Complex Insight - Understanding our world

Interesting paper on structural protien envelope spikes in HIV related viruses and their relation to autoimmune response and implications for vaccine development by John Schiller and Bryce Chackerian. 

Evidence in a study by  Mike Lee of the South Australian Museum in Adelaide and colleagues has shown that a gradual wave of evolution led theropods to evolve into modern birds. Great article from New Scientist on Mike Lee's research work.

Nice article from Prof.Clive Finlayson on 2013 archeology discoveries adn the implications for how we interpret human evolution. 

The resurrected protein is thought to have existed almost four billion years ago in single-celled organisms linked to the earliest ancestor of all life. The protein survives in the extreme environments of high acidity and temperature expected on early Earth and, intriguingly, also Mars.

Spanish and US scientists reported their study in the journal Structure. 

FierceVaccines is a great source of info on new research. The summary of work published in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology from The Scripps Research focus on an area of the HIV virus where mutation is limited is worth reading and shows new approaches towards researching vaccines for HIV.

While the headline is slightly sensationalist and misleading, the article is worth reading. In a March 13 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper, Bar-Yam and his co-authors, Brazilian ecologists Ayana Martins at the University of Sao Paulo and Marcus Aguiar at the University of Campinas, modeled the evolution of greenish warblers living around the Tibetan plateau.  The warblers are what’s known as a ring species, a rare phenomenon that occurs when species inhabit a horseshoe-shaped range. Genes flow around the ring, passing between neighboring populations — yet at the ring’s tips, the animals no longer interbreed with one another. Bar-Yam and co's model generarted a similar distribution based on continual evoluation and genetic drift rather than localised adaptation. The model echoes of Stephen Hubbell's concepts of neutral genetic drift where  random genetic variations that emerge in individuals and spread through populations, can be ‘neutral,’ having no biological function but still drive evolution of species. Good article and interesting ideas that continue to drive the healthy debate on how evolution and speciation work.

Possibly my favourite science article of 2013 so far. It makes sense in terms of evolutionary adaption since astral light sources would be an evolutionary environmental constant so adapting to utilize them makes a lot of sense. Proving that dung beetles do this - is just a wow. cool artile worth reading. 

Culum Brown's research into fish behaviour is deeply revealing both for the insights into aquatic life and into human prejudice regarding other species capabilities.  Good article on vox.com regarding fish sentience, perception and behavioural evolution - worth reading.

Understanding prehistoric evolution is at best a game of educated guesses. Paul Knuath's research has helped revolutionize our perspective of possible evolutionary pathways and this is a great article putting that research in perspective.

Easily accessible article on the research of Nicholas Hud and team at Georgia Institute of Technology. Hud's research group are searching for the evolutionary precursor to RNA and after 20 years of research are finding promising results.

The source of the Mers virus is still unknown. Given that Mers is from the same group of viruses as Sars and Common Cold - understanding the genotype and phenotype differences and how they relate to pathogenic and vector pathways  in its related family could help to better understand both Mers and related groups and perhaps indicate a source. Viral evolution is something we still know relatively little about - and understanding of how they coevolve and relate to microbial habitat are becoming increasingly important to health planning and treatments.

Interesting article on the discovery of Denisovan DNA by the evolutionary genetics team at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. 

The discovery of a translational fossil has helped identifiy the series of evolutionary steps and small changes that gradually add up to the evolution of the turtle shell. 

Another awesome article by Maryn McKenna. If the analysis presented in the article is correct, then it indicates several sources of potential trouble.  The article highlights potential for animal-to-human transmission of resistant bacteria  even by animals that are not routinely receiving antibiotics. Finally the potential host range for resitant bacteria that is, the species detected to be carrying mecCMRSA, now mostly being called CC130  extends past farm breeds to include host range to include not just cows and sheep, but horses, rabbits, cats, dogs, deer, seals, rats and wild birds. Worth reading the entire article so click on the image or the title to learn more.

In Eastern europe up to a third of TB ccases are multi-drug resitant and a more extensively drug resistant form of tuberculosis has now been found in 84 countries. Scary set of implications given rate of evolution of multiresistant strains.