Scientists and the general public have long dismissed the cognitive abilities of cows, pigs, and other livestock. But farm animals are capable of much more than we think.

#Science #Biology #AnimalBehaviour #Behaviour #Cognition #intelligence #Cattle #Cow #Pig #Livestock #Chicken

📄 Grimm D (2023) What are farm animals thinking? Science 382:1103–1107 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.adn3270

Content warning: Crowdfunding rent for a community lab :boost_requested: 🦠 :scihub: Reveal/hide

Hello, so I'm coming to the end of my time as the main volunteer organizer for #Biotech Without Borders (a 501(c)(3) in the USA and an all-volunteer member-led #community biolab, aka #makerspace for molecular #biology). I'm reaching out to ask for #donations to keep our #lab running in 2024. We want to be entirely supported by memberships but its' taking time to find our people. https://opencollective.com/bwob2024

Please boost.

Fundraising 2024: Biotech Without Borders - Open Collective

Raising money for the Biotech Without Borders community lab to cover rent in 2024

^{opencollective.com}

Marine #microorganisms are crucial for #ocean health.

#Bacteria, #archaea, #fungi, #algae and #viruses make up most of the biomass in the seas and form the base of marine food webs.

They support nutrient cycling and drive crucial biogeochemical processes, including key steps in the carbon, nitrogen and silicon cycles.

Ocean modelling must evolve to take their biological complexity into account.

#biology #ecology #oceans
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03425-4

‘Oceans are hugely complex’: modelling marine microbes is key to climate forecasts

Microorganisms are the engines that drive most marine processes. Ocean modelling must evolve to take their biological complexity into account.

^{Tagliabue, Alessandro}

How did #eukaryotes evolve for extreme temps? https://www.futurity.org/high-temp-eukaryotes-2972442-2/ #protists

#ExtremeEnvironments offer an unprecedented opportunity to understand #microbial #eukaryotic #ecology, #evolution, and #genome #biology: Hannah Rappaport & Angela Oliverio https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-40657-4

“several lineages of #amoebae were often recovered from extremely high temperature environments. Studying those lineages may yield great insight into how eukaryotic cells can adapt to life in extremely hot environments.”

The 'There Are Such Things As Cooties' book doesn't appear to be available in UK.

I have a serious need to know as osculation, for me, has always carried great risk, #autoimmunesystem highly compromised.
The first few months of a new romantic relationship is fraught with a horrid cascade of immune response symptoms. And yet, I still do it!!! It's a really difficult one to resist.
#science #biology #immunology #immunesystem

While we are still trying to find ways to clean up problems like oil spills in the ocean, microorganisms in the seas have their own insights to impart.

Oil rich soil from the Guaymas Basin has provided German scientists understanding of a mechanism by which archaea in the Alkanophaga break down alkane molecules and thus degrade petroleum through oxidation.

#Remediation #Bioremediation #Oil #Petroleum #Archaea #Alkanophaga #Science #Biology #Scicomm

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-023-01400-3

Candidatus Alkanophaga archaea from Guaymas Basin hydrothermal vent sediment oxidize petroleum alkanes - Nature Microbiology

Oil-rich deep-sea sediments are used to culture syntrophic communities of archaea and bacteria that pair petroleum alkane oxidation to sulfide generation.

^Nature

This is a 440-pound heart from a blue whale, the largest known animal to ever exist. The heart was so large that technicians had to douse it in 1,000 gallons of formaldehyde. Read more about it here: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/painstaking-process-preserving-blue-whales-heart-180964038/

#histodons #histodon #histmed #biology #animal #animals #bluewhale #museum #DYK

Content warning: Published Science. Symbiosis in beetles Reveal/hide

#Bostrichidae #beetles have two #symbionts with important functions. One encodes the pathways to produce tyrosine precursors and is presumably involved in #cuticle and #exoskeleton formation. The second recycles urea, synthesizes lysine, and is strictly #evolving with its host. These types of "dual symbioses" have only been described in sap-feeding #Hemiptera.

#Biology #Entomology #Evolution #Bacteria #Coevolution #Genome

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.09.519726v1

Cuticle supplementation and nitrogen recycling by a dual bacterial symbiosis in a family of xylophagous beetles (Coleoptera: Bostrichidae)

Many insects engage in stable nutritional symbioses with bacteria that supplement limiting essential nutrients to their host.

^bioRxiv