billy dalto

There was a poster of Stevie Wonder on a wall in my high school’s lunch room on which he claims he’d rather drive himself home than ride with a friend who has been drinking. And although Mr. Wonder might well be an excellent driver, I think it’s sensible to have other mammalian designated drivers lined up.

My first choice has long been the pentail treeshrew (above), which routinely consumes fermented bertam palm nectar without becoming intoxicated. Now, having read this article, I know several frugivorous bats species would be capable drivers, even after a few drinks. Sugars in ripening fruit can be converted to ethanol by fermentation, which can give animals that tolerate ethanol an advantage over those that do not. Such is the case with the bats tested. Those fed an ethanol solution performed as well in an obstacle course as the control group, fed only sugar water.

When I was an embryo, I didn’t have much going for me. I was innumerate, unemployed, and had never eaten a burrito, though, to be fair, I should say my mother did eat a lot of Mexican food during my gestation. Fortunately, things improved markedly as my development progressed. Among other enhancements, my teeth formed and were coated with a layer of enamel by specialized cells called ameloblasts.

Ameloblasts produce the protein amelogenin, which is involved in controlling the formation of hydroxyapatite crystals, the main component of tooth enamel. The structure of amelogenin is highly conserved among mammalian species and is also produced, in a slightly modified form, by frogs. In this article, the effects of variation in amelogenin structure on crystal formation are evaluated. The images above show the difference in enamel deposited in a wild-type mouse (D/F) and a transgenic mouse expressing frog amelogenin (C/E).

Image source.

According to the caption, this is a satellite spinning in a magnetic field. It is of the same type as the first successful weather satellite, TIROS-1, which was launched in April 1960.

Image source.

Part of the Sumedicina project, this is a visualization of a viral DNA sequence. It’s a fictional virus that happens to share its name with an isolate of the Taura syndrome virus, also called 2KMX. TSV has a single-stranded RNA genome, and infects a number of species including the whiteleg shrimp Litopenaeus vannamei, which is actually a closet prawn.

Image via Flowing Data and created by Kim Asendorf.

This is a model of Rochelle salt, a compound unrelated to Rochelle, Rochelle, produced using Ray Pepinsky’s X-RAC (X-ray Analogue Computer), described in this 1954 Life article. X-ray crystallography remains an important method used to solve the three-dimensional structures of molecules.

Image source.

From Moonlight makes owls more chatty, an article I like mainly for its title, which has the ring of something one might read in a children’s book. I am certain this newfound knowledge of owl behavior will serve me well in the future, and anxiously await my chance to use it.

On an evening of improbabilities, I was fortunate to have an artist available to draw a quick sketch of a small portion of the jubilant scene at Ills Manor, where Mills, some first-rate diatoms, and I are celebrating.

Image from WoRMS.

Beginning with the slime mold Physarum polycephalum standing in as Tokyo and oat flakes as 36 nearby cities, researchers found, as reported by Science and The Economist, that the smile mold’s morphology quickly came to bear a resemblance to the railway network around Tokyo. And while I don’t expect these findings to have much impact on my life before I go to bed this evening, it is nonetheless striking to see a relatively simple organism used to solve a complex problem.

Image source.

I admire leaf architecture and hope you do too. It’s well established that the hormone auxin plays a significant role in formation of leaf venation, whereby auxin synthesized in the growing leaf triggers the process leading to differentiation into vein tissue. The current model, however, does not account well for some common features such as vein loops. In this article, the source for the image above, the authors find merit in the idea that mechanical stress within the leaf, caused by two adjacent tissues growing at different rates, plays a role in the development of leaf venation.