Science News - 6-20.05.2023
Science News - 6-20.05.2023
Science News - 6-20.05.2023
MAGAZINE OF THE SOCIETY FOR SCIENCE MAY 6, 2023 & MAY 20, 2023
Rulers
Sky
of the
Features
20 These Animals Can Bend
the Mind
The Sonoran Desert toad has become known for its
psychedelic secretions. What other animals can alter
the mind? By Deborah Balthazar
News
6 Thawing permafrost 14 Scientists have finally 16 Hibernating bears don’t
may unleash industrial found where in Africa get blood clots because
pollution across painted lady butterflies levels of a key clotting
the Arctic go to breed in winter protein plummet
7 Yellow crazy ants’ bizarre Underwater ultrasounds Machine learning
reproduction creates could help reveal 4
FROM TOP: © BEASTMASTER/INATURALIST (CC BY-NC 4.0); © BAVARIAN STATE PAINTING COLLECTIONS, MUNICH; PAT DOAK
spend some time with a pterosaur? Alas, the last opportunity for going aloft BOARD OF TRUSTEES
CHAIR Mary Sue Coleman
with Quetzalcoatlus northropi, a giraffe-sized reptile that was the largest VICE CHAIR Martin Chalfie TREASURER Hayley Bay Barna
SECRETARY Christine Burton AT LARGE Thomas F. Rosenbaum
creature ever to take flight, was about 66 million years ago. But humans con- MEMBERS Adam Bly, Lance R. Collins, Mariette DiChristina,
Tessa M. Hill, Charles McCabe, W.E. Moerner,
tinue to be enchanted by pterosaurs, and freelance writer Sid Perkins explains Dianne K. Newman, Roderic Ivan Pettigrew, Afton Vechery,
Gideon Yu, Feng Zhang, Maya Ajmera, ex officio
how scientists are discovering new clues to pterosaurs’ origins, preferred cui- ADVERTISING AND SUBSCRIBER SERVICES
ADVERTISING Daryl Anderson
sine and global dominance (Page 26). MAGAZINE MARKETING John Pierce
SCIENCE NEWS LEARNING Anna Pawlow
Truth be told, even the humblest of creatures are amazing. At Science News, PERMISSIONS Jackie Ludden Nardelli
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Venus (part
of the northern
Excerpt from the hemisphere shown
May 12, 1973 in false color) has about
issue of Science News 85,000 volcanoes.
PICTURE THIS
50 YEARS AGO
Venus is a volcanic bonanza, a new map shows
Light flashes The hellscape of Venus is riddled with even across, and about 100 are wider than
no danger more volcanoes than scientists thought. 100 kilometers. The team also found
The light flashes and streaks Using radar images taken by NASA’s many tight clusters of small volcanoes
seen by [Apollo] astronauts Magellan spacecraft in the 1990s, research- called volcanic fields.
have long been attributed ers cataloged about 85,000 volcanoes “We have a better handle of how many
to high-energy, heavy cos- strewn across the Venusian surface. volcanoes are on Venus than are on
mic particles (HZE) passing That’s nearly 50 times as many volcanoes Earth,” where most volcanoes are prob-
through the eyes.... A new as past surveys counted. Planetary sci- ably hidden beneath the oceans, Byrne
report … concludes that the entists Rebecca Hahn and Paul Byrne of says. But he doesn’t think the Magellan
particles are not a serious Washington University in St. Louis debuted data tell the whole story of Venus’ volca-
hazard for short trips to the the map in the April JGR Planets. nism. That spacecraft could see features
moon or Earth-orbital mis- Such a thorough inventory of volca- as small as about 1 kilometer in diameter.
sions such as Skylab. nism on Venus could offer clues about Earth has “lots and lots of volcanoes that
the planet’s interior, such as hot spots of are far smaller than a kilometer across,”
UPDATE: The mechanism magma production, Byrne says. And with Byrne says. “That’s probably the case
behind the flashes described the recent discovery that Venus is vol- with Venus, too.”
by Apollo astronauts remains a canically active, the map could also help We may soon find out. The European
mystery. Perhaps the particles, pinpoint places to look for new eruptions Space Agency’s EnVision mission is
which are components of (SN: 4/8/23, p. 10). slated to turn its much sharper eyes on
cosmic rays, emit radiation Almost all the volcanoes that Hahn and Venus’ surface within the next decade or
as they pass through part Byrne found are less than 5 kilometers so (SN Online: 6/2/21).
of the eye. Or perhaps they wide. About 700 are 5 to 100 kilometers — Maria Temming
trick nerve cells to create the
illusion of light. However the Literal hot spots This map of Venus shows the locations and diameters of volcanoes visible in
flashes happen, they are still an radar data from the Magellan spacecraft. Continents and other geographic regions are shown in gray.
issue for astronauts. In 2006,
about 80 percent of NASA and Ishtar Terra
European Space Agency astro-
nauts reported experiencing JPL-CALTECH/NASA; R. HAHN AND P. BYRNE/JGR PLANETS 2023
HOW BIZARRE
Step on the ground in the Arctic, and another 3,600 contaminated locations substances they use and store, or what
chances are that permafrost lies under- occupied the two regions. These include happens to them. So it’ll be difficult to
foot. For decades, people have treated the waste areas and places where pollutants assess and manage the growing risk of
frozen earth as staunch and largely immo- were accidentally released. contamination, Langer says.
bile. Industries constructed infrastructure Focusing on Alaska, the researchers He plans to visit decades-old oil drilling
atop its firmness, and within it they bur- found that diesel, gasoline and related facilities in Canada to see how the chang-
ied their refuse and sludge. In some places, petrochemicals make up about half of ing permafrost has affected the contain-
scientists and others have used permafrost the pollutants reported. Lead, arsenic and ment of drilling fluids. The next step, he
to store radioactive waste. mercury — substances toxic to fish, peo- says, is “to understand better how [con-
But the Arctic is warming nearly four ple and other organisms — were reported taminants] spread into the landscape.”
BY MCKENZIE PRILLAMAN
Yellow crazy ants break the rules of
reproduction.
Every male ant contains separate
populations of cells from two distinct
genetic lineages, making them “chimeras,”
researchers report in the April 7 Science. So he and colleagues collected therefore can’t pass on the W genome.
Yellow crazy ants (Anoplolepis gracilipes) h undreds of yellow crazy ants from “We think it’s maybe an interaction
are the first known species that requires across East and Southeast Asia. Analyzing between two genomes that are in con-
chimerism to create fertile males. females — queens and workers — revealed flict but sometimes cooperate,” Darras
It’s “an elegant response to the kinds of that royalty in this species has a genetic says. The distinct lineages may have
unusual mating systems we’ve observed source. Reproductive queens came from evolved independently in two separate
in other ants,” says Waring “Buck” Trible, combining sperm and egg cells from the ant populations that eventually inter-
an evolutionary geneticist at Harvard same lineage, which the team dubbed R. mingled. Or perhaps the lineages started
University who was not involved in the Queens had R/R genomes. Workers were with similar genes that diverged over
work. “We might consider this as the next hybrids of the R lineage and another lin- time, he suggests. Regardless, “it looks
evolutionary step” in ants, Trible says. eage that the team called W. These ants like the whole genomes are separated
Most animals develop from a sperm cell had R/W genomes. and don’t exchange any genetic material,”
and an egg cell uniting into one, combin- Consistent with the previous study, Darras says.
ing their DNA. As a creature grows, all of the researchers also identified R/W That odd reproductive strategy may
the subsequent cells, save for sex cells, males. But rather than having two sets provide benefits for yellow crazy ants,
carry two sets of DNA-bearing chromo- of chromosomes within somatic cells, helping them earn the title of one of
somes, one from each parent. In other these males had just one set, as is typical the world’s worst invasive species
words, these somatic cells all carry the of other ant species. Each cell contained (SN: 10/10/09, p. 13). Because fusion of R
same genetic information. Sperm and egg chromosomes from either the R lineage and W nuclei results only in sterile work-
cells contain just one set of chromosomes. or the W lineage, the team found. ers, the genomes can never mix and be
But in many ants, along with other Further experiments revealed that the passed to the next generation. Thus, the
insects such as wasps and bees, only R and W cells were unevenly distributed ants avoid any possibility of inbreeding,
females have somatic cells with chromo- throughout the males’ bodies. Most of the which helps small populations invading
some pairs. Males typically develop from body contained majority R cells, almost new areas maintain genetic diversity.
unfertilized eggs, so their somatic cells 75 percent based on the sampled tissue. Chimeras have been observed in other
hold only one set of chromosomes. The ratio nearly flipped in the ants’ sperm — animals, including humans, but it’s rare
A 2007 study, however, found that 65 percent were W cells. and usually a developmental accident.
about half of the sampled male yellow Since both female workers and males Yellow crazy ants are the first known
crazy ants possessed two copies of the come from combining W sperm with species in which chimerism determines
same genes, just like the species’s female R eggs, the sex depends on whether the sex. But some scientists estimate there
worker ants. cells’ packets of DNA, or nuclei, merge. are around 20,000 ant species, and the
But “it didn’t make any sense that all Fusion creates a female. Failure to fuse reproductive systems of most have not
males in this species would be diploid,” causes egg and sperm nuclei to divide sep- been studied.
or have two sets of chromosomes in each arately within the egg, producing a male. “This is a very special system,” says
somatic cell, says evolutionary biologist It’s unclear why this never-before-seen Guojie Zhang, an evolutionary biologist at
Hugo Darras of Johannes Gutenberg mode of reproduction evolved in yellow Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China,
University Mainz in Germany. When this crazy ants. By not fusing its nucleus with who was not involved in the research.
© H. DARRAS
happens in other ants, the males are usu- that of the egg, the sperm “might be able “The question would be how frequently
ally sterile. “Nobody had any explanation,” to increase its reproductive output,” Trible this system can be observed in other ant
Darras says. says. Female worker ants are sterile and lineages.”
HEALTH & MEDICINE volume in two weeks, scientists report a target for precision treatment, Xia, Zhang
power of some cancer therapies, a study radiotherapy and traditional chemo- deployed a flexible battery that can par-
in mice shows. Mice that had the batter- therapy, as there isn’t enough blood flow to tially wrap around a tumor. One of the bat-
ies wrapped around their breast cancer deliver an effective dose, says coauthor Fan tery’s electrodes self-charges by sucking
tumors, combined with cancer therapy, Zhang, a materials scientist also at Fudan up oxygen from the environment. It also
showed a 90 percent decrease in tumor University. On the other hand, it provides creates highly reactive oxygen molecules
says, it will probably have to be combined 10 snails, Shain and colleagues put the concept of leeches. H. austinensis is
with other therapies to make sure the together predator-prey computer simu- tiny — and uninterested in humans. Only
whole tumor is zapped for good. lations that suggested leeches introduced the snails need to shiver.
WE ARE
ADV E RTI SE M E NT
NEWS
ANIMALS ANIMALS
But the next mystery Talavera’s group packs — propellers attached to their scuba
hopes to solve is why painted ladies make tanks — to swim alongside the fish, which
such a long journey at all. average 12 meters in length and move
tributing to the increase, says Christopher through a climate model that controls baseball exists in the current model”
Callahan, a climate change researcher at for greenhouse gas emissions found that within 30 years, Orr says.
ANIMALS health care experts — to show how animals were less likely to clump than those in
ASTRONOMY
L. MEDEIROS ET AL 2023
• Parents understand their children the most, thus, they should always be in contact with the
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• To better understand your gifted child's needs, read and learn more about gifted students.
• Make sure to provide a variety of learning opportunities and resources to support your gifted
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• It is important to participate in your child's school activities that are specially designed for
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• Gifted students are known for being curious and inquisitive. For that reason, try not to give
them straight answers, but encourage them to find out answers and pose questions, and
always spend enough time listening to them.
• Be in contact with parents of other gifted children to support your child's educational journey.
• Ensure that your gifted child interacts within a normal social life.
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Mawhiba
ADV E RTI SE M E NT
NEWS
ANIMALS
PLANETARY SCIENCE The key to the discovery came when predominantly water ice. It may be the
to the discovery of a Saturn-like planet Estrada says, because Cassini detected and then further observations could con-
orbiting another star. it (SN: 1/20/18, p. 7). “The rings are firm the rings’ existence.
sigmaxi.org
ADV E RTI SE M E NT
FEATURE
FROM TOP: © BEASTMASTER/INATURALIST (CC BY-NC 4.0); © MATT REALA/INATURALIST (CC BY-NC 4.0)
ing,” Nichols says. “You can imagine, it’s enhancing the enemies such as other insects and spiders are bitten.)
properties of your mind, rather than just intoxicating you.” A person who eats 1,000 ants would probably die;
Other compounds such as stimulants and depressants according to Schmidt’s book, one ant is enough to kill
modify the activity of the brain, but they don’t leave users a mouse. But some predators have defenses: The regal
with the kind of new insights and memorable experiences horned lizard (Phrynosoma solare) has a mucus lining its
that come with psychedelics. mouth and digestive system that allows it to eat hundreds
Wuelton Monteiro, a tropical medicine researcher at of ants and a substance in its blood that neutralizes the
the Universidade do Estado do Amazonas in Manaus, venom. Some birds somehow avoid getting stung too.
Brazil, points to a 2020 study in Scientific Reports as an It’s hard to get more information on how the ants
example of why the classification has been unclear. In the were used in rituals and the nature of the experience.
small study, nearly half of participants who reported using Disease and violence that came with Westerners during
kambô said they had a spiritual experience, and some ex- California’s gold rush destroyed the Indigenous commu-
periences came with what resembled the afterglow often nities in the Central Valley and their way of life.
associated with hallucinogens. But kambô doesn’t activate
the 5-HT2A receptor, a protein that senses the chemical
messenger serotonin, while classic psychedelics do.
Among Indigenous populations in the southwestern
Amazon, the frog’s skin secretions have been used for
centuries as a stimulant in shamanistic rituals. According
to Villa, the secretions are usually applied on small, super-
ficial burns on the body to increase the stamina of hunters.
In predators attempting to gobble the frog, kambô
might cause regurgitation, seizures and a change in heart CALIFORNIA
function. Researchers are still trying to decipher the HARVESTER ANT
specific compounds that explain these effects, but they do Habitat: Southwestern
know that species of Phyllomedusa collectively produce United States and
over 200 short protein fragments that can influence body northern Mexico
function. Some might be promising for future medicines.
PITTED SPONGE
Pitted sponge (Verongula rigida)
Habitat: The Caribbean
The pitted sponge and some other sponges including Smenospongia aura
and S. echina contain 5-bromo-DMT and 5,6-dibromo-DMT. Because
of their relationship with the psychedelic drug DMT, these compounds
are plausible psychedelics. American chemist Alexander Shulgin,
famous for his research into psychedelic compounds and for introduc-
ing the world to the synthetic hallucinogen MDMA, or ecstasy, and
his wife Ann Shulgin wrote in TIHKAL: The Continuation that they don’t
know whether the sponge compounds are activated by smoking or not.
They are, however, “quantitatively reduced to DMT by stirring under
FROM TOP: BRIAN GRATWICKE/FLICKR (CC BY 2.0); SMITHSONIAN TROPICAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE
hydrogen in methanol, in the presence of palladium on charcoal.”
The pitted sponge is known to concentrate in its tissue chemicals
called monoamines that can modify the behavior of nerve cells. Not
only can these compounds make the sponge taste bitter, but they can
also alter the behavior of predatory fish that dine on the sponge.
“They wouldn’t prevent the fish from ever trying to take a bite, but it
would prevent it from persisting or consuming the sponge any beyond
an initial several bites,” says Mark Hamann, a pharmacologist from the
Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston.
V. rigida’s ability to alter animal behavior intrigued Hamann, who
reported in a 2008 study in the Journal of Natural Products that
5,6-dibromo-DMT acted like an antidepressant in rats, while
5-bromo-DMT acted like a sedative. Hamann says that related
compounds may one day be isolated and might make for promising
antidepressants, anxiety-reducing drugs or pain relievers in people.
Explore more
Laura Orsolini et al. “Psychedelic fauna for psychonaut hunters:
A mini-review.” Frontiers in Psychiatry. May 22, 2018.
The
Original
Highfliers
New discoveries are updating
scientists’ picture of pterosaurs,
the first flying vertebrates
By Sid Perkins
I
n an eat-or-be-eaten world, flight conveys a bevy powered flight. Pterosaurs, Greek for “wing lizards,”
of benefits. A creature that takes to the third arrived on the scene in the Triassic Period, per-
dimension can more easily escape earthbound haps as early as around 237 million years ago. These
predators, dine off a much broader menu or drop original vertebrate fliers preceded birds by at least
With a wingspan of down on unsuspecting victims from above. Flying 70 million years and bats by more than twice that.
at least 2.5 meters, also allows an animal to cover distance more quickly, What caused pterosaurs’ demise is clear: The
Dearc sgiathanach was
N. JAGIELSKA
forage more efficiently and find mates more easily. same asteroid that wiped out the non-avian dino-
the largest pterosaur of
its era, the middle of the So it’s perhaps surprising that only three groups saurs about 66 million years ago also took them
Jurassic Period. of vertebrates have ever evolved sustained, muscle- out — along with more than 75 percent of all life on
Pterosaur timeline Pterosaurs originated during the Triassic Period — well before the other two groups of flying
vertebrates, birds and bats — and then died out in the same mass extinction that killed off non-avian dinosaurs.
237 million 230 million 219 million 150 million 66 million 52 million
years ago: years ago: years ago: years ago: years ago: Asteroid years ago:
Suspected Oldest known Oldest known Oldest known hits and pterosaurs, Oldest known
origin of dinosaur pterosaur bird skeleton along with non-avian bat skeleton
pterosaurs fossil fossil dinosaurs, go extinct
paper in Nature comparing the anatomy of 157 spe- ably didn’t spend a lot of time in trees, that argues
cies of early pterosaurs, primitive dinosaurs and a against the idea that pterosaur flight evolved out
variety of reptiles that lived at the same time or of gliding. But a small pelvic girdle suggests that
earlier. A group known as lagerpetids — from the S. taylori wasn’t a leaper, Foffa says. That would
Greek for “rabbit reptiles,” so named because of the seem to argue against the standard idea for how a
general proportions of the bones in the limbs — was ground dweller would take to the skies. However,
most closely related to pterosaurs. he says, “it’s not necessary to be a leaper to evolve
A separate analysis, reported last year in Nature, flight.”
showed that a fast-running, roughly 20-centimeter-
Pterosaurs may have long reptile that lived about 230 million years ago What’s for lunch?
evolved from small was a close relative of both lagerpetids and ptero- What pterosaurs ate is often a matter of conjec-
ground-dwelling reptiles saurs. Given that close relationship, this creature, ture. Although some fossils preserve stomach
similar to Scleromochlus
taylori (top), which was called Scleromochlus taylori, may serve as a good contents — direct evidence of what was consumed —
about as long as a dinner stand-in for the kind of animal that pterosaurs most of the time researchers must look at where
fork, during the late evolved from (SN: 11/5/22, p. 15). a pterosaur lived and how its anatomy compares
Triassic Period. The re-
cent discovery of Dearc S. taylori had slender limbs, small hands and with modern creatures to reconstruct diet. Based
sgiathanach (bottom) straight claws, all of which point to a ground- on such comparisons, researchers have speculated
suggests that pterosaurs dwelling creature, says Davide Foffa, a vertebrate that various species of pterosaurs ate everything
evolved large body sizes
by at least the middle of paleontologist at National Museums Scotland in from insects and worms to fish, crustaceans and
the Jurassic Period. Edinburgh. Because a critter like S. taylori presum- meatier prey such as small land vertebrates.
But sometimes, researchers are left to comb
through other types of evidence.
Take Kunpengopterus sinensis, a pterosaur that
lived in what is now China between 165 million
and 153 million years ago. Last year, researchers
reported unearthing fossils of this species along-
side gastric pellets chock-full of fish scales, a strong
hint that the creatures had eaten fish and then
regurgitated the indigestible bits, as modern owls
and gulls do (SN: 3/12/22, p. 5).
Other evidence comes à la fossilized poop — or,
more delicately, coprolites. If a coprolite can
be linked to the creature that made it, any con-
tents can be reasonably identified as a part of the
diet, says Martin Qvarnström, a vertebrate pale-
ontologist at Uppsala University in Sweden. A
few years ago, he and colleagues analyzed three
coprolites from more than 150-million-year-old
rocks unearthed in south-central Poland. The fos-
silized dung was deposited on an ancient tidal
flat that also preserved a multitude of pterosaur
footprints, Qvarnström says. The well-trampled
surface appears to have been rapidly buried, per-
haps as soon as the next tide came in, so it’s very
likely that both the footprints and the copro-
FROM TOP: GABRIEL UGUETO; N. JAGIELSKA
Thanks to a fossil discovered in 2017 on Scotland’s and colleagues reported in February 2022 in Current
Isle of Skye, researchers now realize that pterosaurs Biology. Based on the size of the pterosaur’s upper-
grew to larger sizes much earlier than once thought. arm bone, the team estimates the youngster had a
That, in turn, has helped debunk some theories wingspan of around 2 meters.
about why pterosaurs evolved large body sizes. Comparisons with the growth patterns of closely
Embedded in limestone laid down as sediments related pterosaurs suggest that an adult would have
in a lagoon about 167 million years ago, the well- had a wingspan of at least 2.5 meters and possibly
An icon revealed
Of all the pterosaurs ever found, none has cap-
tured imaginations as much as Quetzalcoatlus
northropi, the largest creature to ever take flight.
Besides cameos in Jurassic Park: Dominion and
the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, the species has
appeared on the postage stamps of more than two
dozen nations and on two coins struck by the Royal
Canadian Mint.
A pterosaur named Balaenognathus maeuseri was probably Scientists are enamored of the species too. The
a filter feeder similar to modern flamingos. Little hooks
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ADV E RTI SE M E NT
FEATURE | THE ORIGINAL HIGHFLIERS
Tom Lehman, a vertebrate paleontologist at Texas to reconstruct the range of motion of their joints.
Tech University in Lubbock. That means some of “First of all, their back is so short and their legs are
these pterosaurs could have been alive when or just so long that they couldn’t walk like other quadru-
before an asteroid struck Earth and brought on a peds,” says Kevin Padian, a vertebrate paleontologist
long-lasting and worldwide climate catastrophe. at the University of California, Berkeley. “And their
Much of what scientists suspect about forelimbs are so long, they couldn’t avoid touch-
Q. northropi stems from the more common fos- ing the ground.” Yet pterosaur footprints suggest
sils of a related species, Q. lawsoni. Andres and his that those forelimbs weren’t helping propel the
colleagues have unearthed fossils of more than creature forward when it walked, he says. Instead,
200 of these individuals, offering enough bones to they appear to have been used for support only, like
reconstruct the majority of the pterosaur. The team walking sticks.
estimates that this smaller relative had a wingspan It appears that Quetzalcoatlus could reach down
“The worst of about 4.5 meters and lived in the same area to the ground with its long, toothless beak — and
thing about around the same time as Q. northropi, Lehman says. even lower, into bodies of water. Once it grabbed
He and colleagues estimate that Q. northropi had a its prey, it could tilt its beak to the sky and swallow
pterosaurs is wingspan of about 10 meters. its victims whole. So Padian and colleagues suggest
that they’re no If these two species did live simultaneously, that this pterosaur patrolled through meadows or
longer around.” Lehman says, they evidently divvied up the ecosys- waded in shallow waters as modern-day storks or
BRIAN ANDRES tem and foraged separately. When they died, their herons do, plucking up fish, mammals or even small
carcasses ended up in different types of sedimentary dinosaurs using a beak that acted like chopsticks.
rocks, suggesting different parts of the environ- The sight of a giraffe-sized predator stalking
ment. Q. lawsoni apparently spent a lot of time through swamps would have undoubtedly been
in oxbow lakes. Q. northropi, on the other hand, impressive. “The worst thing about pterosaurs,”
seems to have foraged along the edges of the river Andres says, “is that they’re no longer around.”
itself. Plenty of water snails and other creatures
lived in these bodies of water and would have pro- Explore more
vided ample food for hungry pterosaurs and other Matthew G. Baron. “The origin of pterosaurs.”
predators, Lehman says. Earth-Science Reviews. October 2021.
JAMES KUETHER
ADV E RTI SE M E NT
FEATURE
Kraken
the
code
34 SCIENCE NEWS | May 6, 2023 & May 20, 2023
Cephalopods may edit RNA
to adapt to their surroundings
By Tina Hesman Saey
M
any writers grouse when an editor makes a change
in a story, but the consequences of changing a sin-
gle word usually aren’t that dire.
Not so with genetic instructions for making pro-
teins. Even a small change can prevent a protein from doing its job
properly, with possibly deadly consequences. Only occasionally is
a change beneficial. It seems wisest to preserve genetic instruc-
tions as they are written. Unless you’re an octopus.
Octopuses are like aliens living among us — they do a lot of
things differently from land animals, or even other sea creatures.
Their flexible tentacles taste what they touch and have minds
of their own. Octopuses’ eyes are color-blind, but their skin can
detect light on its own (SN: 6/27/15, p. 10). They are masters of
disguise, changing color and skin textures to blend into their
surroundings or scare off rivals. And to a greater extent than
most creatures, octopuses squirt the molecular equivalent of
red ink over their genetic instructions with astounding abandon,
like a copy editor run amok.
These edits modify RNA, the molecule used to translate infor-
mation from the genetic blueprint stored in DNA, while leaving
the DNA unaltered.
Scientists don’t yet know for sure why octopuses, and other
shell-less cephalopods including squid and cuttlefish, are such
prolific editors. Researchers are debating whether this form of
genetic editing gave cephalopods an evolutionary leg (or tentacle)
up or whether the editing is just a sometimes useful accident. Sci-
entists are also probing what consequences the RNA alterations
may have under various conditions. Some evidence suggests edit-
ing may give cephalopods some of their smarts but could come at
the cost of holding back evolution in their DNA (SN: 4/29/17, p. 6).
“These animals are just magical,” says Caroline Albertin, a
comparative developmental biologist at the Marine Biological
Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass. “They have all sorts of different
solutions to living in the world they come from.” RNA editing may
help give the creatures vast numbers of solutions for problems
they may face.
Editing chemically modifies one of RNA’s four building blocks, those, only 1,517 recode proteins, the researchers reported last
or bases. Those bases are often referred to by the first letters of year in Nature Communications. Of those recoding sites, up to
their names: A, C, G and U, for adenine, cytosine, guanine and 835 are shared with other mammals, suggesting that evolution-
uracil (RNA’s version of the DNA base thymine). In an RNA mol- ary forces preserved editing at those locations.
ecule, the bases are linked to sugars; the adenine-sugar unit, for Cephalopods take RNA recoding to a whole new level, Albertin
instance, is referred to as adenosine. says. Longfin squid (Doryteuthis pealeii) have 57,108 recoding
There are many ways to edit RNA letters. Cephalopods excel sites, Rosenthal, Eisenberg and colleagues reported in 2015 in
at a type of editing known as adenosine to inosine, or A-to-I, eLife. Since then, the researchers have examined multiple spe-
editing. This happens when an enzyme called ADAR2 strips a cies of octopus, squid and cuttlefish, each time finding tens of
nitrogen and two hydrogen atoms off adenosine (the A). That thousands of recoding sites.
chemical peel turns adenosine into inosine (I). Soft-bodied, or coleoid, cephalopods may have more oppor-
Ribosomes read inosine as guanine instead of adenine. Some- tunities for editing than other animals because of where at
times that switch has no effect on the resulting protein’s chain least one of the ADAR enzymes, ADAR2, is located in the cell.
of amino acids. But in some cases, having a G where an A should Most animals edit RNAs in the nucleus — the compartment
be results in a different amino acid being inserted into the pro- where DNA is stored and copied into RNA — before sending
tein. Such protein-altering RNA editing is called RNA recoding. the messages out to meet up with ribosomes. But cephalopods
Soft-bodied cephalopods have embraced RNA recoding with also have the enzymes in the cytoplasm, the cells’ jellylike guts,
all of their arms while even closely related species are more ten- Rosenthal and colleagues discovered (SN: 4/25/20, p. 10).
tative about accepting rewrites, Albertin says. “Other mollusks Having editing enzymes in two locales doesn’t fully explain
don’t seem to do it” to the same extent. why cephalopods’ RNA recoding so far outstrips that of humans
RNA editing isn’t limited to creatures of the deep. Almost every and other animals. Nor does it explain the patterns of editing
multicellular organism has one or more RNA editing enzymes scientists have uncovered.
called ADAR enzymes, short for “adenosine deaminase that acts
on RNA,” says Joshua Rosenthal, a molecular neurobiologist also All about flexibility
at the Marine Biological Laboratory. Editing isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition. Rarely are all copies
Cephalopods have two ADAR enzymes. Humans have versions of an RNA in a cell edited. It’s much more common for some per-
of them, too. “In our brains, we edit a ton of RNA. We do it a lot,” centage of RNAs to be edited while the rest retain their original
Rosenthal says. Over the last decade, scientists have discovered information. The percentage, or frequency, of editing can vary
millions of places in human RNAs where editing occurs. widely from RNA to RNA or between cells or tissues, and may
But those edits rarely change the amino acids in a protein. depend on water temperature or other conditions. In longfin
For instance, Eli Eisenberg of Tel Aviv University and colleagues squid, most RNA editing sites were edited 2 percent or less of
identified more than 4.6 million editing sites in human RNAs. Of the time, Albertin and colleagues reported last year in Nature
Communications. But the researchers also found more than
U
Recode away In a common form of
U
205,000 sites that were edited 25 percent of the time or more.
Deaminase
RNA editing, an adenosine becomes an domain In most of a cephalopod’s body, RNA editing doesn’t often
inosine (below) through a reaction that U
affect the makeup of proteins. But in the nervous system, it’s a
removes an amino group and replaces it
with an oxygen (arrows). The illustration
different story. In longfin squids’ nervous systems, 70 percent of
NH2 O U have three or more recoding sites. Some contain 10 or more such
sites. Combinations of those editing sites could result in multiple
N N N NH versions of a protein being made in a cell.
Having a wide selection of proteins may give cephalopods
N N N N U
U
“more flexibility in responding to the environment,” Albertin
O O
says, “or give you a variety of solutions to the problem in front
U
of you.” In the nervous system, RNA editing might contribute to
flexibility in thinking, which could help explain why octopuses
H H 3'
can unlock cages or use tools, some researchers think. Edit-
Adenosine Inosine 5' ing could be an easy way to create one or more versions of a
Perhaps RNA editing provides some evolutionary advantage. may stick around not because it is adaptive, but because it is
To test that idea, Zhang and then–graduate student Daohan addictive, Zhang says.
Jiang compared “synonymous” sites, where edits do not change He and Jiang proposed a harm-permitting model (that is, a
situation that permits harmful changes to DNA). Imagine, he guanine in the DNA of one or more related species, researchers
says, a situation in which a G (guanine) in an organism’s DNA gets reported in 2020 in PeerJ. And for heavily edited sites, evolution
mutated to an A (adenine). If that mutation leads to a harmful across cephalopods seems to favor a transition from A to G in
amino acid change in a protein, natural selection should weed DNA (rather than to cytosine or thymine, the other two DNA
out individuals that carry that mutation. But if, by chance, the building blocks). That favors the idea that editing can be adaptive.
organism has RNA editing, the mistake in the DNA might be Other recent work by Rosenthal and colleagues, which exam-
corrected by editing RNA, essentially changing the A back to G. ined A-to-G replacements in different species, suggests that
If the protein is essential for life, then the RNA would have to having an editable A is an evolutionary boon over an uneditable
be edited at high levels so that nearly every copy is corrected. A or a hardwired G.
When that happens, “You’re locked into the system,” Zhang
says. Now the organism is dependent on RNA editing machinery. Open questions
“It cannot be lost, because you will require the A to be edited Evidence for and against RNA recoding’s evolutionary value
back to G for survival, so the editing will be kept at high levels.… has come mainly from examining the total genetic makeup, or
In the beginning you really didn’t need it, but after you got it, genomes, of various cephalopod species. But scientists would
you became addicted.” like to directly test whether recoded RNAs have an effect on
Zhang argues that that sort of editing is neutral, not adap- cephalopod biology. Doing that will require some new tools and
tive. But other research suggests RNA editing can be adaptive. creative thinking.
RNA editing may work as a transition phase, letting organ- Rangan tested synthetic versions of squid motor proteins
isms try out a switch from adenine to guanine without making and found that two edited versions that squid make in the cold
a permanent change in their DNA. Over the course of evolution, moved slower but traveled farther along protein tracks called
sites where adenines are recoded in RNA in one cephalopod spe- microtubules than unedited proteins did. But that’s in artificial
cies are more likely than unedited adenines to be replaced with laboratory conditions on microscope slides. To understand what
is happening in cells, Rangan says, she would like to be able to
Making changes Soft-bodied cephalopod species including grow squid cells in lab dishes. Right now, she has to take tis-
octopuses, squid and cuttlefish recode RNA in their nervous systems sue directly from the squid and can only get snapshots of what
at tens of thousands of sites, compared with about a thousand or fewer
sites in humans, mice, fruit flies and other animal species. Though scien- is happening. Lab-grown cells might allow her to follow what
tists have been documenting the number of editing sites, they will need happens over time.
new tools to directly test how recoding influences cephalopod biology. Zhang says he is testing his harm-permitting hypothesis by get-
Number of RNA recoding sites across animals ting yeast hooked on RNA editing. Baker’s yeast (Saccharomyces
100,000 cerevisiae) doesn’t have ADAR enzymes. But Zhang engineered a
Cephalopods strain of the yeast to carry a human version of the enzyme. The
Other ADAR enzymes make the yeast sick and grow slowly, he says. To
speed up the experiment, the strain he is using has a higher-than-
10,000
normal mutation rate, and may build up G-to-A mutations. But
if RNA editing can correct those mutations, the ADAR-carrying
yeast may grow better than ones that don’t have the enzyme.
Editing sites
1,000 And after many generations, the yeast may become addicted to
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ADV E RTI SE M E NT
REVIEWS & PREVIEWS
Math plus literature look at how math also molds the structure or pace of nov-
els. For example, I had noticed Amor Towles was not moving
equals a good pair through time in a strictly linear fashion when I read his 2016
“Mathematical symbolism and metaphor book A Gentleman in Moscow, but I completely missed how
are present in every kind of literature, the number two orchestrates the story’s structure. The novel
from the humblest of fairy tales right takes us through 32 years in the protagonist’s life, starting in
through to War and Peace,” claims math- 1922 when he begins living under house arrest. Each chapter
ematician Sarah Hart. In Once Upon a advances in a roughly doubling interval of time since his sen-
Prime, she lays bare some of this hidden tence begins: the first day after, then the second, fifth, 10th,
Once Upon a Prime
Sarah Hart math and meaning in a host of poetry, three weeks after, six weeks after and so on. Then from the
FLATIRON BOOKS, novels and folklore. middle of the book, the intervals climb down again, reversing
$29.99 She starts with nursery rhymes, the sequence. Some readers may wonder if Hart’s love of math
often rife with counting — such as “One, Two, Buckle My simply leads her to find patterns like this everywhere. But the
Shoe” — showing how numbers bleed into our very first odds must be astronomically high for the examples she pres-
encounters with the world of words. This is not just through ents to be mere chance.
counting but also more subtly through the rhythms and rhyme Among the numerous math-loving authors Hart cites is
patterns. It’s also through trebling — where a word or phrase is Herman Melville, who steals the limelight for a good 10 pages
repeated three times, such as “Row, row, row your boat.” that are sheer joy to read. Melville tended to lace his novels
The number three has a special hold on Western lit- with so much philosophy and mathematics that his publisher
erature and languages in general. It pervades common worried about profitability. At one point, Melville promised his
phrases — “Three cheers for…,” “Ready, Set, Go,” “Learning next novels would have “no metaphysics, no conic-sections,
your ABCs.” It’s also central to story structure; nothing but cakes & ale.” He did not keep that
for example, trilogies are more prevalent than Sarah Hart lays promise. One of his next books was Moby-Dick.
tetralogies. Characters tend to come in threes bare some of the The novel is thick with math, from the concept
too, like “The Three Little Pigs,” and even in hidden math and of a quoin — a kind of lopsided wedge, which the
jokes like “A priest, a minister and a rabbi…”
Hart suggests this emphasis on three has
meaning in a host main character Ishmael defines through geo-
metric descriptions of a sperm whale’s head — to
some basis in geometry. Three is the mini- of poetry, novels the analogy for how such a creature must see
mum number of points that can define a two- and folklore. two distinct views of the world from eyes on
dimensional shape, and the minimum number either side of its head, “as if a man were
of sticks that can be bound to make a stable able simultaneously to go through
rigid structure, that is, a triangle. And the demonstrations of two dis-
the equilateral triangle is the only tinct problems in Euclid.”
shape with both equal-length Cover to cover, Hart’s love
sides and equidistant corners. of math fizzes off the page,
These geometric properties such as when she implores
give the number three “a sense readers to put down the book
of strength and completeness, and twist a line of paper into
and also often of equitability,” a Möbius strip. She admits
Hart writes. it’s a bit of a detour, but in her
It’s a poetic argument, if not defense, it is leading up to a dis-
completely convincing. To bolster cussion of a 1974 short story called
her case, she also points to trichoto- “Mobius the Stripper,” which has a particular
mies. Take a number, any number, and kind of circular narrative.
every other number is either more, less or equal to that num- Hart’s simple breakdowns of both math and literature
ber — a trichotomy that has direct parallels with Aristotle’s make the book easy for anyone to follow, no matter their
doctrine of the mean: “Every ethical virtue is a golden mean proficiency in either subject, though a familiarity with some
(just right) between two vices — one an excess, the other a of the math and literature references might make for a
deficiency,” as Hart describes it. This doctrine is playfully slightly more satisfying read. Not everyone will finish the
illustrated in Goldilocks’ experiences with porridge, chairs book primed (ha!) to discover the mathematical gems hid-
and beds. den in a book or poem. But that takes little away from the
C. CHANG
For a book about math and literature, it’s not surprising charm of reading Once Upon a Prime, a joyous tour de force
that Hart focuses quite a bit on poetry, which is often defined of mathematical and literary delights. — Anna Demming
CONVERSATIONS
WITH
Maya Ajmera, President & CEO of the Society for Science and Executive Publisher of
Science News, chatted with Raj Chetty, an alumnus of the 1997 Science Talent Search
(STS) and the 1997 International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF). In 2018, Chetty
founded Opportunity Insights, an institute based at Harvard University dedicated to
harnessing big data to improve upward mobility out of poverty. Chetty is the William A.
Ackman Professor of Economics at Harvard, a MacArthur Fellow and a recipient of the
John Bates Clark Medal. Chetty, who recently joined the Society’s Honorary Board, sat
down with Ajmera this fall for a fireside chat hosted by the Society. We are thrilled to share
an edited version of that conversation.
Tell us about yourself and a little bit about your upbringing. in ISEF shaped my own interest in research and the types of
I grew up in New Delhi, India, until I was 9 years old. Then I questions I'm focused on today.
came to the United States with my parents. I had what I think is
a common experience for many immigrant kids: I saw the U.S. What inspired you to apply big data to the study of
as a land of opportunity. Seeing the big contrast between India economic mobility?
and the United States has shaped some of my perspective and In high school, I started to realize that I was very interested in
interest in issues of inequality, social mobility and opportunity. research, science and discovering things. But at the same time,
That experience, in part, inspired my research into what I realized I was more interested in statistical analysis of the
factors lead people to pursue careers in science and data I was generating. My interest in math and statistics and
innovation. We found that America has many “lost Einsteins” — my experience seeing vast differences in outcomes between
women and people from minoritized or low-income groups kids in India and kids in the U.S. led me towards economics
who could have made significant discoveries if they had been and social science. Big data came later. When I was in college
exposed to innovation as children. and in graduate school, big data wasn't a thing. But I later
discovered that it could be a great vehicle to study some of
You participated in ISEF and STS. What are your memories the questions I and many others had been thinking about for
of those competitions? decades.
I have vivid memories of participating in ISEF and STS. I had
an opportunity to work during the summers and after school You have studied a range of variables that both coincide
at the Medical College of Wisconsin in a microbiology lab, with and challenge our perceptions of economic mobility
which is where I did my research project. At ISEF, I remember and the American dream. What findings have surprised you
being struck by the experience of seeing all these students the most?
from different parts of the U.S. doing lots of different exciting What surprised me the most is how the U.S. is not actually all
things. Conducting research in high school and participating that much of a land of opportunity, despite that perception.
We
are
uncoMmon.
At the Virginia Commonwealth University College of Engineering,
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discovering new ways to understand and solve real-world problems.
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If you grow up in the U.S. in a low-income family, your odds
of reaching up into the middle class or beyond don't look that
great. In some sense, if you want to achieve the American
dream, you are better off growing up in Canada or in many
parts of Scandinavia.
But when I started digging further into the data on millions
of children’s experiences from anonymized tax return data,
it became clear how disparate opportunities are, depending
upon where you live and the color of your skin.
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FEEDBACK
(Repeat chorus)
(Repeat chorus)
Making an impression
Air pollution from the Industrial Revolution
may have helped give rise to 19th century
impressionist art, Bas den Hond reported in
“Smog influenced impressionism’s dreamy
style” (SN: 3/25/23, p. 4).
Join the conversation
Reader Bill Clendenen asked if pollutants
E-MAIL feedback@sciencenews.org
trapped in impressionist paintings could
MAIL Attn: Feedback
1719 N St., NW reveal increasing levels of air pollution
Washington, DC 20036 during this time.
Paints can trap environmental
Connect with us elements. Vincent van Gogh’s 1882 paint-
ing “Beach at Scheveningen in Stormy
Weather” contains sand from the beach
where it was made. But analyzing paints
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1 µm
FROM TOP: X. FAN ET AL/PNAS 2023; NAN SHI, XIUJUN FAN AND GENBAO WU
The iridescence of the roughly 5-centimeter-long ghost microscope image above) consists of two adjacent “tiles” of
catfish caught the eye of Qibin Zhao, a physicist at Shanghai interlocking myosin filaments and actin filaments, threadlike
Jiao Tong University, when he was in an aquarium store. To protein structures responsible for muscle contraction. The
investigate the freshwater fish’s colorful properties, Zhao repeating bands bend white light in a way that separates and
and colleagues examined several ghost catfish under differ- enhances its different wavelengths. The collective diffraction
ent lighting conditions. The researchers determined that the of light produces an array of colors (left). When a fish con-
tracts and relaxes its muscles to swim, the sarcomeres slightly
change in length, causing a shifting rainbow effect.
The purpose of the iridescence is a little unclear, says
Heok Hee Ng, an independent ichthyologist in Singapore.
Ghost catfish live in murky water and seldom rely on sight.
But the iridescence might help them visually coordinate
movements when traveling in schools, he says, or it could
help them blend in with shimmering water to hide from land
predators such as birds. — McKenzie Prillaman
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