December 9, 2024: Today we're covering mushroom power, an unsettling bird-flu finding and one of our galaxy's darkest places. —Robin Lloyd, Contributing Editor | | | A view of Barnard 68 (B68), a dark and dusty nebula some 500 light-years from Earth. ESO | | | • One of our galaxy's darkest places, called Barnard 68, appears to be a hole in space, but it's actually a dense, opaque cloud of dust—for now. | 5 min read | | | • The virologist at the center of the COVID lab-leak theory has revealed the coronavirus sequences from the Wuhan Institute and says the lab has no close relatives to SARS-CoV-2. | 3 min read | | | A human cell infected with the avian influenza virus H5N1 (blue filaments). Steve Gschmeissner/Science Source | | | Bird-Flu Mutation Surprise | The avian influenza strain spreading among U.S. dairy cows is only one genetic mutation away from gaining the ability to attach more efficiently to human cells in the upper respiratory tract, scientists have discovered. The finding puts the pathogenic H5N1 virus even closer to spreading from one human to another, rather than from dairy cows to humans, as it currently does. And the one-step path increases the risk that H5N1 could become a pandemic in humans, reports Scientific American editor Lauren J. Young. Genetic tweaks that have enabled past flu viruses to spread among humans, including the 1918 influenza pandemic and the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, have required two swaps.
How it works: Researchers wondered how many mutations in the circulating virus's genetic sequence would allow one of the strain's surface proteins, called hemagglutinin, to bind to human upper-airway cell receptors. After trying various possible mutations in viral proteins, the team found that one particular amino-acid swap, involving the 226th amino acid in the sequence, would do the job.
What the experts say: To cause more widespread disease in people, the bird-flu strain also would have to evolve more ability to copy itself and proliferate in our bodies. The hemagglutinin mutation alone would be just the first step. | | | Following a three-year effort, bioengineers have succeeded in using flashes of ultraviolet light to provoke voltage spikes from lab-grown mycelial threads of oyster mushrooms, reports Saima S. Iqbal, Scientific American's news intern. The achievement could lead to deploying mushrooms' buried tendrils as sensors and piloting them to function as "biohybrid" bots. Advantages of mushroom-power: fungi and their tissue are highly sensitive detectors and simple to maintain, says senior study author Robert F. Shepherd. Why this is cool: The mushroom-powered machine isn't the first biohybrid. In 2012, bioengineers reported on a synthetic jellyfish made of silicone and rat cardiac cells. The creature pulsed and swam when placed in an electric field. See a video of the swimming artificial jellyfish in the link above.
Why this matters: The fungi-powered bots could be used to pick fruit as well as to detect nitrogen dips in agricultural fields and then add nutrients to soil, the researchers say. | | | • Our nation is engaged in a continuous "struggle for truth telling," writes research psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, notwithstanding the current environment of serial lying by political leaders. Lifton has explored the "principle of truth telling" in his studies of antiwar Vietnam veterans, Nazi doctors and survivors of the atomic bomb. Just as those study subjects did, individuals in the U.S., as well as the country as a whole, now face a choice between rejecting and embracing factual truths, he asserts. Lifton sees signs that we still hunger for factual truth and will struggle on behalf of truth telling. | 5 min read | | | A few years ago, stand-up comic Matthew Broussard posted the following.
Human: We have named a color after you!
Salmon: Really? Is it silvery blue like my outsides?
Human: No, uh-
Salmon: Wait, why is it pink?
Human: …
Salmon: WHY IS IT PINK
True story: orcas spotted last month off the coast of Washington wore dead salmon "hats." And in a more serious vein, we recently published this positive fish news—salmon are returning to the Klamath River, in Oregon and California, following some innovative conservation measures there. | —Robin Lloyd, Contributing Editor | | Subscribe to this and all of our newsletters . | | | | Scientific American
One New York Plaza, New York, NY, 10004 | | | | | | Support our mission, subscribe to Scientific American | | | | | | | | | |
