Microbes 100M Years Old Found In Termite Guts 145
viyh writes with coverage on MSNBC of the discovery of ancient microbes fossilized in the gut of a termite. "One hundred million years ago a termite was wounded and its abdomen split open. The resin of a pine tree slowly enveloped its body and the contents of its gut. In what is now the Hukawng Valley in Myanmar, the resin fossilized and was buried until it was chipped out of an amber mine. The resin had seeped into the termite's wound and preserved even the microscopic organisms in its gut. These microbes are the forebears of the microbes that live in the guts of today's termites and help them digest wood. ... The amber preserved the microbes with exquisite detail, including internal features like the nuclei. ... Termites are related to cockroaches and split from them in evolutionary time at about the same time the termite in the amber was trapped."
but is there any dinosaur dna in there? (Score:5, Funny)
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Yes, but it's in Chickens, not frogs (Score:5, Interesting)
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I can supply that for you. Take a look here. [youtube.com]
Re:Yes, but it's in Chickens, not frogs (Score:5, Funny)
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On a more serious note, what are the chances of bringing back a Woolly Mammoth? The ticket sales for that at a zoo (or a series of exhibitions at major capitals around the world) would bring in incredible amounts of money to finance further research in related fields.
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According to the authors of the "we found chicken-like DNA in a bit of T-rex bone" paper, there are equivocations. A number of challenges are ongoing about their reporting and their statistics (AIUI, they reported their positive hits for "chicken-li
Re:Yes, but it's in Chickens, not frogs (Score:5, Insightful)
According to Jack Horner, professor of palaeontology
Yes, I'm sure a professor in paleontology will now everything about the genetic problems that will arise...
To name a few: Mere DNA is not sufficient for an fertilized oocyte to develop, generally an oocyte contains maternally provided protein and RNA, where are you going to get those? Second is epigenetics: The DNA generally contains a lot of modifications to "switch on or off" genes, during embryonic development the DNA is heavily reprogrammed, those cues are probably very species specific, again where are we going to get an dinosaur oocyte??? I'm sure there are even more difficulties to overcome.
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Cross-species cloning has been done [advancedcell.com]. What is not clear is just how close the species have to be. If birds don't work, you could try a species that has remained morphologically basically the same since the time of dinosaurs--the alligator. [sciencedaily.com]
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To be honest I didn't know cross-species cloning was possible, also I don't think it will never be possible to clone a dinosaur, just not right now. I just wanted to point out that it is not as easy as putting some DNA in a cell and let it grow. PS: morphologically similar doesn't say much, birds are still mo
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Embryogenesis tends to be highly conserved. While protein sequences will continue to evolve even in an organism that is in evolutionary stasis, due to challenges from viruses and other pathogens, the only reason for embryogenesis to change is if the organism needs to evolve morphologically.
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According to Jack Horner, professor of palaeontology
Yes, I'm sure a professor in paleontology will now everything about the genetic problems that will arise...
Except he's too busy feeling proud of himself for finding a plum.
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Screw that! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Screw that! (Score:5, Interesting)
And it might just be possible, that it really tastes like chicken! :D
Re:Screw that! (Score:5, Funny)
This is what killed them off, their tastiness.
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OMG! That's why they went extinct...GACK! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:but is there any dinosaur dna in there? (Score:4, Funny)
What's not exciting about out-of-control velocotermites?
Re:but is there any dinosaur dna in there? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, I guess if you _are_ going to clone dinosaurs (and I'm not saying that you should), and you want your new best friend to have a fighting chance of survival, you might actually also need to clone the ecosystem of microbes and bacteria that would have lived in an on it back in its day. If you can find some dinosaur bacteria.
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Summer block buster (Score:5, Funny)
One hundred million years ago a termite was wounded and its abdomen split open
That would make a better film than most of the crap out there at the moment.
Re:Summer block buster (Score:5, Insightful)
How would that be? The evil mastermind, who owns a pest control company, revives the prehistoric termites immune to modern pesticides. And the hero, aided by his beautiful lab assistant, releases into the environment the ancient bacteria that are the termites only natural enemy.
Re:Summer block buster (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Summer block buster (Score:5, Funny)
Hot lesbian termite sex?
I dunno. Maybe.
Re:Summer block buster (Score:5, Funny)
Hot lesbian termite sex?
Probably not... termites prefer wood.
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Aren't terminates hermaphrodites?
Dunno about terminates, but thermites are thermaphrodites, at least when in heat.
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It's unlikely that prehistoric termites would be immune to modern pesticides. They wouldn't have had any reason to develop such an immunity...
oh, you were being facetious? ;)
SB
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How would that be? The evil mastermind, who owns a pest control company, revives the prehistoric termites immune to modern pesticides. And the hero, aided by his beautiful lab assistant, releases into the environment the ancient bacteria that are the termites only natural enemy.
I think I've seen this one... It ends when the gorillas freeze to death in the winter.
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That sounds a lot like the plot of the fucked-up version of The Andromeda Strain (2008) [imdb.com]
And that counts as one of the stupidest scripts in Sci-Fi cinema history - definitely a let-down from the original. Two flying thumbs way down, for sure.
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One hundred million years ago a termite was wounded and its abdomen split open
That would make a better film than most of the crap out there at the moment.
Heh sounds like the beginning of an 'Alien' sequel.
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Your thinking about quantum of solace yes?
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A well-reasoned critique of QoS [thebestpag...iverse.net].
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This song [youtube.com]?
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Amber preservation (Score:5, Interesting)
Seems even better than mummification for preserving the dead. We should figure out how to make it, and stick some creatures from our own time in it, including larger specimens for future paleontologists to ponder over. Like, famous politicians, as a reward for their service.
Re:Amber preservation (Score:5, Interesting)
Like, famous politicians, as a reward for their service.
Do we have to wait 'til they die? I know a few individuals that I'd love to preserve that way right now. For their incredible service, of course...
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Please, don't give them the idea of amber-boarding.
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If it's first tried on them, why not? I could see this become a hit in prime time TV! Actually, I'd really love to see those "harmless" ways of torture be first of all tried on people applauding their use for an hour or two, then discuss it with them how harmless it was.
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No, the whole point is to do it while they're alive and all those bio-molecules are still viable. So the sooner the better.
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Do we have to wait 'til they die?
Woah woah woah now, no need to get offensive.
*no one* was talking about waiting until they died... >:D
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Your sig is all wrong. In Soviet Russia, the government IS the commerce. It's the free economics you retarded Americans always dreamed of!
Now, now ... no need to sling epithets around, you foreign prick.
Re:Amber preservation (Score:5, Interesting)
Why not just encode the genomes of as many species as possible, and bury it somewhere geologically inactive - like the moon - with a big x painted on top of it. Would probably be cheaper.
Re:Amber preservation (Score:5, Interesting)
Would degrade in sunlight.
No, encase it in a huge container ... something obviously not naturally occuring. Maybe a huge slab of obsidian. Make it really stand out ... say 4 times as wide as deep and 9 times as high as it is deep.
Then you bury that at the bottom of a large crater on the moon. Deep down so it doesn't just end up surfacing on its own.
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There is no actual dark side of the moon. There is a part of the moon that is always facing away from the Earth, but that is still bathed in sunlight from time to time.
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Re:Amber preservation (Score:5, Interesting)
It probably wouldn't work for anything bigger than a termite. When I was a kid I had a tarantula encased in acrylic resin. After a year or so, the spider body started shrinking and in the end there was only a dust-filled hole in the plastic.
Even if it was totally encased in the plastic and isolated from the outside, the tarantula had enough bacteria in its guts to decompose it.
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Funny, I had one of those myself as a kid, and it lasted a good six years before it got lost in a move. Though perhaps mine was treated somehow?
Perhaps it had been irradiated.
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It's not as if insects won't have bacteria.
I wonder if the amber has certain properties that exchanges certain materials with its captive animals to aid preservation. Maybe we don't see much larger things because there's not much amber dripping from a tree.
http://paleobiol.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/28/3/389 [geoscienceworld.org]
This article seems to say spiders are preserved in amber, but since the bloodsuckers that host the paper want $15 for just one day access to the paper, I'm not that desperate to know what
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Seems even better than mummification for preserving the dead. We should figure out how to make it, and stick some creatures from our own time in it, including larger specimens for future paleontologists to ponder over. Like, famous politicians, as a reward for their service.
Shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted? By the time they're famous politician's they've already done their damage.
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Re:Amber preservation (Score:5, Funny)
And then revive him from DNA? Now there's material for a horror movie. "Politician Park."
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Oh, shit, the Cheney got loose!
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Clearly you don't know about this: http://boingboing.net/images/12cheney4xx.jpg [boingboing.net]
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Now, now, like D&D gods and tinkerbell, politicians only have power if we believe.
Epic Advemture (Score:5, Funny)
Is it just me, or does the summary read like the start of a legend that serves as prelude to an epic adventure?
I want to go on a quest to this "Myanmar" place and find the termite amber and throw it into the nearest volcano before the Evil One's minions get their hands on it.
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Show me an epic, any epic or tale from any author or society ...
that starts out with disassembled termites.
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Drat you and your comment! My sleep deprived mind, in a state leaving it very vulnerable to suggestion, and has taken what you said and written something incredibly stupid. Well, here it is...
One hundred million years ago a termite was wounded and its abdomen split open. The resin of a pine tree slowly enveloped its body and the contents of its gut. In what is now the Hukawng Valley in Myan
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Or perhaps both.
Re:Epic Advemture (Score:5, Funny)
You have been disemboweled.
Restore, Restart, or Quit?
Re:Epic Advemture [game] (Score:1)
Restore? Is there such as word as "reembowelment"? Cyberland is gonna fuck with the dictionary big-time.
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Re:Epic Advemture (Score:5, Funny)
One does not simply walk into Myanmar
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One does not simply walk into Myanmar
Sure one does. It's the walking out part that makes for the real trick.
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Exactly. First one has to drop some bombs from some UAVs.
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Heh nice reference.
Seriously though, my brother did actually walk into Myanmar while he was backpacking with friends in Thailand. Just walked across some river on the border - they didn't hang around long though.
He didn't try swimming across a lake to rescue a princess... now that would be far fetched :)
oh no... (Score:2)
don't let spielburg know...
That's no microbe... (Score:2)
100M year old bugs (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds like the work of Microsoft.
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Sounds like the work of Microsoft.
What? You mean they DO work?
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While it may seem like Microsoft is the source of all evil, and thus older than all of time, that hasn't been proven yet!
100 million? (Score:5, Funny)
Don't you mean 6,000?
colon cleanser (Score:1)
It's the gut microbes that made them termites (Score:4, Interesting)
If you, as I, accept Lynn Margulis's hypothesis, parasitic and symbiotic interactions with microbes play a much stronger role in driving evolutionary diversification than "random" mutations of the genome.
The only reasonable ref I could find quickly is from 1991: Symbiosis as a Source of Evolutionary Innovation: Speciation and Morphogenesis [mit.edu].
Quote of the Day (Score:5, Funny)
And tasted it, and found it good.
And that is why your Cousin May
Fell through the parlor floor today.
-- Ogden Nash
Mutualism vs Symbiosis (Score:3, Informative)
Without the protozoa, the termite would starve. Meanwhile, the protozoa would quickly die outside of the termite, resulting in a relationship of dependence between the animals that scientists call "mutualism."
From the Symbiosis [wikipedia.org] article:
The definition of symbiosis is in flux, and the term has been applied to a wide range of biological interactions. The symbiotic relationship may be categorized as being mutualistic [wikipedia.org], parasitic [wikipedia.org], or commensal [wikipedia.org] in nature. Others define it more narrowly, as only those relationships from which both organisms benefit, in which case it would be synonymous with mutualism.
Hmm, live and learn.
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Maybe the definition in Wikipedia is in flux. I just checked my Webster's Third International Dictionary and it still says the same definition it did back when I was in high-school.
-dZ.
termite related to teh cockroach..... (Score:2)
now I can understand why they say the cockroach will be the last living creature.... as it seems to be the first too..
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Wha? (Score:2)
The amber preserved the microbes with exquisite detail, including internal features like the nuclei.
I was raised to believe that "nuclei" were by definition a feature of eukaryotic cells, and not prokaryotes. I would like to know more about these obviously parasitic eukaryotic termite bowel infesting organisms...
Let's get a shelter built (Score:2)
Upon making the discover, one Professor Hans Singleton was noted to have made the following remark:
"And I thought they smelled bad on the outside!"
Termites A_R_E cockroaches ... (Score:2)
Quote [nhm.ac.uk]:
"Termites have long baffled scientists as to their place in the natural world and their relationship with other insects. Although they are part of a large 'superorder' that includes cockroaches, they were classified separately in a group called Isoptera .
This new research puts termites into the same group as cockroaches, (Blattodea). Termites are now classed as a new family of cockroaches called Termitidae . Isoptera is no longer valid."
Well, I always pre
Found in 100M Year-old termite guts (Score:2)
Are you certain there were no RIAA/MPAA copyrights in those microbe genomes? I'm just saying...
A little harsh (Score:2)
Modern RIAA music lyrics use *at least* *five* letters.
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I dunno, I hear a bunch of goofies did a mickey-mouse job on him.
Re:I'm confused. (Score:5, Funny)
It's easy to find, it's north of Kampuchea, to the west of French Indochina and Siam and to the east of Hindustan and Bengal.
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