Absence Makes the Beard Grow Thicker

I saw this posted by Scicurious at Neurotopia. If you're not reading that blog regularly, you're missing out. This particular piece of blogging on peer reviewed research has it all: desert islands, self-experimentation, beards, sex and measuring things. And it was published anonymously in Nature.

In this study (n=1), a man who spent great deal of time alone on an island discovered that when he returned to the mainland and was able to visit his girlfriend his facial hair was thicker. So he tested it. By collecting daily shavings and weighing them, the anonymous author determined that sex (or anticipation thereof) caused an increase in beard growth. But the effects were only after being away from her for some time, and diminshed quickly after the first day together. He followed this up with self-administered hormone studies on the island, and determined that many different hormones resulted in similar growth, with androsterone having the best effect.

The full paper is available here (subscription required) and more details can be read at Neurotopia.

One of the commenters there has suggested that the paper itself was a hoax. I haven't been able to find any retractions (and it wasn't April Fool's Day), but almost all of the letters in response to the paper suggested alternative reasons for the difference in shaving weight - most having to do with time of day and/or relative skin thickness. The author tried to control for this with a regular shaving schedule. One correspondant suggested some further experiments:

Your anonymous correspondent (Nature, May 30, p. 869) ought, in the interests of science, to try abstaining from sexual activity during some of his returns to civilization. Or, better still, the lady concerned might be persuaded to cooperate in the experiment by unexpectedly withholding her favours during certain of his visits, chosen at random.

Hmm. Doesn't sound like a very fun follow-up. And if the results are real and generalizable, it doesn't quite explain my own thick facial hair.

More on STDs

At the same party AC mentioned, conversation naturally turned from herpes to other STDs - namely gonorrhea. (Don't you wish you could have been there?) Most people are probably familiar with Kramer's portrayal of the disease on Seinfeld:



In addition to the burning he describes, infection may also be accompanied by a urethral discharge (sometimes known as gleet). And no, you can't get it from a tractor (but possibly from a blow-up doll). You can, however, get it in non-genital sites such as the throat or eye. Throat infections may be asymptomatic, but common symptoms include redness and soreness. Gonococcal eye infections result in conjunctivitis, as well as a possible discharge.

While gonorrhea is primarily sexually transmitted - so much so that it's presence in children is almost always taken as a sign of sexual abuse - non-sexual transmission (such as from shared towels, rectal thermometers, or even caregiver hands, but not riding a tractor in your bathing suit) does occur. Still, it kind of makes you wonder about that lab pink eye outbreak.

STDs, drinking games and sexomnia

During a party over the weekend some younger colleagues took part in a drinking game called "flippy cup". Now the game was innocent enough but we wondered about the potential for transmission of herpes viruses (HSV, EBV) via drinking games. Interestingly we were not the first to notice a possible link, as you can read here in a college newspaper about herpes being passed around as a result of a "beer pong" tournament. The article even quotes a CDC report indicating a 230% increase in infection as a result of cup sharing. There goes to show that two girls shouldn't share one cup. In a related train of thought, the subject of alcohol-induced sexsomnia came up, perhaps as another vector for STD transmission. Apparently some people suffer from sleeping masturbation. As usual, pubmed comes to the rescue with a nice case report:

CMAJ voices concern over budget

Much like what was echoed here, the CMAJ isn't too impressed with cuts to science in favor of shovel-ready cheap fixes to the economy. They warn of massive brain drain and irreparable setbacks to Canadian science:

"In economics, as in clinical practice, treating acute deteriorations does not obviate the need for a long-term care plan. The crisis in Canada’s resource sectors in particular, while urgent, is a reminder that government investment must aim to substitute science and technology industries for the volatile “found” wealth of oil, mining and forestry.
These cuts to science and technology arrive despite the federal government agreeing that deficit spending is fair game when stimulating the economy. In saying yes to deficits and
stimulus, yet being lukewarm to science, the unmistakable message from Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is that science is unimportant in Canada’s economy.
Meanwhile, the stimulus package in the United States could hardly be more different. Both the House and Senate agree on adding US$3.9 billion of new money to the National
Institutes of Health budget — a 13% increase."

The answer, according to the editorial, is stronger lobbying in Ottawa. They argue that most of the population understands that resources such as oil will not suffice to keep the country prosperous, and that this message must be relayed to the Harper governement:

" Clearly, health researchers and other stakeholders must ensure that politicians hear about the importance of research from their constituents. It is a small wonder that funding is decreasing or that opposition parties in Parliament have not demanded more spending for knowledge-based sectors. Next, health researchers and professionals as well as institutions and lobbyists must ensure that the public and politicians recognize that Canadian scientists and doctors are capable of home runs."

You can read the rest of the article here.

Celebrate Darwin Day with a Phylum Feast

Today, February 12 2009, marks the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth, and this year is also the 150th anniversary of the publication of his 'On the Origin of Species'. As such, there are events around the world celebrating Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution.

Darwin, during his travels on the Beagle, collected specimens for gastronomic - as well as scientific - purposes. While at Cambridge University he was a member of the "Gourmet Club", a group whose goal was to sample animals not normally found on menus. In South America, he supped on armadillo, as he describes in the 3rd volume of 'Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle'

We found the Beagle had not arrived, and consequently set out on our return, but the horses soon tiring, we were obliged to bivouac on the plain. In the morning we had caught an armadillo, which, although a most excellent dish when roasted in its shell, did not make a very substantial breakfast and dinner for two hungry men.

Elsewhere in his Beagle Diaries, Darwin describes feasting on puma comparing it to veal:

At supper I was suddenly struck with horror that I was eating one of the very favourite dishes of the country, viz a half formed calf long before its time of birth. — It turned out to be the Lion or Puma; the flesh is very white & remarkably like Veal in its taste. — Dr Shaw was laughed at for stating that "the flesh of the Lion (of Africa) is in great esteem, having no small affinity with veal, both in colour, taste & flavour". — Yet the Puma & Lion are not, I believe, closer allied than any other two of the Cat genus. — The Gouchos differ much whether the Jaguar is good eating; but all agree that the Cat is excellent.

Ever the scientist, Darwin was even able to salvage important specimens even after having consumed the animal. While searching Patagonia for the rare lesser rhea (Rhea darwinii), an ostrich was shot and eaten. It was in fact not an ostrich, but the mistake wasn't realized until afterwards:

When at the Rio Negro, in Northern Patagonia, I repeatedly heard the Gauchos talking of a very rare bird which they called Avestruz Petise. They described it as being less than the common ostrich (which is there abundant), but with a very close general resemblance. They said its colour was dark and mottled, and that its legs were shorter, and feathered lower down than those of the common ostrich. [...] When at Port Desire, in Patagonia (lat. 48°), Mr. Martens shot an ostrich; and I looked at it, forgetting at the moment, in the most unaccountable manner, the whole subject of the Petises, and thought it was a two-third grown one of the common sort. The bird was cooked and eaten before my memory returned. Fortunately the head, neck, legs, wings, many of the larger feathers, and a large part of the skin, had been preserved. From these a very nearly perfect specimen has been put together, and is now exhibited in the museum of the Zoological Society.

Darwin and his shipmates also reportedly developed a taste for tortoise meat, bringing several specimens on board only to eat them and discard the shells overboard.

Darwin's gastronomic adventures have given birth to the Phylum Feast - a Darwin Day tradition conisisting of a meal with food from as many different species as possible. The tradition may even have Canadian roots. While I doubt armadillo or puma are on the menu, it's no surprise that some of today's Darwin Day events include Phylum Feast meals.

Cheap WoW Gold!

I've noticed in recent weeks that the Bayblab has been flooded with spam comments from WoW (or more recently Runescape) gold farmers. It's kind of annoying, and pretty much renders our 'recent comments' feature on the sidebar useless.

As a result, I've turned on Blogspot's word verification for comments. Hopefully this will eliminate the comment spam we've been getting. If our commentor(s) find this too annoying and obtrusive leave a comment here and we'll see if we can come up with a better solution.

Now back to your regular scheduled programming.

SETI progress

I was wondering if the recent finding of hints of life on Mars has instigated a resurgence of interest in the Search for ExTraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). I used to run SETI@home, and I really should be doing something with my extra available computational power, and am considering running the Linux version on my home computer. SETI@home, if you don't know, just uses your idle computer power to search through radio telescope signals for any sign of signals with an intelligent origin.
I didn't see any evidence that things at SETI have picked up, however, while poking around, here are some of the more interesting things that I did not know about SETI:
-An answer, much more complicated that you might think, about how much of the sky SETI has covered.
-The radio telescope data is collected using the Arecibo Observatory. As featured in the movie (and N64 game) GoldenEye. It looks awesome but may soon be essentially shut down. (we have mentioned SETI's financial woes before.)
-Apparently if they find aliens they will make the news public. I wonder if that would actually happen in practice. ?
I would have liked to see a calculation on what they have searched and work this into a probability of intelligent life in our galaxy. Anything has got to be better than the Drake equation. Unfortunately, it would anticlimactic to have this number continually decrease as the search continues.
Perhaps I should devote my CPU time to something that has a garentee of being produtive. Folding@home, where disrubuted computing is used to simulate folding of proteins, has an amazing track record.

Nature Videos

I love Sir David Attenborough and his enormous collection of nature videos. Someone really needs to make some highlight reels of his work. If you haven't seen the Polar Bear vs Walrus scene from Planet Earth you don't know nature videos.
In any case I ran into David Attenborough's commentary on Darwin on Youtube. It's part of Nature Videos, which I had not heard of before. Check out the NatureVideos Youtube channel for some more David Attenborough goodness, as well as some other stuff that I haven't checked out yet.

Olive oil cures all

My mother is Spanish, and growing up, she always touted olive oil as being the cure to every ailment. If I had an ear infection, she would shove a cotton ball with olive oil in my ear, for dry skin or scalp just massage-in some olive oil, for a burn, yep you guessed it, olive oil. Incidentally the same goes for food, and there isn't any ingredient that can't be combined with olive oil to make it better, even marmalade for toasts. I figured it has something to do with my ancestors growing olive trees. I constantly have to defend my work by explaining that all cancers are not a result of poor diet, and that no, it wouldn't be better to treat with olive oil. Well I may have to eat my words (coated in delicious oil) according to a recent study by a team of spaniards. According to them, polyphenols present in extra virgin olive oil (such as hydroxitirosol, tirosol, elenolic acid, lignans, pinoresinol and acetopinoresinol, and secoiridoids, diacetox oleuropein aglycone, ligustrosid aglycone and oleuropein aglycone) have specific anti-HER2 effects in breast cancer cells in the micromolar range. HER2 is not only inhibited by the polyphenols, but also promoted for proteosomal degradation.

The authors conclude: "Our current findings not only molecularly support recent epidemiological evidence revealing that EVOO (extra-virgin olive oil)-related anti-breast cancer effects primarily affect the occurrence of breast tumors over-expressing the type I receptor tyrosine kinase HER2 but further suggest that the stereochemistry of EVOO-derived lignans and secoiridoids might provide an excellent and safe platform for the design of new HER2 targeted anti-breast cancer drugs."

Papers can be found in int j onc, and BMC cancer

Cancer Carnival #18

Charles at 'Science and Reason' has done a great job hosting hosting Cancer Research Blog Carnival #18. Head over there and check out this month's collection of cancer blogging goodness. Then drop us a line to host it yourselves. The next edition is due to arrive Friday, March 6.

Anti-cancer supplement interferes with cancer drug

Herbal supplements are increasingly popular as both prevenative and potentially curative alternative medicine. Often, they're taking alongside standard medication with the underlying assumption that there's no real downside: At best, they'll help; at worst they do nothing. We now know this isn't necessarily the case. For example, St. John's Wort, echinacea and even grapefruit are known to change the bioavailability of certain drugs by acting on cytochrome P450s.

One of the most popular supplements is green tea - consumed either as tea or in more concentrated supplement forms - whose most active polyphenol, EGCG, has been shown to have anti-cancer effects. That being the case, it's no surprise that many cancer patients complement their treatment by consuming green tea.

This may not be a good idea, depending on the chemo drugs being used.

A recent paper in the journal Blood (subscription required, press release here) demonstrates that green tea supplements can interfere with at least one particular chemotherapeutic.

The drug in question is bortezomib (aka Velcade), a proteasome inhibitor that induces ER stress leading to cell death and approved for treatment of multiple myeloma and mantle cell lymphoma. One of the pro-survival regulators in the ER stress response is GRP78. EGCG is known to inhibit GRP78 activity which may be the reason it can senstitize cells to other chemo agents. To the surprise of the researchers involved, the opposite was seen with bortezomib, and the drug's anti-tumor activity was almost completely negated. This was shown both in vitro and in vivo with different cancer models - multiple myeloma and glioblastoma. More importantly, the inactivation of the drug was found to occur with physiologically relevant concentrations of EGCG:

The study findings may have several important implications in the clinical setting. The EGCG blocked bortezomib’s antitumor effects at levels that are commonly achieved with the use of available concentrated green tea supplements (as low as 2.5 μM – which can be attained with two to three 250 mg capsules of green tea extract) suggesting the impact is very real for patients supplementing their therapy. The team also believes that as the EGCG inactivates bortezomib’s function in the tumor cell, it may also prevent some of the side effects that usually accompany the therapy. As a result, patients taking green tea products to supplement their therapy may experience improved well being and feel encouraged to increase their intake while unknowingly blunting or completely negating the efficacy of their bortezomib treatment.

EGCG was found to block bortezomib's proteasome inhibitory activity by directly interacting with the boronic acid group of the drug, forming a new adduct. Vitamin C has a similar, but much less potent, effect.

Of course, this is one very specific interaction and the authors note that it shouldn't minimize any previous beneficial effects reported for green tea. At the same time, it's an example of how complementary medicine doesn't get a free pass for being 'natural'.

Extinct Ibex Goes Extinct

In an age of cloned livestock and pets, is it any surprise we're inching towards Michael Crichton territory? A team of researchers in Spain has succeeded in bringing back a once extinct species.

Using DNA from skin samples taken from the last known Pyrenean ibex, or bucardo - which was officially declared extinct almost 10 years ago - scientists were able to resurrect the species by somatic cell nuclear transfer to domestic goat surrogates.

Over 430 cloned embryos were created with only 57 transferred to mothers and 7 resulting pregnancies. Of these, only one pregnancy resulted in a live birth. [source] The success was short lived, however, with the newborn - and only known living example - bucardo dying shortly after birth due to lung defects putting back on the 'extinct' list.

The news has provoked mixed reactions. Many are excited by the brief success, seeing it as a small step to protecting the genetic diversity of the planet and a move to a future where wooly mammoths and flightless dodos make a comeback (the terrors of Jurassic Park notwithstanding). Others have a more sober take:

Samples of the bucardo's ear were taken in 1999 under experimental conditions and were frozen in liquid nitrogen. If it is not possible to produce healthy clones from this tissue, it is unlikely it will be possible to clone from the long-dead and degraded tissue of a mammoth frozen in Siberia for thousands of years, or a dead thylacine kept for decades in a museum.

This wasn't the first attempt to clone the Pyrenean ibex, and other groups are pursuing similar goals with endangered species such as the pygmy hippo or giant panda. But even with future success, this shouldn't be a license to have a laissez-faire attitude with the environment or its other inhabitants.

Genome Canada cut from the budget?

So at a time where our southern neighbors are investing heavily in science and putting science back into decision-making we have an unpopular prime-minister (at least out east), who is crippling science and rendering us completely uncompetitive. The latest casualty is Genome Canada, our only large-project funding agency, completely left out of the budget. I hear a lot of grumbling, and it's only a matter of time before we experience major brain-drain. Such a reversal in a short amount of time. From the Globe and Mail:

The only agency that regularly finances large-scale science in Canada was shut out of Tuesday's federal budget, putting at risk thousands of jobs and some of the most promising medical research, and forcing the country to pull out of key international projects.

For the first time in nine years, Genome Canada, a non-profit non-governmental funding organization, was not mentioned in the federal budget and saw its annual cash injection from Ottawa - $140-million last year - disappear.

"We got nothing, nothing, and we don't know why," said a stunned Martin Godbout, Genome Canada president and CEO. "We're devastated."

The news spread like a virus through the research community yesterday as the country's top scientists wondered whether the oversight was a mistake. Genome Canada supports 33 major research projects in areas such as genomics, agriculture and cancer stem cells with operating grants of $10-million a year. The projects employ more than 2,000 people. By comparison, medical research grants from the federally funded Canadian Institutes of Health Research run in the $100,000-a-year range.

Science and the 2009 Canadian Budget

Looks like the granting agencies took a hit with the Canadian Conservative Governments new budget.
From the Globe:
The headline numbers offered yesterday drew praise from university leaders. There is $2-billion for colleges and universities to fix their aging buildings, $87.5-million for new graduate scholarships and $750-million for the Canada Foundation for Innovation, which funds research infrastructure.

But more than 250 pages back in the budget are figures that point to cuts to the three federal granting councils, the bodies that hand out the money to support continuing research. Over three years, the base budgets of the three agencies will be reduced by $87.2-million; the government says this money will be directed to other spending programs in higher education.

At a time when U.S. President Barack Obama has pledged to "restore science to its rightful place" with billions in new investments, leaders in the Canadian research community were left scratching their heads over Stephen Harper's response to what many fear will become a widening funding gap.

Also it sounds as if environmental investments are exclusively carbon capture and storage. Also the money given to the auto sector had less green strings attached than what was done in the US.

Yet, the budget was mostly silent on the science sector, other than for infrastructure investment in universities and colleges, while its commitment to the energy sector, particularly when it comes to green projects, seems limited to carbon sequestration efforts to which it has already committed, and a green infrastructure fund to transmit power from renewable energy projects. Research and development in this area got scant attention.

Overall doesn't sound very competitive with what the US has decided to do to take on this 'financial crisis'. I was optimistic that the Conservatives might have done something smart, because I have no doubt they have some smart people, especially since they have to please the opposition. Lost opportunity.

"catching fish and chopping wood, the revolution, slow time coming" Buck 65

Posts and Hosts

Charles at Science and Reason has volunteered to host the upcoming 18th edition of the Cancer Research Blog Carnival to appear on Feb. 6. He currently has a bunch of cancer posts up himself, but be sure to submit your own posts for the carnival here.

We also need hosts for March and onward. Email us to sign up!

Move over GFP, it's FlAsH and ReAsH

Just read a paper that follows a viral protein in live cells using the smallest fluorescent tag available. In this paper they follow a protein that could not previously be labelled with a GFP tag. While extremely useful for many applications as a fluorescent tag to follow protein localization, GFP can disrupt the function of some proteins, thus defeating the purpose of labelling it in the first place. This recent paper makes use of a technology I had previously not heard of; biarsenical labelling of tetracysteine motifs. Tetracysteine motifs are exceedingly small, only six amino acids, and are therefore much less likely to disrupt protein function, however, they are still useful for affinity purification of your labelled protein. These amino acids then interact, non-covalently, with a biarsenical molecule which then greatly increases fluorescence of the molecule. Apparently this was originally found in 1998, and I just heard about it now. Invitrogen, a former sponser of the Bayblab (perhaps they don't approve of animal penises), sells the technology and, I presume, owns it aswell. The invitrogen website has a reasonable explanation of the commercially available system as well as links to the original references. Additionally there are some supplementary figures with movies using tetracysteine labelling technology, nothing extremely impressive or free access however.

Turning Stem Cells Into Cancer

An interesting new paper (Open Access, click away!!!) exploring the cancer stem cell hypothesis, describing to my knowledge the first transgenic cancer model to be derived by specifically targeting a normal stem cell population. The Spanish group of Maria Perez-Caro et al. show that they can induce chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) in mice by introducing the infamous bcr-abl oncogene (a gene encoding an aberrent fusion protein known to drive the human disease), specifically into Sca1+ normal hematopoietic stem cells.

They go on to use the model to investigate an important corollary of the cancer stem cell hypothesis, which postulates that residual CSCs are responsible for disease remission during/following therapy. They show that their CML mice cannot be cured with the bcr-abl targeted inhibitor STI571/Gleevec, whereas ablation of the Sca1+ stem cell compartment is sufficient to eliminate the disease. Therapeutically speaking they cheated a bit here by simply engineering a suicide gene into the oncogene cassette, but it's a start. It would be nice to see whether a therapeutically relevant approach to CSC depletion (ie anti-Sca-1 MAb) would also be able to eliminate the disease in their model.

siRNA cream for STDs

There is a small pharma company that is touting a new anti-herpes cream that protects against HSV-2 transmission. The cream contains two siRNAs: one targeted at nectin in the cells of the vaginal lining and the other UL29 in the viral genome. Nectin ko mice are resistant to HSV infection and UL29 is presumably vital for the virulence. The delivery is via a lipid system. Obviously this would be a nice approach to a number of viral STDs including AIDS. However I couldn't help but facepalm when I read the press release:

"As a new route to making better drugs, several companies have locked onto technology using small, interfering RNAs or siRNAs. These are molecules that can silence microRNAs -- tiny strands of RNA, or ribonucleic acid, that help turn genes into proteins."

Really... really?

But it makes we wonder, how long before we have an miRNA cream? They are, after all, bigger than siRNAs. Even bigger than p53.

Odds of finding life on Mars

When I first read about the "Big Belch" on Mars, in the Sun of all places, I was a tad incredulous. Turns out however that the evidence is pretty tantalizing. But short of going there and digging we won't know for sure. What do you think are the odds that the origin of the methane is biotic? Turns out bookies have stopped taking bets since the discovery. In the 1970's the odds of finding past or present life on Mars were 1000:1, and before the discovery they were hovering around 16:1. Bookies however are still taking bets on whether life is still present on Mars at 500:1 (seems like a good bet to me), and whether president Obama will announce the discovery of intelligent extra-terrestrial life in this current year, and the odds are 66:1 (seems like a bad bet to me). Gentlemen, time to make your bets, comment with your odds and the wisdom of the crowd will enlighten us.

Incentive to graduate

I'm often accused of being a career student. A decade studying at a university is not nearly as bad as it sounds, but it's enough for me... This guy however never stopped, accumulating 27 college degrees, including 19 masters and one doctorate. I guess he just collects them. Time to finish up my ph.D. before I too turn 67.