Sarah: Have you heard about the spectacular mass meetings of cuttlefish in the waters of the Spencer Gulf, South Australia?
Every year between May and August these incredible cephalopods (in the same family as squid and octopus) arrive to mate and lay eggs in the rocky reefs near Port Lowly. Recently fewer and fewer cuttlefish have been arriving to mate – scientists don’t know if this results from a natural cycle in their abundance, or something more ominous.
Recently I wrote a piece for The Lead SA about new ways of identifying different species and subspecies of cuttlefish, and plans to create a better evidence base for keeping an eye on them into the future (image thanks to southoz on flickr].
New science helps track mysterious cuttlefish
The annual migration of cuttlefish into the Spencer Gulf of South Australia has begun but scientists are baffled by the lack of cuttlefish in the usual spawning grounds.
Massive declines in the cephalopods have led scientists to look for ingenious ways to track the sea creatures.
Scientists are using parasite tracking amongst a panel of other biological tools to identify discrete populations of the Great Australian Cuttlefish (Sepia apama) in the waters around South Australia.
The work offers a rare insight into how species evolve over time, and provides vital information for natural resource management.
“There are likely to be five subpopulations of Great Australian Cuttlefish across the species range,” said Bronwyn Gillanders, Professor in aquatic ecology at The University of Adelaide.
Monitoring the parasites that live on cuttlefish could be the most useful tool for identifying the different populations. Recent PhD graduate Dr Sarah Catalano performed research focusing on an unusual worm-like parasite that is only found in cuttlefish and other cephalopods. Each species of cuttlefish is though to host its own genetically unique parasite.
“Parasite genetics might be a more sensitive tool than looking at the cuttlefish themselves to distinguish whether different species or subspecies actually do exist,” said Professor Gillanders.
Another line of research to identify cuttlefish subpopulations focuses on the appearance of their unique beaked mouth – used by cephalopods to masticate their food before swallowing – and related dietary preferences.
Professor Gillanders and her colleagues hope that by using multiple lines of evidence – parasite genetics in combination with cuttlefish genetics and cuttlefish dietary preferences – they will be able to sort out whether the different groups of cuttlefish in the waters off South Australia are separate species or subspecies.
In particular, they’d like to determine whether the spectacular breeding aggregations of Great Australian Cuttlefish that occur annually during May-August in the northern Spencer Gulf are confined to a particular subpopulation.
Although historically up to tens of thousands of cuttlefish have arrived in this period to breed, that’s not been the case recently.
“The numbers have been decreasing over many years – since the peak in abundance since the late 1990s, they’ve dropped in number by about 90%,” Gillanders said.
Although recent low numbers of cuttlefish have been attributed to many factors – including natural cycles in cuttlefish abundance or changing environmental factors – it’s hard to know the real reason without the existence of long-term evidence.
This level of ambiguity is something Bronwyn is keen to avoid in the future. Along with colleagues across the sciences, governments and industry, she is running the Spencer Gulf Ecosystem and Development Initiative . The program is one of the first of its kind in the world, aiming to provide all stakeholders with access to independent and credible information about the Spencer Gulf and opportunities to develop it without compromising its environment.
I have to share two amazing science presentations with you.
Both featured at TEDxAdelaide yesterday.
Alan Cooper from Adelaide University’s Centre for Ancient DNA is interested in your microbiome – the natural and ‘good’ bacteria which live in and on your body. Bacteria and people have co-evolved over millions of years, and we need each other for good health.
Alan’s particular interest is studying bacteria on fossilised teeth. Because bacteria become calcified into tooth tartar, they can remain fixed in place with bones and other hard structures over thousands and thousands of years.
Alan showed us evidence that when humans shifted from a hunter-gatherer existence to a less nomadic lifestyle with reliance on agriculture as a primary source of food, we rapidly changed the health of our mouths. We began to eat more grains, more sugar – and we started suffering from gum disease, cavities and tartar buildup. Mouth bacteria became out of whack with what evolution had set up previously.
These days, we compound this further with the overuse of antibiotics, buying antibacterial wipes, and overzealous cleaning and sanitation of our homes. We’ve messed up our microbiomes and our health is suffering – not just in terms of tooth decay but possibly also autism, obesity and other diseases.
Mike Lee from the University of Adelaide and South Australian Museum blew our minds with evolution.
Although life on Earth has been evolving for millions and millions of years, it’s not been at a constant rate. Early life forms stayed virtually the same for eons. Slowly, slowly…unicellular life became multicellular, then complexity gradually began to increase. During the cambrian explosion about 500 million years ago, most of the life forms we see on Earth today first appeared and continued to evolve at faste and faster rates. Life went beserk.
Mike then convinced us that like evolution of life, evolution of technology has similarly undergone an explosion. Right now we live in a time when technology is changing at such a rapid rate that if we were picked up and planted back on Earth in 100 years there’s a good chance we might not even recognise the gadgets people use.
And then he talked about aliens.
Because complexity in life and complexity in technology vary so hugely over time, and we can only assume that the same rules would apply on another planet as they do on Earth, we could find aliens at either extreme of the two curves. They could consist of single-celled life floating about in a primordial soup. Or they could be super-technified human-like creatures which we would struggle to understand and match.
I know which one I’d prefer….
[image taken by Josh Inglis]
It makes sense that obesity tends to run in families, right?
When parents and children share genes, and eat similar sorts of foods, naturally you’d expect their bodies to end up looking roughly similar.
More and more research suggests that another factor is also at play. When an obese woman becomes pregnant, there are subtle abnormalities operating at cellular and sub-cellular levels which influence aspects of fertilisation, embryo implantation, placental development and delivery of nutrients to the fetus. Independent of genes and lifestyle, these act to ‘program’ aspects of the baby’s development which predispose them to developing obesity as a child and adult.
Obesity in fathers also weighs in, if you’ll forgive the pun. Sperm in obese men carry information outside of the genes themselves, but which also predispose offspring to developing obesity.
The bottom line is that even if you don’t have a family history of obesity, and you eat a healthy diet, if one or both partners are very overweight when you make a baby it may have a different growth pattern compared to if both parents have a body mass index in the normal range.
To read more, see this COSMOS article which I wrote at the Australian Health and Medical Research Congress yesterday.
[photo thanks to Beverly & Pack on flickr]
Cervix.
The bit at the distal end of a uterus.
For approximately half of us, we surrender a small sample of cervical cells for Pap analysis every 2 years or so. Some readers will have experienced the gradual cervical dilation which accompanies childbirth.
But did you know that after sex, a reaction occurs in the cervix which is typically only seen during inflammation? And that this reaction is important for setting up the right immune environment for pregnancy?
See my latest COSMOS article here to learn more.
[image from euthman on flickr: “the squamocolumnar junction of the uterine cervix, representing the boundary between the exocervix on the left, and the endocervix on the right. It’s important to sample this area while collecting a Pap smear specimen”]
Think of a member of your family who is aged over 55 years. Now think of another.
In the next 5 years, one of those 2 people will suffer a major cardiovascular event*. That event could be heart attack, aneurysm or stroke.
If it’s a stroke due to a blood clot, the only medical intervention that specialists can offer you is a ‘clot buster’. This will dissolve the coagulated blood – which is good. The bad news is that irreversible damage to your brain tissues will have already taken place. Doctors can do little else other than assess the extent of the damage and point you in the direction of appropriate therapy.
It’s a story Peter Couche knows very well. Peter suffered a brain-stem stroke at the age of 42 on 14th February 1992, leaving him in a permanent state of ‘Locked-In Syndrome’, where he has
“a perfectly good body, but not enough signals coming from the brain to drive that body”.
To use his own analogy, if he were a car it’s as though someone took a hammer to the carburettor but left the body in perfectly good shape. Peter cannot move, eat, walk, or talk, and is blind in one eye. The remainder of Peter’s mind is active and capable of normal adult performance. In an incredible tale of dedication and commitment, over the past 20 years Peter has committed his energies to writing a book – Lifelines (Wakefield Press 2007) – and establishing the Peter Couche Foundation, which supports research at the University of Adelaide’s Robinson Institute aimed at isolating adult stem cells for use as a therapy to repair brains damaged by stroke.
Last night the Peter Couche Foundation hosted a Wine Dinner to support research at the Robinson Institute into stem cells. I was lucky enough to attend, and hear from Peter himself in a speech read by his brother Steven Couche – who incidentally tickled us with his impressive Bob Carr impersonation during one of the wine information aspects of the night.
It was also great to hear from neurologist Associate Professor Simon Koblar, who filled us in with the science behind the stem cell concept they are working with at the Robinson Institute. Get your teeth into this one: the stem cells are derived from dental pulp – living tissues in the centre of your molars. Let’s hope these prove to offer new options for stroke patients in the future – you can donate to the Foundation here if you’re so inspired.
There was a dark moment in the evening. When challenged to match a tasting with a list of commercial wines currently on the market, none of the South Australians on our table identified it correctly. Instead, it fell to a New South Welshman. Oh, the shame.
[photo thanks to taigasylvan on flickr]
*based on statistics describing risk across populations
My friend Heather Bray is a scientist and communicator who never sits still.
This Friday she is running a workshop for the University of Adelaide: Patenting Human Genes Workshop – ethics, regulation and innovation in biotechnology.
What does patenting human genes mean? In essence it boils down to ownership of genetic information.
To give a hypothetical example, say I discover that your daughter has an unusual gene which makes her resistant to catching malaria. Should I as the scientist then be able to lay claim to ownership of that genetic information? Do I solely own the knowledge, or does she as well? What about her siblings, and her children in the future – do they own it too? Could I use that genetic information in a private setting to design new drugs which make me rich? Is it different if I release the information and resulting new drugs to the public sector so that millions of lives in sub-Saharan African and Asia are saved every year?
So many important questions to think about, and I think the workshop promises to be a great couple of hours.
The event is free, however bookings are essential. Please register through Eventbrite or contact Dr Heather Bray (heather.bray@adelaide.edu.au). Here’s some relevant extra information from the event flier:
Patenting Human Genes Workshop – ethics, regulation and innovation in biotechnology
Are patents on genes really patents on innovations? What should be patentable? Should organisations ‘own’ exclusive rights to human genetic information? How would researchers attract the investment needed to fund research if the patenting environment were to change? How do we ensure that society continues to benefit from research which may lead to accessible tests and treatments?
These questions and more will be discussed at a small-scale workshop to discuss gene patenting in the Australian context.
Speakers:
- Dr Robert Chalmers, ARI, University of Adelaide
- Professor Dianne Nichol, Faculty of Law, University of Tasmania
- Professor Ian Olver AM, CEO, Cancer Council of Australia
- Dr Luigi Palombi, Intellectual Property Law Consultant
- Ms Melissa Parke MP, Federal Member for Fremantle
Facilitator: Associate Professor Rachel Ankeny, University of Adelaide
When: Friday October 26 from 1.30 pm to 5.30 pm (refreshments from 4.45pm)
Where: B03 Seminar Room West, Masonic Lodge, North Terrace
[photo thanks to certified su on flickr]
Could you describe and justify your job in less than 3 minutes?
Last night I attended a special Research Tuesday event put on by the University of Adelaide.
The 3-minute thesis competition pitted 10 PhD students against each other in a battle of wit and communication. Each was asked to prepare a single PowerPoint slide and astound the audience with a brief, simple and electrifying presentation of their research.
Topics were diverse, and included:
My personal favourite, and eventual judges’ choice as the winner, was Emily Cock with her presentation Exchanging Flesh: Prostitution & Plastic Surgery in 17th Century England.
Emily is interested in the historical and economic implications of prostitution. Her thesis addresses the activities of a certain Italian surgeon Gaspare Tagliacozzi, who developed new techniques in plastic surgery to hide nasal deformities arising from chronic syphilis infection. His method allowed prostitutes to continue to work and even enter the higher echelons of society without the stigmatisation associated with syphilis.
Sex, medicine, drama, deception, money….that’s what I call a winning thesis. Emily will travel to Queensland to compete in the national final in October.
[photo thanks to pasukaru76 on flickr]
Life comes full circle sometimes.
This year, I’m really excited to be returning to my old stomping ground at The University of Adelaide to do some work with the Robinson Institute. Many moons ago I studied for my honours and PhD degrees in a pre-cursor department of the Institute.
My tasks is to write a regular column highlighting top-notch research across a really interesting spectrum of science including health of women and babies, reproductive health, early origins of disease and regenerative medicine. What’s also really cool is I get to work with world class clinical endocrinologist and scientist Professor Rob Norman, general manager and strategist Kate Irving and go-get-‘em scientist and marketer Dr Joanna Brooks.
This is going to be fun.
Science for Life. 365 
