diabetes in children, as covid-19 infection raises the risk of developing the disease by up to 166%. This is a risk that could have anticipated, given that it’s known that type 1 diabetes often develops subsequent to viral infections such as rubella, and is another damning indictment of the current policy of mass infection.

On the lines of “new and improved”, we now have a beautifully sequenced new and improved version of the human genome. I’m old enough to remember when the first draft of the human genome came out, to great excitement, 21 years ago, when I was a student. Everyone in science had been watching the race between the publicly funded Human Genome Project and private Celera Corporation. When the project started, the computing power available wasn’t even sufficient to complete the job in anything like a reasonable time – the researchers relied on Moore’s law giving a doubling of processing power every year, meaning that it would later be sufficient – which it was. That original, although a hugely significant scientific achievement, didn’t in fact manage to sequence every last bit of the genome: there’s a lot of repetitive DNA outside of genes that’s quite difficult to sequence, and, of course, there is variability amongst human genomes. Specifically, they sequenced the “euchromatic” DNA, which is less densely packed and gene-rich, and left out the “heterochromatic” DNA. The latter is largely in the centromeres that hold the two sister chromatids of the chromosome together, and the telomeres, which form protective buffers at the end of chromosomes (and are selectively lost as we age). The “Telomere to Telomere” consortium has filled in the last remaining unsequenced 8%, giving us a much better understanding of the genomic architecture of the chromosomes. Additionally, they discovered more than 2 million additional variants in the human genome. The research is published in Science magazine, in 6 related papers, the first of which may be found here.

Today’s wonderful animal is the Eurasian beaver, which has been reintroduced to London 400 years after they became locally extinct. Beavers are ecosystem engineers, and it’s hoped they will restore biodiversity and limit flooding. A pair were released on the Thames in Enfield. Here’s hoping they flourish (and that our water companies stop dumping sewage in rivers).

Featured image

Eurasian Beaver (nature reserve in Ukraine), Ryzhkov Sergey, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Intermittently fasting flies, spiders, covid news (good and bad) and dancing PhD students.

In my last post, I focused on how what you eat, rather than how much of it, is an important predictor of obesity. There is increasing evidence that when you eat is also important too. There has been a rise in popularity of intermittent fasting diets – either eating only at certain times, or alternating days when you and eat. It seems like, in fruit flies at least, time-restricted eating increases their lifespan and improves their health. This involved an extended period of overnight fasting, which seems a lot more achievable (and probably safer) than alternate day fasting, for example. The study links this to the circadian rhythm, which may also explain why shift workers on irregular or night shifts are more prone to ill health. Full study here.

Good news, bad news with Covid-19. Good first: a large-scale trial has shown that a commonly used drug to treat rheumatoid arthritis, baracitinib, reduces the risk of hospitalised patient’s dying by 13%, which is not insignificant. It works by dampening down the immune response: the steroid dexamethasone, also used to treat covid, does the same thing by a different means, highlighting that an over-active immune response could be causing severe disease in some people. Bad news now: even if you only had a mild case of covid (like I did, pre-vaccines, gulp), it significantly elevates your risk of having a heart attack for up to a year after infection, not to mention other cardiovascular problems, such as pulmonary, embolisms, stroke, etc. This is a massive study, so a robust finding, and the risk applied even if you were young and relatively healthy. Yet another reason why we should be taking the long-term effects of covid seriously, rather than let infections rip around the globe. Full study published here.

This came out a little while, but I’m highlighting it here because it’s so shocking. What do you think the leading cause of death in pregnant women in the US is? Pre-eclampsia? Haemorrhage? Infection? No, it’s homicide. That’s right: if you’re a pregnant woman in the United States, you’re more likely to be murdered than die of any pregnancy related complication. Oh, and if you’re a Black woman in the US, that risk is triple that of a white woman. Younger women (and underage, pregnant girls), are also at greatly heightened risk. As the study found: “Homicide during pregnancy or within 42 days of the end of pregnancy exceeded all the leading causes of maternal mortality by more than twofold.” No prizes for guessing which sex is doing the murdering. People working with victims of domestic violence have known for a long time that the risk of violence often begins or escalates during pregnancy. I’m actually lost for words, but at least with the data now being collected, it can hopefully attract both funding and action to tackle it. Original study published in Obstetrics and Gynecology here (paywalled).

Definitely time for something more light-hearted: how about watching the winners of this year’s “Dance your PhD” competition?

And finally, this post’s weird and wonderful animal (featured image) is the false widow spider. Actually, this is just disturbing and creepy. This species has been invading the UK (not its natural home) for over a century now, and is notorious for its painful bites. Well, now, for the first time, it has been recorded capturing a bat in its web, and feeding on it. Yes, that’s right, an actual bat – a pipistrelle bat, to be precise: the smallest in the UK but nonetheless prey of considerable size compared to the spider. You’re welcome, arachnophobes. Study here (and the researchers encourage you to email them if you see one).

Featured image

Steatodis nobilis, the noble false widow spider. By Alexis Lours – Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=114760823

Is a pan-coronavirus vaccine possible? Plus: sweaty humans and the barn owl of dinosaurs.

I’m aware that I’ve already broken my promise not to talk about coronavirus, so I guess it won’t hurt if I break it again, right? Anyway, you may be concerned about all this talk of variants in the news, particularly the India variant that is wreaking such havoc in Asia. There is justifiable concern that the vaccines we’ve developed may not be as effective against variants that will evolve. This, of course, is one good reason why we should aim to get as close to “zero covid” as possible: keeping the number of cases down limits the possibility of advantageous (to the virus) mutations to arise, potentially ones that we would have to develop new vaccines against, in a potentially endless cycle.

But what if we could make a global coronavirus vaccine that would not only be effective against all the different variants of covid-19, but also potentially against other deadly coronaviruses like MERS and SARS-CoV-1? This could preventially prevent the next pandemic. Researchers are already looking into this, as this interesting and thoughtful (and hopeful!) piece in Science explores. Many of these are targeting the common “spike” protein that these viruses use to infect cells, but focusing on generating antibodies against multiple different regions, particularly those that are common across different virus species and that do not vary as much. Others take the approach of trying to active T-cell responses, rather than B-cell producing antibodies, or even the old-school tried and tested means of using a combination of inactivated whole viruse to generate an immune response. It’s encouraging that scientists are already thinking ahead and trying to tackle this problem.

Why are humans so sweaty? Sorry: but yes, we are. Really sweaty. Compared to most other primates, we have 10x the density of sweat glands in our skin. This is our key way of regulating our body temperature and helping us to cool down. Unlike most other apes, we evolved on the hot, dry African savannah, and not the jungle. Not only that, but we relied heavily on the ability to run to hunt prey, particularly over long distances. All that makes for a hot hot human who needs to cool down: sweating works by evaporative cooling, in which the heat energy dissipates as the moisture on our skin vaporises.

But how did we evolve this ability? A lot of the traits that we think of as human are complex, evolving changes in multiple genes. Increasing the density of sweat glands, however, appears to have been relatively simple. This is controlled by the activity of the gene Engrailed (first discovered in fruit flies – another example of how important this model organism has been). By altering the activity of control “enhancer” elements of Engrailed in mice, researchers have demonstrated that multiple changes in the control regions of this gene have resulted in higher levels of Engrailed, and so more sweat glands. It’s a really neat piece of work that also demonstrates a key theme of evolutionary developmental biology: changes in regulatory DNA often have more profound effects than changes in the bits that actually code for proteins. There’s an accessible Science Daily article here:

Today’s amazing animal is, alas, extinct. It’s an extremely bizarre (and cute) dinosaur called the shuvuuia that had extremely good hearing and night vision, judging by analysis of fossils of its skull. Of course, birds are descended from dinosaurs (theropod dinosaurs, to be precise, which are the ones that tended to walk on two legs, like T. rex) but it’s interesting to see that some had specialised adaptations that we see in much later bird species, like barn owls. Shuvuuia is part of a group of dinosaurs called alvarezsaurids, which share a unique characteristic in common with modern birds: they can lift the upper part of their jaws in relation to their skulls. Indeed, the alvarezsaurids may be more “bird” than “dinosaur”. It may also help explain the shuvuuia’s bizarre appearance: this funny little creature not only had feathers, but long legs and tough little forearms with a single claw. Likely it hunted insects at night and used the claws to excavate prey from burrows. Original paper published in Science here, with a brief news piece here (both paywalled, alas).

Featured image

Shuvuuia deserti: artist’s impression by Victor Radermaker

Brains, ears, tongues (and a bit of Covid)

Good news for those suffering from tinnitus, in which a persistent ringing or buzzing is heard, not caused by external sounds. Although this doesn’t seem serious (if you don’t suffer from it…) it affects a whopping 15-20% of the worldwide population, and can range from annoying to downright dibilitating. Moreover, it looks like there’s been a rising incidence during the pandemic, possibly due in some cases to long-term effects of covid infection. So it’s great to see an effective new treatment do well in clinical trials (I missed this study when it came out last October). Oddly enough, it involves electrically stimulating the tongue at the same time as sending audio pulses to the ears, calibrated for each individual patient. This is a process of medical neuromodulation, in which a targeted stimulus is used to alter nerve activity. After a 12 week course of treatment, the majority of participants in the trial reported improved symptoms for up to 12 months afterwards. The study is published in Science Translational Medicine here (paywalled).

One jab or two to protect against Covid-19? It’s a debate that’s been going back and forth; generally you will need a booster vaccine, but some of the vaccines coming through are designed to give protection with only one dose. However, if, like me, you’ve already had Covid-19, it looks like you only need one dose of the mRNA vaccines (Pfizer, Moderna) to get protection, with this triggering a robust immune response, and the second dose not making much difference (not that would hurt it you had it anyway) If you haven’t had Covid, you’d need both doses. Study published here in Science Immunology (and really one for the immunologists, as it’s quite technical).

Today’s weird and wonderful animal is the Indian Jumping Ant, which can selectively shrink and regrow its brain in response to its reproductive status (no jokes about baby brain please!). Worker ants, who do not reproduce, have larger brains, but, if the colony lacks a queen, they can shrink their brains and grow their ovaries to invest all their energy into laying eggs. The researchers found that they were fully capable of transitioning back to worker status if they artificially simulated that environment, shrinking their ovaries and regrowing their brains. Amazing! Full study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B here.

Image Credit

“This image reveals a worker jumping ant Harpegnathos saltator murdering the queen. The queen had just torn off her own wings after a successful mating and was scouring the forest floor in search for a suitable nest site. Though this de-alated queen was ‘murdered’, a large number of her sisters successfully established nests, thus completing their life’s mission – passing on the colony’s genes.”

Kalyan Varma, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Finally back, with a focus on good news and weird animals: today, a potential new treatment for multiple sclerosis and wombat poo.

Well, apologies for the hiatus, but it’s been a bit like that, hasn’t it? I’m still “enjoying” the challenges of pandemic working plus homeschooling/caring for a small child, so I still have no spare time. However, I have resolved to do less doomscrolling, and, in an effort to focus more on positives (and be realistic about what can be achieved), I’ve decided that this blog will concentrate on science news stories that are good news stories. These will be updated when I can, at least fortnightly again I hope – plus also weird and wonderful animals, which will be the focus of the featured images, because who doesn’t like those?

I’m going to start with vaccines. No, not coronavirus vaccines, you’re probably all experts on those by now. This is a vaccine against the autoimmune condition multiple sclerosis (MS). It is, however, based on the same principles as the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine: using mRNA to entrain the immune system. How does this work? A little background first. Every cell in your body (bar eggs and sperm) contains a complete copy of your all the genes needed to make you in your DNA-based genome. The genes code for proteins, which are both the building blocks and workers of your cells. But not all the genes are switched on at the same time in every cell. You don’t want to making digestive enzymes in your brain, or muscle tissue in your liver, right? Genes that are switched on are “transcribed” into a messenger RNA, or mRNA, sequence, which is then translated into the protein. Unlike DNA, mRNA is single-stranded (which is also why it’s so unstable and has to be stored at -70C). The mRNA-based coronavirus vaccines use this principle to inject mRNA coding for a bit of virus protein into your cells. This is then made into protein which your immune cells can recognise and make antibodies against (Moderna has some good info on mRNA technology and the basic biology behind them here).

In the case of this MS vaccine, however, it is being used to train the immune system to tolerate myelin, the nerve cell coat that is degraded in MS, rather than attack it. Your immune system has to learn not only to recognise things that are harmful, like bacteria and virus proteins, but harmless everyday things it shouldn’t worry about and learn to ignore. When this doesn’t work, you can get problems ranging from allergies (e.g. reacting to harmless pollen) or autoimmune disease, in which the immune system starts attacking the body’s own tissues. In the case of multiple sclerosis, this is the insulating coating of the nerve cells, made of myelin. The MS vaccine contains an mRNA encoding a myelin-like protein, and reduces severe disease in a mouse model. Yes, it’s just a mouse model so far, but it’s promising. mRNA vaccines look like they’re going to be an exciting new field of research, and I am going to be very interested to see if this could be applied to more autoimmune diseases. Original paper published in Science here (paywalled, alas, but you can read a Nature opinion piece here).

Todays’ wonderful animal is the wombat (featured image). These delightful marsupials can run as fast as human, dig burrows (and have backwards-facing pouches so they’re babies don’t get dirt shovelled on them) and use their backsides for defence. No, they don’t fart in your general direction; it’s made of tough cartilage that a predator has a tough time getting a bite out of. They also produce cube-shaped faeces. Apparently this is because it stops it rolling away, and wombat poo is important in marking territory and communicating with other wombats. But it’s always been a bit of a mystery as to how they do it: how do you make square poo from a tubular intestine? Via careful contraction of the walls it seems. They have “two stiff and two flexible” regions which help shape the faeces into the characteristic cube shapes. And if you’re thinking that this is a waste of research money, it would actually be quite useful to know how to do this for some manufacturing processes. The best thing about this research is that it is published a journal called Soft Matter. And a group of wombats is a wisdom of wombats, which I think we can all get behind. Not the square poo though. That’s all theirs.

MS treatment & wombats

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Featured image:

Southern Hairy-nosed Wombat (Lasiorhinus latifrons). Author Stygiangloom. https://www.flickr.com/photos/stygiangloom/220992362/

Super-sensing dogs, crafty cuttlefish, whale migration, and please wash your hands…Sunday Science 08/03/20

Lots of clever animals in this week’s Sunday Science, with cuttlefish connoisseurs, super-sensing dogs, and whales who go the distance for a good skincare regime….plus: self-promotion in science, and how washing your hands really is the best individual tactic against coronavirus…

Coronavirus, albatross police, biodiversity declines, and why it’s never too late to give up smoking…Sunday Science 16/02/2020

A slightly belated Sunday Science, due to term hitting with unusual force three weeks back. More on coronavirus, CRISPR against cancer, using albatrosses to police illegal fishing, giant fossil beasties, and why it’s never too late to give up smoking.

Coronavirus, how stress turns your hair grey, culturing snake venom, and global human cooling…

In this week’s Sunday Science: some facts on the new coronavirus that is spreading through China (and abroad); how stress turns your hair grey; how scientists are stressed (so we’ll all go grey early); how human body temperatures are falling, and growing your own snake venom….