Removing worn-out cells makes mice live longer and prosper

Antiaging treatment shows promise for lengthening life span

BY TINA HESMAN SAEY
1:00PM, FEBRUARY 3, 2016
Killing worn-out cells helps middle-aged mice live longer, healthier
lives, a new study suggests.
Removing those worn-out or senescent cells increased the median
life span of mice from 24 to 27 percent over that of rodents in which
senescent cells built up normally with age, Mayo Clinic researchers
report online February 3 in Nature. Clearing senescent cells also
improved heart and kidney function, the researchers found.
If the results hold up in people, they could lead to an entirely new way
to treat aging, says gerontology and cancer researcher Norman
Sharpless at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in
Chapel Hill. Most prospective antiaging treatments would require
people to take a drug for decades.

Random changes in behavior speed bacteria evolution

Computer modeling of how microbes mutate could provide clues to battling antibiotic resistance
BY CHRIS SAMORAY
6:00AM, FEBRUARY 1, 2016
Random changes in microbes behavior can speed up evolution, a
new study shows.
These shifts called phenotype switches can promote genetic
mutations that help microbes better survive their environment,
researchers report online January 19 at BioRxiv.org. Understanding
how the microbes evolve is particularly important for antibiotic
resistance, says study coauthor Bartlomiej Waclaw, a physicist at
the University of Edinburgh.
Waclaw and colleagues used computer modeling to look at how an
organisms phenotype in this case, its growth behavior might
influence its genetic makeup, or genotype, in an unchanging
environment. The experiment could represent how bacteria replicate and evolve to reach an antibiotic-resistant
state, the researchers suggest.

Computer simulations heat up hunt for Planet Nine

Evidence accumulates for presence of orb on outskirts of solar system
BY CHRISTOPHER CROCKETT
8:00AM, JANUARY 31, 2016
For a planet that hasnt technically been discovered yet, Planet Nine
is generating a lot of buzz. Astronomers have not actually found a
new planet orbiting the sun, but some remote icy bodies are
dropping tantalizing clues about a giant orb lurking in the fringes of
the solar system.
Six hunks of ice in the debris field beyond Neptune travel on orbits
that are aligned with one another, Caltech planetary scientists
Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown report (SN Online: 1/20/16).
Gravitational tugs from the known planets should have twisted the
orbits around by now. But computer simulations suggest the
continuing alignment could be explained by the effects from a planet
roughly 10 times as massive as Earth that comes no closer to the
sun than about 30 billion kilometers 200 times the distance between the sun and Earth. The results appear in the
February Astronomical Journal.

Phytoplankton rapidly disappearing from the Indian Ocean

Loss of mini marine plants at base of food web threatens seas ecology
BY THOMAS SUMNER
7:00AM, FEBRUARY 1, 2016
A rapid loss of phytoplankton threatens to turn the western Indian Ocean into an ecological desert, a new study
warns. The research reveals that phytoplankton populations in the region fell an alarming 30 percent over the last 16
years.

A decline in ocean mixing due to warming surface waters is to blame

for that phytoplankton plummet, researchers propose online January
19 in Geophysical Research Letters. The mixing of the oceans layers
ferries phytoplankton nutrients from the oceans dark depths up into
the sunlit layers that the mini plants inhabit.

Immune system gene leads to schizophrenia clue

Excessive synapse pruning linked to protein variant
BY LAURA SANDERS
12:57PM, JANUARY 29, 2016
From the tangled web of schizophrenia biology, scientists have
pulled out one tantalizing thread. Variants of a protein that
helps snip connections between nerve cells in the brain may
contribute to the disorder, scientists report January 27 in Nature.
Its not the answer, but its an answer, says psychiatrist and
neuroscientist Henry Nasrallah of Saint Louis University School of
Medicine. The findings give scientists a clue that may help unravel
more insights into how schizophrenia takes hold of the brain, he
says.
The research was sparked by genetic studies that identified a
mammoth stretch of DNA on chromosome 6 as particularly
suspicious. Called the major histocompatibility complex, or MHC, this
DNA chunk carries information used by the immune system to help identify invaders.

Tracking health is no sweat with new device

Wearable electronic analyzes chemicals in perspiration
BY MEGHAN ROSEN
1:00PM, JANUARY 27, 2016
Fitness trackers just got an upgrade.
A new electronic health-monitoring device can sense a persons
temperature, analyze chemicals in a drop of sweat, and send the
data wirelessly to a smartphone app all in a package about the
size of a few postage stamps.
The gadget could help athletes instantly gauge their hydration
level, or give scientists an easy and noninvasive way to collect data
for medical studies.
Previous sensors have detected only a single chemical. The new
sensor can measure four chemicals glucose, lactate, sodium and
potassium simultaneously and in real time, Ali Javey and
colleagues report January 27 in Nature.
Traditional electronics rely on brains made of tiny circuits laid out on silicon chips. But the problem with silicon
chips is that theyre way too small and rigid, says Javey, an electrical engineer at University of California,
Berkeley.Theyre great for data processing not for making sensors that hug the skin. For that, rubbery electronics
that can twist and flex are ideal (SN: 11/17/12, p. 18). But they dont have the processing power of silicon-based
versions.

Zika virus raises alarm as it spreads in the Americas

Mosquito-borne disease is linked to birth defect in Brazil
BY MEGHAN ROSEN
1:32PM, JANUARY 28, 2016
The latest virus to break out of the tropics may be the most
frightening.
Its called Zika virus. It has already blazed across Brazil. And it has
pressed northward into Central America and Mexico. Now it is
poised to jump to the United States. Infection typically causes minor
or even no symptoms. But in pregnant women, its been linked to a
birth defect called microcephaly. The condition leaves babies with
abnormally small heads and partially developed brains.
Zika virus is an arbovirus. This type of virus is one of many that are
spread by insects such as mosquitoes and ticks. International travel
may make it easier for these viruses to spread across the globe.
Because of this, the rapid emergence and reemergence of little-known viruses such as Zika may be the new
normal, suggest Anthony Fauci and his colleague David Morens. Their warning appears January 13 in theNew England
Journal of Medicine.

Zika virus is just the latest mosquito-borne disease to reach the Americas. Dengue fever causes severe headaches,
joint and muscle pain and other symptoms. It can be deadly. Dengue hit with a vengeance in the 90s, Fauci notes.
He is director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Md. West Nile arrived in
1999. Chikungunya showed up in 2013. Lo and behold, now we have Zika in 2015 and 2016, says Fauci. This is a
disturbing, remarkable pattern.

Why some penguin feathers never freeze

These birds could inspire new ways to keep ice off of airplane wings
BY ANDREW GRANT
7:00AM, JANUARY 28, 2016
Penguins in Antarctica survive in some rough conditions.
Temperatures can reach -40 Celsius (-40 Fahrenheit). Winds can
blow as fast as 40 meters per second (89 miles per hour). A
drenched penguin waddling in such bone-chilling air would seem like
a recipe for frozen feathers. Yet the birds dont become popsicles.
Thats because tiny grooves and an oily sheath on the feathers
prevent some penguins from freezing, a new study finds.
Pirouz Kavehpour is a mechanical engineer at the University of
California in Los Angeles. He and his colleagues studied feathers
from gentoo penguins, an Antarctic species, under a scanning
electron microscope. The jagged surface of the feathers was full of
nano-sized pores. This subtle roughness forces water droplets to
slide off rather than stay and freeze. The penguins also release preen oil from a gland near the base of the tail. A bird
will use its beak to spread the oil over its feathers. That oil works as a water-repellent.

Frozen oil droplets morph and shine

Hydrocarbon crystals could eventually serve as drug delivery vessels
BY SARAH SCHWARTZ
12:00PM, JANUARY 26, 2016
In carefully chilled conditions, microscopic beads of oil freeze to
form a panoply of shapes.
The triangles, hexagons and other structures above are oil droplets
tens of micrometers across that are mixed with water and a
detergent-like substance, and then slowly frozen to form hydrogencarbon crystals. Polarized light passing through the crystals
disperses to create the kaleidoscopic color displays. University of
Cambridge materials scientist Stoyan Smoukov and
colleaguesdescribed the assorted shapes and the recipes for
crafting them in the Dec. 17 Nature.
Scientists have observed similar transformations in other
hydrocarbons, but this is the first time researchers have managed
to manipulate the droplets shape-shifting, Smoukov says. His team varied detergent types and cooling speeds to
control the geometries of the droplets. All four droplets in the top row are made of the same substance, a chemical
chain of 16 carbon and 34 hydrogen atoms. The other crystals contain from 14 to 20 carbons.
The new technique may allow scientists to efficiently produce an assortment of custom-shaped miniature bricks.
Those bricks, Smoukov says, could serve as building blocks for larger, more complex structures, or as vessels for
delivering drugs inside the body.

Devils Hole pupfish may not have been so isolated for so long
Story of how fish got stuck in the desert was possibly oversimplified
BY SUSAN MILIUS
7:05PM, JANUARY 26, 2016
The alarmingly rare Devils Hole pupfish known from only one pool in a Nevada desert might not be the longisolated species it has seemed.

The small, bluish Cyprinodon diabolis fish inhabits Devils Hole, a

collapsed cavern filled with water in the Mojave Desert. To explain
how fish got into such hostile terrain, biologists have speculated
that C. diabolis and some related local pupfishes in the area
descend from residents of ancient bodies of water that
disappeared from the region more than 10,000 years ago. As those
waters receded, fishes took refuge where they could, the idea
goes. By now, descendants have adapted to odd remnant habitats
of wetter days.
That intuitively appealing story, however, does not fit with hints
from new genetic evidence, says Christopher Martin of the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Devils Hole pupfish
appears to have recently shared genes with desert pupfishes that live in springs or other watery places perhaps
between 105 and 850 years ago. So the Devils Hole pupfish may not have been really isolated as a species as long as
once thought. And it may not even have moved in to its watery hole in the desert recently, Martin and colleagues say
January 27 in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.