I love science and language learning and books (especially by Peter Godfrey smith) and Fleetwood mac and clairo and girls and nick drake and playing the guitar and studying and my curly hair
Glowing Proteins Go Quantum to Reveal Life's Hidden Signals
Scientists are giving biology's favorite glowing tools a quantum twist. The same fluorescent proteins that make jellyfish shine and help researchers track cell activity are being upgraded to tap into quantum physics. By converting these proteins into qubits, the basic units of quantum information, researchers aim to create ultra sensitive biological sensors. Unlike current fluorescent tags that simply light up, these quantum versions could detect the faint magnetic fields of firing neurons, trace ion flows, or spot minute quantities of free radicals that signal cellular stress or early cancer. Because researchers can switch these quantum sensors on and off remotely, they open new possibilities for precision imaging and targeted therapies. The technology builds on proteins already sitting on lab shelves and uses standard equipment, suggesting the leap from concept to clinic could come quickly. For biologists struggling with the limits of current imaging sensitivity, these quantum proteins offer a way to see what was previously invisible inside living cells.
Fluorescent proteins with a quantum upgrade could offer unprecedented views inside cells.
Octopus And Squid Evolution Is Officially Weirder Than We Could Have Ever Imagined
"... in April last year scientists discovered that octopuses, along with some squid and cuttlefish species, routinely edit their RNA (ribonucleic acid) sequences to adapt to their environment....that's really not how adaptations usually happen in multicellular animals. When an organism changes in some fundamental way, it typically starts with a genetic mutation - a change to the DNA. Those genetic changes are then translated into action by DNA's molecular sidekick, RNA. You can think of DNA instructions as a recipe, while RNA is the chef that orchestrates the cooking in the kitchen of each cell, producing necessary proteins that keep the whole organism going.
But RNA doesn't just blindly execute instructions - occasionally it improvises with some of the ingredients, changing which proteins are produced in the cell in a rare process called RNA editing. When such an edit happens, it can change how the proteins work, allowing the organism to fine-tune its genetic information without actually undergoing any genetic mutations. But most organisms don't really bother with this method, as it's messy and causes problems more often that solving them....
In 2015, researchers discovered that the common squid has edited more than 60 percent of RNA in its nervous system. Those edits essentially changed its brain physiology, presumably to adapt to various temperature conditions in the ocean....at least two species of octopus and one cuttlefish do the same thing on a regular basis. To draw evolutionary comparisons, they also looked at a nautilus and a gastropod slug, and found their RNA-editing prowess to be lacking.
"This shows that high levels of RNA editing is not generally a molluscan thing; it's an invention of the coleoid cephalopods,"....
The researchers analysed hundreds of thousands of RNA recording sites in these animals, who belong to the coleoid subclass of cephalopods. They found that clever RNA editing was especially common in the coleoid nervous system.....
It's true that coleoid cephalopods are exceptionally intelligent.....
So it's certainly a compelling hypothesis that octopus smarts might come from their unconventionally high reliance on RNA edits to keep the brain going.....But it's not just that these animals are adept at fixing up their RNA as needed - the team found that this ability came with a distinct evolutionary tradeoff, which sets them apart from the rest of the animal world.
In terms of run-of-the-mill genomic evolution (the one that uses genetic mutations, as mentioned above), coleoids have been evolving really, really slowly. The researchers claimed that this has been a necessary sacrifice - if you find a mechanism that helps you survive, just keep using it....in order to maintain this flexibility to edit RNA, the coleoids have had to give up the ability to evolve in the surrounding regions...
As the next step, the team will be developing genetic models of cephalopods so they can trace how and when this RNA editing kicks in. "It could be something as simple as temperature changes or as complicated as experience, a form of memory,".
Just when we thought octopuses couldn't be any weirder, it turns out that they and their cephalopod brethren evolve differently from nearly
