Gizmorama - November 20, 2013
Good Morning, It looks like dinosaurs were smarter than we thought.
According to U.S. scientists, a detailed map of a dinosaur brain suggests faculties for complex behavior, and quite possibly the ability to make sounds to communicate.
Learn about this and other interesting stories from the scientific community in today's issue.
Until Next Time,
Erin****-- Scientists trick algae's biological clock to create valuable compounds --*NASHIVILLE, Tenn. - Tricking the biological clock in algae can boost valuable compounds the marine plants produce when grown in constant light, U.S. researchers say. Causing algae's biological clock to remain in daytime mode can increase production of compounds useful in biofuels and drugs, Vanderbilt University biologists reported Thursday. When the biological clocks of cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) were stopped in their daylight setting, the amount of several biomolecules they were genetically altered to produce increased by as much as 700 percent when grown in constant light, they said. "We have shown that manipulating cyanobacteria's clock genes can increase its production of commercially valuable biomolecules," biological sciences Professor Carl Johnson said. "In the last 10 years, we have figured out how to stop the circadian clocks in most species of algae and in many higher plants as well, so the technique should have widespread applicability." Researchers have mapped the entire clock mechanism in cyanobacteria, which is the simplest bioclock found in nature, and identified proteins that can be manipulated to switch the clock on and off. Bioclock stopping could have significant economic benefits, they said; microalgae are used for a wide variety of commercial applications ranging from anti-cancer drugs to cosmetics to bioplastics and biofuels. The study, in collaboration with Waseda University in Tokyo and the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Md., was published in the journal Current Biology.
*-- First detailed map of dinosaur brains suggests complex behaviors --*DURHAM, N.C. - U.S. scientists say a detailed map of a dinosaur brain suggests faculties for complex behavior, and possibly the ability to make sounds to communicate. Soft tissues like brain matter are not preserved in fossils, but faint impressions left on the insides of fossilized skulls can yield "endocasts" giving clues of the size and shape of the outermost brain parts, they said. To recreate a dinosaur brain, the researchers analyzed the brains of alligators -- which came from a lineage that predated many dinosaurs -- and those of birds, which evolved after the dinosaurs. The dinosaur brain should have evolved to be somewhere in between, Duke University researcher Erich Jarvis said. "In the popular mind, dinosaurs may be underrated in the complexity of their behavior," Jarvis told a meeting of the Society of Neuroscience in San Diego this week. The analysis of alligator and bird brains allowed Jarvis and Duke colleague Chun-Chun Chen to piece together the innermost regions of the dinosaur brain, including six areas that are specialized for complex behavior such as processing visual information and learning and making sounds. "It suggests that the dinosaur brain had the capacity for complex sensory motor processing, just like we see in birds and alligators," Jarvis said. It also suggest dinosaurs had sufficient brain complexity to communicate with sounds, Jarvis said, although he acknowledged there is currently no evidence of a dinosaur that did this. "But all the brain subdivisions to support vocal learning are there, so I'd argue the capacity to evolve vocal learning did exist in dinosaurs," he said.
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