Queen of Decay

The January 2009 issue of Science has an article about Osedax, an annelid worm with help from Oceanospirillales bacteria, feeds on the bones of whales. 

It notes how the male worms are parasitic on females and "thus fertilization is guaranteed." 

The females from a swimming trochophore [A trochophore is a type of free-swimming planktonic marine larva with several bands of cilia] only occurs when the larvae encounter a carcass and have been infected with the endosymbiont. 

Interestingly enough there is an article in the December 2008 edition of National Geographics about Pilosaurs, that were big as school buses and looks like precursors to whales. They lived in the Jurassic Period, were 50-feet-long and found 400 million miles from Norway's Coast. I would bet that Oceanospirillales feasted on these and had plenty of time to diversify to adjust around the world. 

FoldIt and Education

The January 2009 edition of Science Magazine chronicles Steven Pletsch who, with his infant daughter in his lap, learned the protein folding game Foldit, helped team of university graduate students win a biochemistry competition. 

Pletsch spent up to 30 hours a week with the game learning the fundamentals of protein folding. He has no background or degree and is a self-taught designer of low-voltage electrical devices. 

Once again, the non-college educated has more insight than the mass trained.

lincRNAs Discovered in Genome

A new study finds about 1,600 known highly conserved, long RNAs with important regulatory roles in the mammlian genome. These are non-protein coding genes that produce "large intervening non-coding RNAs or lincRNAs." 

[There functions include the] regulate a variety of different cellular processes, including cell proliferation, immune surveillance, maintenance of embryonic stem cell pluripotency, neuronal and muscle development, and gametogenesis.

This is in contrast to the nearly 20,000 protein encoding genes. This will add to the classic examples of RNA such as microRNAs.