Somewhere in Baltimore, volunteers are gulping capsules filled with GMOs—gene-modified E. coli bacteria, to be precise.

Synlogic of Cambridge, Massachusetts, the company behind the unusual study, is testing what it calls “synthetic biotics,” or bacteria engineered to carry out specialized jobs in a person’s stomach.

Inside the pills are E. coli engineered to sop up ammonia inside the gut of people who can’t get rid of it fast enough. The study signals how genetic engineers are hoping to harness the microbiome, as the trillions of microscopic organisms that dwell within you are known.

The drug is designed to help people suffering from disorders of the “urea cycle.” That’s the metabolic flywheel inside your liver that gets rid of excess nitrogen. For people whose urea cycles are faulty, excess nitrogen turns into ammonia, just like what’s under your kitchen sink, and just as hazardous.

Though the condition is rare, for some people it’s serious enough to require a liver transplant.

This study, which began in June, doesn’t yet involve any sick patients. Instead, it’s a safety trial. The volunteers taking the drug collect a fee for swallowing GM germs to advance knowledge. They have to live in a testing facility for as long as three weeks so technicians can monitor them and collect their poop for DNA analysis.

Of the 50 people the trial is meant to study, Synlogic CEO J.C. Gutierrez-Ramos says “many” have already taken the new GMO pill. Others, picked at random, have gotten a placebo. The trial is being carried out at one hospital in Maryland.

The drug represents a concrete application of synthetic biology, which is the idea of engineering an organism’s metabolism to produce fuel, drugs, perfumes, or other chemicals. Previously, a company called ActoGenix undertook studies in Europe of a GM version of the bacterium Lactococcus lactis that it had altered so it released a protein drug. In the U.S., Marina Biotech also carried out a small safety test of anti-cancer bacteria, also genetically modified.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which considers such drugs to be “live biological products,” this summer fast-tracked Synlogic’s application to try it on people. Gutierrez-Ramos says Synlogic will know if it’s safe by December and hopes to start up studies in actual patients next year.

SEE ALSO: A single gene in E. coli bacteria could hold clues for extending the human lifespan

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Business Insider spoke with John Bradshaw, anthrozoologist and author of "The Animals Among Us," about how humans are breeding cats and dogs to look like babies and how it is making them suffer.

Mr Bradshaw said; "The human response to cuteness is something which has evolved as a way of making sure that we look after our own babies, but our species is unique in that our response to cuteness extends to other species as well."

"But it looks as though our response to pets and particularly to young animals like puppies and kittens has hijacked on the back of our response to our own infants."

"One of the trends we’re seeing in pet keeping over the past couple of decades is the increasing popularity of very small dogs and also dogs and cats with very squashed faces. Now all of those are characteristics which are also characteristics of infants."

"We have dogs, for example, pugs that have some of the characteristics of human infants, Chihuahuas have very short legs and are very playful, so although their faces are quite different they still respond to our “cute button” if you like, and there is also a fashion for flat-faced cats as well and all of those present welfare problems."

"The dog skeleton is not sufficiently evolved to cope with being squashed into these strange shapes and come to that, nor is the cat skeleton."

"So in particular, animals such as pugs and Persian cats with squashed faces have considerable breathing difficulties particularly as they get older."

"And so although these animals have tremendous appeal to the first time purchaser, those people who get those animals find as the dog gets older or the cat gets older, they’re faced with a lot of vetinary bills to get these put right and of course along the way, the animal is suffering."

You can find out more about John Bradshaw's book here.

Produced and filmed by Jasper Pickering. Research by Fraser Moore. 

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Business Insider spoke with John Bradshaw, anthrozoologist and author of "The Animals Among Us," about how much dogs understand when you communicate with them.

Mr Bradshaw said; "Dogs are very responsive to the way that we talk to them and it tricks many owners into thinking they literally understand every word."

"The science suggests that dogs don’t really understand the words, they understand sounds and so you can train them to do all sorts of things based on things you say."

"But what they don’t really seem to understand is syntax, sentences, grammar, the way that we put words together in different orders to mean different things. To dogs, it’s just a string of sounds."

"We don’t believe that these animals are actually understanding every word. What they are doing and particularly what dogs are very good at is responding to emotion through the tone of voice that we’re using and they learn to respond in very specific ways to their owners so the owners really can believe and it’s almost true that the dog is responding to every word they say."

You can find out more about John Bradshaw's book here.

Produced and filmed by Jasper Pickering. Research by Fraser Moore. 

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Our internal clocks determine nearly every biological process in our bodies, from sleeping, to eating, to our blood pressure.

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2017 has just been awarded to the three scientists — Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash, and Michael W. Young — who uncovered certain molecular mechanisms for these body clocks, or "circadian rhythms."

The winners were announced at the Nobel Forum at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. The scientists will share the prize of 9 million Swedish kronor (£8.23m) and will each receive a medal engraved with their name.

According to the Nobel Prize committee, they were awarded the prize for their scientific advancements towards understanding "how plants, animals and humans adapt their biological rhythm so that it is synchronised with the Earth’s revolutions."

The Earth is always rotating, so it makes sense that animals and plants have evolved with the regular rhythm of days.

Hall, Rosbash, and Young furthered research in this area by isolating a gene from a fruit fly that controls a normal daily biological rhythm.

They showed that the gene code had instructions to make a particular protein, called PER. PER builds up in living cells during the night, then disappears throughout the day. This showed that PER protein levels oscillated over a 24-hour cycle. They also identified other protein components which help sustain the cell's internal clockwork.

This discovery was made in 1990, and further research over the years since has shown that biological clocks function in the same way across many other lifeforms, including humans.

If our social clocks don't align with our biological clocks, this can wreak havoc on our health. For example, we experience jet lag when flying long distances, we can feel groggy when the clocks go forward, and can even throw ourselves out of whack if we stay up late binge-watching TV shows.

This is because our circadian rhythms have adapted to the different phases of the day, and regulate our hormones, behaviour, sleep, body temperature, and metabolism to keep in sync. Prolonged misalignment of these things, such as if we stay up late all the time, can mean we have a higher chance of developing various diseases, like diabetes and cancer.

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• Jeffrey Hall, Michael Rosbash, and Michael Young were awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine"for their discoveries of molecular mechanisms controlling the circadian rhythm."
• Your circadian rhythm, known as your internal body clock, helps regulate when you feel awake or asleep — and much more.
• Going against that body clock goes against your biology and has serious health consequences.

The thing that makes you a "morning person" or a "night owl" isn't an arbitrary preference or tendency. It's something that's fundamentally part of your biological makeup — and something that we ignore at our own peril.

On Monday, Jeffrey Hall, Michael Rosbash, and Michael Young were awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine"for their discoveries of molecular mechanisms controlling the circadian rhythm," the Nobel committee said.

In other words, these researchers played a key role in identifying how cells in organisms regulate the internal body clock — also known as the chronotype or circadian rhythm — that determines when people feel awake or sleepy.

This is a Nobel Prize-winning discovery because it shows how biology regulates body clocks for living organisms ranging from fruit flies, which these researchers worked with, to humans.

Chronobiologists, who study this kind of science, emphasize the importance of the discovery because it's only after accepting body clocks as a biological fact that you can fully appreciate how big a role they play in our health. Our body clocks have huge effects on things like cancer risk, mental health, and obesity.

"Some people still think the body clock is something esoteric rather than a profoundly biological function," Till Roenneberg, a chronobiologist, wrote in his book, "Internal Time: Chronotypes, Social Jet Lag, and Why You're So Tired," in a section explaining some of Rosbash's work with fruit flies.

Some think the biological clock is an issue only for "sensitive people," Roenneberg writes, which explains the common sentiment that it's possible for people to change their natural rhythms to fit a schedule that a job or school may require. We know, however, that biological clocks can be changed only to a limited degree — and for some people, not much at all.

"Yet the biological details, right down to the molecular and genetic levels, prove how much biology is behind our internal timing system," Roenneberg wrote.

Night and day on a genetic level

As a press release from the Nobel committee explains, the three Nobel laureates in 1984 first isolated the "period gene" that regulates the internal clock of fruit flies. (The gene had been discovered in the 1970s but not isolated.)

Hall and Rosbash found that this gene played a role in causing cells to produce what they named the PER protein, which accumulates throughout the night and breaks down during the day. They figured out that the period gene would cause the PER protein to build up until it switched off the period gene. Once protein levels degrade enough, the gene switches back on, coding for more protein production.

Young found a second clock gene in 1994 called "timeless," which creates a protein that binds with the PER protein, giving it the ability to enter the cell nucleus to block activity. Another gene he discovered helps regulate this process to match a 24-hour cycle.

Other aspects of biology, including hormones and other genes, help regulate this internal clock as well. Light plays a crucial role, helping trigger phases of the body clock. It's also the reason we all have an internal clock in the first place.

As biological creatures, we can't all be at peak energy throughout the day. Sometimes we need to be on high alert and able to react quickly. At other times, we need to eat, rest, and sleep to regain energy. Our body clock regulates these phases, which is why most of us sleep at night and are awake during the day — though there's significant variation among people as to when we feel most awake and most asleep, regulated by genetics and other factors.

Understanding there is a physical cycle and biological factors that all work together helps explain why it's hard to suddenly pull all-nighters, adjust to a new time zone, or start waking up earlier: Your entire body, down to your cells, needs time to adapt.

Deadly consequences for ignoring the clock

Having an internal clock naturally keeps us to a schedule, though it isn't always the one we want, as some of us are night people and others morning people.

But it's at least a schedule that defines when we'll be sleepy, when we'll be hungry and best process food, when we'll be most mentally alert, and when we'll be most physically capable.

It's when our lives aren't matched with our body clocks that things start to go haywire. Night-shift work and exposure to bright light at night (which can start to shift the body clock) can cause a sort of internal jet lag. The same thing happens when you're flying to a new place.

People whose schedule changes regularly, making it impossible to have consistency, can experience the biggest problems. They may more easily gain weight, are more likely to have a mental illness like anxiety or depression, and undergo biological changes significant enough that the International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified shift work as a "probable human carcinogen."

That's why, more than anything else, sleep researchers say that having a regular schedule is key.

Trying to match your life to your circadian rhythm isn't just a matter of preference — it's an issue of biology, and one that could explain why on a certain schedule you thrive and on another everything feels wrong.

SEE ALSO: There’s a scientific explanation for why you’re a morning person or night owl — but it’s possible to reset your internal clock

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• Charles Darwin once theorized that the origin of life — known as abiogenesis — could have happened as precursor compounds came together in "warm little ponds."
• A new study provides evidence for that theory, modeling how meteorites may have delivered compounds that could have led to the formation of RNA (a cousin of DNA) in ponds all over the Earth.
• Proponents of the other major life-origin story, the idea that life comes from hydrothermal vents deep in the ocean, are not convinced.

The biggest question about life is an obvious one, but the answer is hotly debated.

How did it all begin?

The most well-known of biologists, Charles Darwin, once theorized in a private letter to his friend Joseph Lee Hooker that life — the very first molecules of it — could have emerged from a "warm little pond" where some precursor components underwent a chemical reaction, creating compounds that would later develop into the forms of life as we know them today.

The other main theory is that life could have first emerged underwater at ultrahot hydrothermal vents, where cold seawater is heated to searing temperatures by volcanic activity deep in the ocean, providing enough energy to transform chemicals and other particles.

This week, the warm little ponds theory got a boost.

In a study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers wrote that they had mathematically modeled a way that meteorites, which smacked into early Earth far more regularly than they do now, could have delivered organic materials called nucleobases to warm little ponds all over the earth. These nucleobases would have served as the building blocks for RNA (a cousin of DNA), which many scientists think was the first sort of "life" to emerge, since it can both store information and help catalyze chemical reactions that would lead to the formation of other organic compounds.

Scientists say that for life to exist, molecules have to be able to trigger reactions that lead to the creation of new molecules. RNA has properties that could allow it to do that without already having complex proteins, which DNA requires for the replication process — a key argument for why RNA would come first.

The authors say their simulation is the first to model this origin story in such a complete way, helping demonstrate that the warm little pond story might be the correct one.

"No one's actually run the calculation before. It’s pretty exciting," Ben Pearce of McMaster University, lead author of the new study, said in a press release.

A model for life formation

Pearce and co-authors created a model of what the Earth looked like as the planet changed geologically in its early stages. All over the world, meteorites that hit the planet somewhere between 4.5 and 3.7 billion years ago could have delivered nucleobases to those warm little ponds, thousands of which could have been found all over early continents still emerging from the ocean.

During dry seasons, these ponds would shrink, bringing chemicals together; they'd expand during wet seasons. Wet and dry cycles help explain polymerization, the process by which compounds develop into chains or three-dimension structures, the authors wrote. The shrunken pools during dry cycles would bring compounds close together, allowing them to bond, which is one of the reasons they think that chemicals coming together in more open water near hydrothermal vents is a less plausible explanation.

But because of rapidly changing environmental conditions during these cycles, the authors believe RNA must have formed within a few years of meteorite impact. Otherwise, UV from sunlight during dry periods could have destroyed the compounds.

The authors think this happened at least 4.17 billion years ago, millions of years before we have clear evidence of life forming on the planet. That evidence dates to about 3.5 billion years ago — though another study this week also made the claim that life existed at least 3.95 billion years before now.

There are several reasons the authors believe this model could help solve the question of the origin of life, known as "abiogenesis." Their model accounts for meteorites as the source material for the RNA precursors; it can help explain how some of the necessary reactions would have occurred; and they say their timeline fits with the early geologic conditions of the planet.

"Because there are so many inputs from so many different fields, it's kind of amazing that it all hangs together. Each step led very naturally to the next," said study co-author Ralph Pudritz in the release. "To have them all lead to a clear picture in the end is saying there's something right about this."

Unanswered questions

But the question is still far from solved.

"Yeah, that's a possibility, but it's certainly far, far, far from being the only possibility, and it's far, far, far from being true,"Jan Amend, a geochemist at the University of Southern California who studies hydrothermal vents, told Newsweek.

Amend disagreed with the necessity of the wet-dry cycle, pointed out the meteorite impacts could have destroyed the precursor compounds, and said that even meteorites probably couldn't have delivered the all the necessary materials.

Other scientists prefer the hydrothermal vent explanation because they believe it's the only way there could have been sufficient energy for the life-forming reactions to occur.

This new study at least advances the warm pond theory, even if the question remains far from solved.

"Based on what we know about planet formation and the chemistry of the solar system, we have proposed a consistent scenario for the emergence of life on Earth. We have provided plausible physical and chemical information about the conditions under which life could have originated," co-author Dmitry Semenov of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy said in the news release. "Now it's the experimentalists turn to find out how life could indeed have emerged under these very specific early conditions."

SEE ALSO: There's a compelling reason scientists think we've never found aliens, and it suggests humans are already going extinct

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Jeremy Bentham died in 1832.

Unlike most people, however, the English philosopher decided on a rather unusual posthumous operation.

Bentham made instructions in his will, aged just 21, for him to be dissected after death and preserved as an 'auto-icon.'

Now, Bentham's 269-year-old decomposing head will appear on display for the first time in decades at University College London. Bentham will be part of a UCL Culture exhibition "exploring the science and dilemma of death."

"The exhibition positions Bentham's head within the context of his scholarship and his beliefs, with reference to prevailing ideas of the time about death and dead bodies. It asks the question, why did he believe donation was important? And forces us to ask what that means to us today," said Subhadra Das, Curator of Collections (UCL Culture).

Bentham is widely regarded as one of the foremost proponents of utilitarianism — "the view that the morally right action is the action that produces the most good." 185 years after his death, his remains are still being used for the greater good: "It has... allowed scientists to test his DNA to see if he was autistic. We have been working with the Natural History Museum who have new techniques of studying ancient DNA," Das said.

Bentham is also considered the "spiritual father" of UCL — the university's actual founders were heavily influenced by the philosopher's ideals and held him in high regard.

Despite being one of the most notable theorists and social reformers of his time, Bentham was remarkably eccentric. He used to carry the very pair of glass eyeballs that now rest in his preserved skull around with him in his pockets. He also owned a walking stick called Dapple, a teapot named Dickey, and an elderly cat: The Reverend Sir John Langbourne.

What Does It Mean To Be Human? Curating Heads at UCL will be on display at The Octagon Gallery from 2 October - 1 March 2018 and is free to all visitors.

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Three researchers who developed a way to see the basic molecules of life in three dimensions won the 2017 Nobel Prize in chemistry, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on Wednesday.

Jacques Dubochet of Switzerland’s University of Lausanne, Joachim Frank of Columbia University in New York City, and Richard Henderson of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in England were honored “for developing cryo-electron microscopy for the high-resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution,” said Göran Hansson, secretary general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, in announcing the prize in Stockholm.

Basically, cryo-EM lets biologists see what they’re studying, from the surface of the Zika virus to human enzymes involved in disease. And that has big implications for drug development: Seeing the shape of a molecule involved in cancer, for instance, can give scientists clues about the kind of molecule they need to create to disrupt the disease. The prize is therefore another example of the chemistry Nobel honoring research that is squarely within biology.

“This discovery is like the Google Earth for molecules in that it takes us down to the fine detail of atoms within proteins,” Allison Campbell, president of the American Chemical Society, said. “A picture truly is worth a thousand words, and the laureates’ discoveries are invaluable to our understanding of life and the development of new therapeutics.”

“I think this is a very exciting choice,” Jeremy Berg, editor-in-chief of Science and former director of the National Institute for General Medical Sciences at the National Institutes of Health, told STAT.

Cryo-EM “is truly revolutionizing biochemistry, particularly over the past five years,” Berg said. Many of the structures it has revealed, often at an atomic level, “are those of greatest interest to biologists, but have been difficult to reveal by other means,” he said, including “ion channels central to the function of the nervous system and the machinery for splicing RNA, essential for effective gene expression.”

The three laureates worked independently, but their discoveries about how to prepare biological samples to have their picture taken, how to take the picture without destroying the sample, and how to turn the initial fuzzy image into something sharp converged to make cryo-EM today’s go-to imaging technology.

Older microscopic techniques couldn’t generate images of life’s molecular machines; the cutting-edge technique of yore, electron microscopy, seemed to work only for seeing dead objects, since the electron beam destroys living things. But Frank, who said on Wednesday that he “didn’t mind” receiving the early-morning call from Stockholm, developed a way to take the fuzzy 2-D images from electron microscopes and turn them into a sharp 3-D picture, the first step toward cryo-EM.

Ordinary electron microscopy makes biomolecules, which contain water, collapse. But in the 1970s Dubochet showed that adding water to electron microscopy in a certain way that prevented that. He cooled water so rapidly that it became a sort of solid liquid (more like glass than ice), forming a sort of cage around the biological sample. That cage helped the biomolecules keep their shape during the imaging.

(Dubochet is known not only for his discoveries but also for having one of science’s more unusual official CVs, which starts with being “conceived by optimistic parents” in October 1941 and includes “being the first official dyslexic in the canton of Vaud” in 1955.)

Henderson showed that it is possible to freeze biomolecules “mid-movement,” the Nobel committee said, generating a three-dimensional image of a protein down to the atomic level. His breakthrough came in 1990, when he used cryo-EM to reveal the 3-D structure of a bacterial protein called bacteriorhodopsin. That demonstration of what cryo-EM could achieve was “decisive for both the basic understanding of life’s chemistry and for the development of pharmaceuticals,” the committee said.

In the new millennium, cryo-EM became the go-to technology for seeing the molecules of life, capturing everything from proteins that cause antibiotic resistance to the surface of the Zika virus to receptors in human cells that sense the spiciness molecule in chili peppers. And biologists hope that by actually seeing what their drugs have to target, they might develop more effective medications more quickly: a study last year, for instance, showed the atomic-level structure of an enzyme that, if disrupted, might fight cancer.

The three scientists will receive the Nobel Medal, Nobel Diploma, and a document confirming the Nobel Prize amount (9 million Swedish krona, about $1.1 million) from King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden at the annual Nobel ceremony in Stockholm on Dec. 10, along with the rest of this year’s laureates.

SEE ALSO: Three scientists who helped discover gravitational waves just won the Nobel prize in physics

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A strange and unseen world exists at our fingertips, and only microscopes have the power to bring this hidden dimension into view.

To honor the beauty and scientific importance of microscopic photographs— also called micrographs — the Nikon Small World image contest hands out awards and prizes to researchers and hobbyists who capture the most impressive images.

A handful of independent judges picks the contest's 20 best micrographs, and this year I joined the 43rd judging panel.

We reviewed more than 2,000 pictures from all over the world, and selected the best pictures based on technique, subject matter, and inherent beauty. (We also watched hundreds of stunning videos for the 2017 Nikon Small World in Motion competition.)

The image shown above is a tapeworm's head with all of its spiky mouthparts in stunning detail.

To see all of the photos the judges picked as winners, keep scrolling.

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This image won first place. It shows keratin structures in "immortalized" human skin cells, which are increasingly important tools for medical researchers.

This image came in second. It shows the seed-filled head of a groundsel flower.

This Pac-Man-like photo is the third-place winner. It shows a colony of volvox algae bursting open.

• Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank, and Richard Henderson were awarded the 2017 Nobel prize in chemistry Wednesday for developing cryo-electron microscopy.
• The technique allows researchers to see the details of biological molecules like proteins, DNA, RNA, and viruses in ways that were impossible before.
• The new technology is revealing secrets of how biology works on molecular and microscopic levels and is essential for developing new medications.

In order to understand something — even if it's microscopic and invisible, like a protein or a virus — you need to know what it looks like.

A recently developed technique called cryo-electron microscopy creates 3D visualizations of biological molecules like proteins, DNA, and RNA, making them visible in ways previously thought impossible. Three scientists — Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank, and Richard Henderson — were awarded the 2017 Nobel prize in chemistry Wednesday for their work developing the method, which has given scientists an unprecedented look at what the Nobel prize committee described as "life's molecular machinery."

Being able to see the twists, turns, and shapes of molecules can reveal what types of drugs could help treat a virus or which medical molecule might fight a certain type of cancer. Just looking at these structures has filled in scientific knowledge gaps that existed for years.

Electron microscopy refers to the act of sending a beam of electrons at a small sample of a material. Unlike normal microscopes, which use light, beams of electrons can illuminate the tiniest of details in a structure, down the location of individual atoms.

The technique has existed since the 1930s, but many scientists didn't think it could be used to look at biomolecules for two main reasons. First, the force of the electron beam blasts biological material apart. Weakening the beam enough to keep molecules intact only creates a low-contrast, fuzzy image. Second, electron microscopes can't be used on anything that's in water, since the process evaporates that water. And without water (a main component of all cells), biological molecules collapse.

Advances in the field

In 1975, Richard Henderson, a molecular biologist who heads up a lab at Cambridge in the UK, used a weakened electron beam to capture a poor-contrast image of a protein. The protein was protected by a membrane, so didn't need to be kept in water.

He and colleagues gathered images from a number of angles, then used a mathematical model to create the best picture yet of a protein generated with an electron microscope. You can see it on the right. 

But the image didn't yet have the resolution Henderson wanted.

Meanwhile, Joachim Frank, a Columbia University professor originally from Germany, was working on ways to process the flat 2D images taken by electron microscopes. In the years between 1975 and 1986, he came up with a way to process a number of those fuzzy, flat images and turn them into sharper 3D models. The 3D versions could reveal the structure of a protein, advancing the technique Henderson had previously used.

In the 1980s, Swiss biophysicist Jacques Dubochet set to work solving another problem that was keeping scientists from creating images and models of biomolecules. He developed a way to "vitrify" water by cooling it so rapidly that it became a solid in its liquid form (without forming ice crystals). Essentially, he turned it into glass.

Put together, these developments set the stage for what would become known as cryo-electron microscopy, with "cryo" being the prefix for "cold."

Cryo-electron microscopy revolution

By 1990, Henderson was able to capture a far more detailed model of bacteriorhodopsin — the same protein in his original image — using cryo-electron microscopy.

The new image (right) was taken at true atomic resolution. And because of the techniques developed by Frank and Dubochet, it was possible to capture models like this of any sort of biomolecule, not only those protected by membranes.

The technique would get still more sophisticated, however.

New electron detectors and microscope technology eventually revealed far more than the uneven surface of a protein, including details of the atomic structure of the molecules. The difference is evident in the image below.

Now researchers turn to this technology immediately when they want to understand anything biological. For example, when researchers first noticed that something was causing microcephaly in newborn children, they found and imaged the Zika virus and its proteins to see if they could get a better sense of what was happening.

Creating these images helps researchers identify which components of the virus might be causing the negative effects — and that can allow them to develop ways to block those troublesome parts.

The ability to do all this fundamentally transforms biochemistry, medicine, and our understanding of biology.

As the Swedish Academy wrote in their announcement of the Nobel Prize winners:

"After Joachim Frank presented the strategy for his general image processing method in 1975, a researcher wrote: 'If such methods were to be perfected, then, in the words of one scientist, the sky would be the limit.'

Now we are there – the sky is the limit. Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson have, through their research, brought 'the greatest benefit to mankind.' Each corner of the cell can be captured in atomic detail and biochemistry is all set for an exciting future."

SEE ALSO: 3 scientists just won the Nobel Prize for discovering how body clocks are regulated — here's why that's such a big deal

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The recent popularity of “designer” dogs, cats, micro-pigs and other pets may seem to suggest that pet keeping is no more than a fad. Indeed, it is often assumed that pets are a Western affectation, a weird relic of the working animals kept by communities of the past.

About half of the households in Britain alone include some kind of pet; roughly 10m of those are dogs while cats make up another 10m. Pets cost time and money, and nowadays bring little in the way of material benefits. But during the 2008 financial crisis, spending on pets remained almost unaffected, which suggests that for most owners pets are not a luxury but an integral and deeply loved part of the family.

Some people are into pets, however, while others simply aren’t interested. Why is this the case? It is highly probable that our desire for the company of animals actually goes back tens of thousands of years and has played an important part in our evolution. If so, then genetics might help explain why a love of animals is something some people just don’t get.

The health question

In recent times, much attention has been devoted to the notion that keeping a dog (or possibly a cat) can benefit the owner’s health in multiple ways – reducing the risk of heart disease, combating loneliness, and alleviating depression and the symptoms of depression and dementia.

As I explore in my new book, there are two problems with these claims. First, there are a similar number of studies that suggest that pets have no or even a slight negative impact on health. Second, pet owners don’t live any longer than those who have never entertained the idea of having an animal about the house, which they should if the claims were true. And even if they were real, these supposed health benefits only apply to today’s stressed urbanites, not their hunter-gatherer ancestors, so they cannot be considered as the reason that we began keeping pets in the first place.

The urge to bring animals into our homes is so widespread that it’s tempting to think of it as a universal feature of human nature, but not all societies have a tradition of pet-keeping. Even in the West there are plenty of people who feel no particular affinity for animals, whether pets or no.

The pet-keeping habit often runs in families: this was once ascribed to children coming to imitate their parents’ lifestyles when they leave home, but recent research has suggested that it also has a genetic basis. Some people, whatever their upbringing, seem predisposed to seek out the company of animals, others less so.

So the genes that promote pet-keeping may be unique to humans, but they are not universal, suggesting that in the past some societies or individuals – but not all – thrived due to an instinctive rapport with animals.

Pet DNA

The DNA of today’s domesticated animals reveals that each species separated from its wild counterpart between 15,000 and 5,000 years ago, in the late Palaeolithic and Neolithic periods. Yes, this was also when we started breeding livestock. But it is not easy to see how this could have been achieved if those first dogs, cats, cattle and pigs were treated as mere commodities.

If this were so, the technologies available would have been inadequate to prevent unwanted interbreeding of domestic and wild stock, which in the early stages would have had ready access to one another, endlessly diluting the genes for “tameness” and thus slowing further domestication to a crawl – or even reversing it. Also, periods of famine would also have encouraged the slaughter of the breeding stock, locally wiping out the “tame” genes entirely.

But if at least some of these early domestic animals had been treated as pets, physical containment within human habitations would have prevented wild males from having their way with domesticated females; special social status, as afforded to some extant hunter-gatherer pets, would have inhibited their consumption as food. Kept isolated in these ways, the new semi-domesticated animals would have been able to evolve away from their ancestors’ wild ways, and become the pliable beasts we know today.

The very same genes which today predispose some people to take on their first cat or dog would have spread among those early farmers. Groups which included people with empathy for animals and an understanding of animal husbandry would have flourished at the expense of those without, who would have had to continue to rely on hunting to obtain meat. Why doesn’t everyone feel the same way? Probably because at some point in history the alternative strategies of stealing domestic animals or enslaving their human carers became viable.

There’s a final twist to this story: recent studies have shown that affection for pets goes hand-in-hand with concern for the natural world. It seems that people can be roughly divided into those that feel little affinity for animals or the environment, and those who are predisposed to delight in both, adopting pet-keeping as one of the few available outlets in today’s urbanized society.

As such, pets may help us to reconnect with the world of nature from which we evolved.

SEE ALSO: Nearly every president kept a pet in the White House — here's a look at all of America's first pets

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NOW WATCH: Animated map shows how cats spread across the world

Kissing is one of our favourite disgusting activities.

Looking at it objectively, sharing saliva with someone else is a pretty gross thing to do. In fact, we transfer approximately 80 million bacteria for every ten seconds we're kissing each other.

The majority of these germs are totally benign, so it's nothing to worry about.

But it's still weird to think about inviting someone to share their spit with you, so why do we do it?

First of all, it makes us feel good. Our lips are packed full of receptor cells, which make them very sensitive. In fact, along with fingertips, they are thought to have the highest concentrations of receptor cells.

When you enjoy kissing someone, these receptors shoot signals to your brain, and you release chemicals like dopamine, which fuels your reward system, and makes you want to carry on kissing.

Endorphins, your body's natural painkillers, are also released, which enhance the feeling of pleasure. If it's a really good kiss, your brain may also release oxytocin, the "love hormone," which makes us feel warm and cuddly, and increases our attachment to the other person.

Male saliva contains measurable amounts of testosterone, which could also increase your libido (if you're kissing a man.)

Dr Sarah Johns, an expert in human reproduction and evolutionary psychology at the University of Kent, told The Independent that as well as being an emotion-driven act, kissing helps us pick our most compatible partner.

"Humans don't have strong olfactory skills and kissing allows you to smell and taste a person and see if you have different immune responses as we tend to feel more attracted to someone with a different immune response," she said.

"The major histocompatibility complex is detectable in body odour, so by kissing and tasting someone it gives the opportunity to assess how similar or different that individual is to you biochemically."

In other words, somehow your body may be able to detect whether reproducing with the person you're kissing would be an evolutionary risk or not.

She added that feeling arousal can inhibit feelings of disgust, meaning we don't necessarily think of all the gross things we're doing while we're doing them, because we're too turned on.

Nobody really knows where kissing came from

There's some debate about whether we started kissing each other for cultural reasons, or if it's something we evolved to do biologically.

About 90% of human populations kiss in some way or another, with the majority of others doing similar things in replacement such as rubbing noses, suggesting it could be something instinctual.

Kissing also isn't unique to humans. Primates such as bonobos often kiss each other, and cats and dogs lick and groom one another.

Some scientists believe that kissing could have evolved from "kiss-feeding" behaviours, which is when mothers pass food from their own mouths to their offspring. Birds still do this with their chicks. One theory is that over time, pressing lips became known as an act of caretaking and love.

According to evolutionary psychologists at the University of Albany, the way men and women feel about kissing can differ quite significantly.

In a study of 1,041 college students, the researchers found that women placed more emphasis on kissing, seeing it more as a deal-breaker. They were more likely than men to insist on kissing before having sex, and emphasising the importance of kissing during and after sexual encounters.

Men were more happy to have sex without kissing, and weren't that bothered about whether their partner was a good kisser or not. They were also more likely than women to initiate french kissing (with tongues.)

So whether it's an evolutionary thing, or just something we've picked up, humans really enjoy kissing. It might be gross on paper, but it looks like the benefits outweigh the costs on this one.

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NOW WATCH: A happiness expert explains why having work friends is vital to your success

From the time a farmer harvests strawberries or green beans, they will last — at best — three weeks before they start to rot. It usually takes a week or two for the food to reach the grocery store and then your fridge, leaving you only a few days to eat them.

A Santa Barbara, California-based startup called Apeel Sciences has invented an edible coating called Edipeel that it says can extend a fruit or vegetable's shelf life by as much as five times. If you spray it on a ripe strawberry, for example, the company claims the fruit will last up to a week longer than normal.

Made of leftover plant skins and stems, the coating acts as a barrier that slows the decay process. You can apply it to produce anytime during its lifespan — Apeel even claims they were able to make a bunch of bananas grown at the same time ripen on different days.

A year after its launch in 2016, Apeel has moved into a 105,000-square-foot facility. At least six farms in Southern California, Kenya, and Nigeria are using Apeel's products, CEO James Rogers told Business Insider.  The company is also finalizing negotiations to work with at least two dozen packing houses and several farms in Mexico, Peru, and Chile for a "very large commercial rollout" to the US, Rogers said.

The US Food and Drug Administration has approved Apeel's first products as "generally recognized as safe," meaning they're okay to eat and sell. The company also recently received approval to use Edipeel on organic produce.

Here's how the product works.

SEE ALSO: Wildfires are causing 'the worst year on record' for California's marijuana industry

Edipeel is a transparent coating that you spray on produce or dip items into.

After the coating dries, it acts as a shield to natural gases (e.g. oxygen and ethylene) that make produce decay.

Edipeel is engineered to keep water from leaving a fruit or vegetable and prevent oxygen from entering. Apeel is also working on a second product called Invisipeel that's designed to keep insects away but is not yet widely available. 

Edipeel's formula differs for each fruit or vegetable.The startup has so far developed Edipeel products for three dozen crops, including avocados, asparagus, peaches, lemons, pears, and nectarines.

Farms and food packing houses are now able to buy Apeel's products. Edipeel is usually sprayed on produce during the wash cycle, before produce is sorted and packed to go to retailers.

Facial recognition technology may catch a lot more in a photo than a winning smile or sparkling eyes.

Psychologist Michal Kosinski and his colleague Yilun Wang at the Stanford Graduate School of Business caused a stir last month when they suggested that artificial intelligence could apply a sort of "gaydar" to profile photos on dating websites.

In a forthcoming paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the two researchers revealed how existing facial recognition software could predict whether or not someone identifies as gay or straight just by studying their face.

Comparing two white men’s dating profile pictures side-by-side, an existing computer algorithm could determine with 81% accuracy whether or not a person self-identified as gay or straight. The researchers used an existing facial recognition program called VGG Face to read and code the photos, then entered that data into a logistic regression model and looked for correlations between the photo features and a person's stated sexual orientation. 

Kosinski said it's not clear which factors the algorithm pinpointed to make its assessments — whether it emphasized certain physical features like jaw size, nose length, or facial hair, or external features like clothes or image quality.

But when given a handful of a person’s profile photos, the system got even savvier. With five pictures of each person to compare, facial recognition software was about 91% accurate at guessing whether men said they were gay or straight, and 83% accurate when determining whether women said they were straight or lesbian. (The study didn’t include those who self-reported as ‘bisexual’ or daters with other sexual preferences.)

People were furious about the news, which was first reported in The Economist.

"Stanford researchers tried to create a ‘gaydar’ machine," The New York Times wrote. The Human Rights Campaign and the LGBTQ advocacy group GLAAD denounced the research, calling it “dangerous and flawed.” In a joint statement, the two organizations lambasted the researchers, saying their study wasn’t peer reviewed (though it was) and suggesting the findings “could cause harm to LGBTQ people around the world.” 

Lead study author Kosinski agrees that the study is cause for concern. In fact, he thinks what’s been overlooked amidst the controversy is the fact that his discovery is disturbing news for everyone. The human face says a surprising amount about what’s under our skin, and computers are getting better at decoding that information.

“If these results are correct, what the hell are we going to do about it?” Kosinski said to Business Insider, adding, “I’m willing to take some hate if it can make the world safer.” 

AI technology appears to be hyper-capable of learning all sorts of information about a person's most intimate preferences based on visual cues that the human eye doesn't pick up. Those details could include things like hormone levels, genetic traits and disorders, even political leanings — in addition to stated sexual preferences. 

Kosinski's findings don't have to be bad news, though.

The same facial recognition software that sorted gay and straight people in the study could also be trained to mine photos of faces for signs of depression, for example. Or it could one day help doctors measure a patient's hormone levels to identify and treat diseases faster and more accurately.

What's clear from Kosinski's research is that to a trained computer, photos that are already publicly available on the internet are fair game for anyone to try to interpret with AI. Indeed, such systems could already be in use on images floating across computer screens around the world, without anyone being the wiser.

SEE ALSO: Walmart is developing a robot that identifies unhappy shoppers

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NOW WATCH: The surprising truth about symmetrical faces and attractiveness — according to science

(REUTERS) British scientists are testing cutting edge gene editing techniques in mice, by inserting a jelly fish gene that makes their skin green.

The research uses CRISPR-Cas9, a gene editing tool that works like a pair of 'molecular scissors', cutting out and replacing specific parts of a cell's DNA. Scientists hail CRISPR's potential for treating genetic diseases such as sickle-cell anaemia.

The team at the University of Bath in southwest England describes the CRISPR ribonucleic acid (RNA) molecule as the satellite navigation system for the Cas9 protein. It guides the protein to the defective part of the genome, which it then removes, directing the cell to repair the cut.

The team, led by reproductive biologist Dr Tony Perry, says the fluorescent green jelly fish gene given to the mice in their study becomes integrated into the entire mouse genome. The scientists can then see whether targeting the genome with CRISPR-Cas9 technology works.

"We take what would have been green embryos and make them into non-green embryos, so it's a great way of demonstrating the method," Dr Perry told Reuters.

So far the results show that the CRISPR-Cas9 technology allows for gene editing with a high degree of success and few unpredicted effects.

Perry sees the technique being used in plants and livestock species within five years.

"As more of the ground rules become established we understand better how the system works, in particular livestock species," he said.

The technology could also be used to edit plant genomes to make them resistant to disease and improve crop yields. Researchers say this differs from traditional controversial genetic modification that adds a new gene from another organism.

It's hoped the technology could one day be used for gene editing in humans. In 2016 scientists at Stanford University School of Medicine used it to repair the gene that causes sickle cell disease in stem cells of diseased patients. This could herald a cure for the disease which affects up to 5 million people around the world.

In sickle cell disease the body makes mutant, sickle-shaped haemoglobin, the protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen to the body's tissues. It's caused by a single mutation in a gene that makes a haemoglobin protein.

"If you think about genetic disease it really refers to a condition specified by the sequence of letters in the DNA in a patient. We now have a technology that allows correction of a sequence that would lead to normally functioning cells. There are many diseases that are have known genetic causes that we now have in principle a way to cure," professor of chemistry and molecular and cell biology at the University of California Berkeley Jennifer Doudna told Reuters.

Her Doudna Lab team at Berkeley has also corrected the genetic mutation that causes sickle cell disease using CRISPR-Cas9.

Some scientists warn about the ethical dangers of using gene editing in embryos.

"It will immediately create this new form of consumer eugenics in which people choose the cosmetic characteristics and abilities of their children and enhance them to perform better than other people's children," said director of Human Genetics Alert Dr David King.

The British team says the use of the technique in human embryos is a long way off, but the research in mice presents a golden - or possibly green - opportunity to eradicate inheritable disease.

Video produced by Jasper Pickering.

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• Social scientists say conservative political views can be fueled by fear.
• A new study suggests that making people feel safe from harm can change their stance on hot-button social issues.
• The new research gives insight into the role of the unconscious mind in the voting booth.

Social scientists have long known how to turn liberals into conservatives in the lab — all they have to do is scare them.

“Research has shown that you can make liberals more conservative by threatening them and making them somewhat afraid,” Yale psychology professor John Bargh writes in his new book, “Before You Know It: The Unconscious Reasons We Do What We Do,” which was released Tuesday.

Several studies have shown that when social scientists get liberal-leaning experiment subjects to think about their own deaths or make them feel threatened, some left-wingers adopt more conservative values. This phenomenon played out after 9/11 — researchers found that there was a "very strong conservative shift" in the US after the attacks, with more liberals supporting Republican President George W. Bush and favoring increases in military spending.

The hypothesis social scientists developed about this effect is perhaps best summed up in a 2003 review of research on the subject: "People embrace political conservatism (at least in part) because it serves to reduce fear, anxiety, and uncertainty; to avoid change, disruption, and ambiguity; and to explain, order, and justify inequality among groups and individuals," it said.

There’s evidence that this fear plays out in how conservative and liberal brains are shaped, too. Researchers have taken brain images of people with different political leanings and found that those who self-identify as conservative have larger and more active right amygdalas, an area of the brain associated with the expression and processing of fear. A 2011 study looked at MRI scans of self-described conservative young adults and found they had more grey matter volume in the right amygdala than their liberal counterparts. In 2013, another team of scientists expanded that research to show that conservatives generally have more activity in their right amygdala when taking risks than liberals do.

But while inducing fear might shift a liberal mindset, conservatives have generally been more difficult for social scientists to sway in experiments — until now.

In his new book, Bargh details two separate experiments that he conducted with his colleagues that swayed folks who identified as conservative to express more liberal attitudes.

How They Did It

The researchers behind the psychology experiment told a group of participants to imagine that they'd been granted a superpower by a magic genie and were suddenly as invincible as Superman — bullets bounced off them, fire couldn't scorch their skin, and “a fall from a cliff wouldn’t hurt at all,” Bargh writes in his book. The study's control group was simply told to imagine they could fly.

Then the researchers asked the participants to weigh in on some political statements, including whether they "would be reluctant to make any large-scale changes to the social order," and whether "it’s okay if some groups have more of a chance in life than others." 

Liberal participants' attitudes on social issues didn't shift at all. The conservative participants, on the other hand, started adopting more liberal views on social issues (though not economic ones.)

Participants who imagined themselves with the ability to fly had no change in their political views.

The study authors say this is some of the first experimental evidence that making people feel completely safe can (temporarily) change their politics and make them more liberal. 

What Else Are We Doing Unconsciously?

Bargh argues in his book that these results are but one example of the way humans are still living with the “hard-won lessons” of evolution.

“The fundamental drive for physical safety is a powerful legacy of our evolutionary past” he writes. “It exerts a pervasive influence on the mind as it navigates and responds to modern life, often in surprising ways — like who you vote for.”

Bargh’s book suggests that a myriad of unconscious influences impact our everyday decisions. Holding a cup of piping hot coffee can make us friendlier, he suggests, becuase the association between physical warmth and social warmth is something we learned unconsciously as infants when we were held close to a loved one's warm chest.

In another study, Bargh showed how washing hands with soap and water can make people less hostile to individuals who are different than they are. Bargh says that's because to some extent, our modern prejudices are shaped by the way we've evolved to avoid unknown, foreign threats like disease.

In general, Bargh writes, people “don’t fully understand why we do what we do all of the time.”

"We have one mind, and it can operate consciously and unconsciously," he told Business Insider. But Bargh says that's generally not a bad thing. He believes the unconscious forces at play are generally "on our side," since they help us get through the day without needing to reason through every decision we make.

SEE ALSO: Liberal colleges are recruiting conservative professors to 'stir up some trouble'

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NOW WATCH: 'That hypocrisy is also real' — Jon Stewart takes liberals to task for calling all Trump supporters racist

• Human teeth fossils found in Germany may shake up our understanding of human evolution and migration.
• The fossils place human ancestors in Europe millions of years before paleontologists believed a migration took place.
• Some researchers believe the fossils may be a fluke, and merely a result of convergent evolution.

Scientists have announced the shocking discovery in Germany of ancient teeth fossils that are nearly 10 million years old, and which they say don't fit in with our established timeline of human history.

The researchers say one of these fossils is similar to that of humanity's primitive ancestors, hominins – except up until now, we've only seen teeth like this in Africa, not Europe, and even then, the existing fossil record is millions of years younger.

"This is not only the first time something like this has been found here in over 80 years, but it's something completely new, something previously unknown to science," paleontologist Herbert Lutz from the Mainz Natural History Museum in Germany told ResearchGate.

The find, made near the German town of Eppelsheim in September 2016, uncovered two well-preserved teeth dated to about 9.7 million years ago.

Historically, the Eppelsheim region is well-known for producing fossils, and one of these teeth, an upper right first molar, shares characteristics with other specimens discovered in the area.

But the other tooth, an upper left canine, is something else, and the researchers say its outline and shape give it close affinities with the teeth of hominin species including Australopithecus afarensis, the most famous example of which is a skeleton called Lucy.

The thing is, Lucy is estimated to only be a little over 3 million years old, and humanity's early ancestors are only thought to have begun their migration out of Africa and into Europe and Asia some 100,000 years ago.

So the question is: who did these teeth out of time and space belong to, and how in the name of human history did they get there?

"We've got two teeth from a single individual. That means there must have been a whole population," Lutz told ResearchGate.

"It wouldn't have been just one, all alone like Robinson Crusoe… if we're finding primate species all around the Mediterranean area, why not any like this? It's a complete mystery where this individual came from, and why nobody's ever found a tooth like this somewhere before."

The team thinks it's possible the species the teeth come from could be related to more recent hominins from Africa – in which case it means this mysterious and so-far-unknown group of primates existed in Europe before they were in Africa.

Alternatively, the upper canine similarities could be the result of convergent evolution – with the resemblance in shape to African hominin teeth being a genetic, environmental fluke, which just happened to arise in two different species in different locations.

"We want to hold back on speculation," Lutz said.

"What these finds definitely show us is that the holes in our knowledge and in the fossil record are much bigger than previously thought."

After holding off on publishing their research for more than a year while they continued their investigations – which are still ongoing – the team has now made their findings available in a pre-print.

But while news of the discovery has created significant headlines – no doubt assisted by the mayor of Mainz, who sensationally claimed "we shall have to start rewriting the history of mankind after today"– not everybody is convinced the findings are so dramatic.

For starters, a more likely explanation for the fossils is they belong to the broader primate group of hominoids, not hominins, which means they would be more distantly related to us than species like Australopithecus afarensis – and some commentators don't want to even go that far.

"I think this is much ado about nothing," paleoanthropologist Bence Viola from the University of Toronto in Canada told National Geographic.

"The second tooth (the molar), which they say clearly comes from the same individual, is absolutely not a hominin, [and] I would say also not a hominoid."

Instead, it's possible the teeth belong to a much more distant group called pliopithecoids – something Lutz's team themselves acknowledge in their research.

But we won't know more about that for sure until the team have a chance to analyze the teeth in greater detail, which could tell them about the individual's age, dietary habits, and – maybe – its place in our ancient ancestors' story (or that of their cousins).

Until then, claims that we have to rewrite the textbooks need to be taken with a grain of salt, because the science on this one hasn't been fully cooked yet.

The findings are reported in a pre-print available online.

SEE ALSO: Fossils cast doubt on human lineage originating in Africa

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NOW WATCH: Drinking flavored water could be making your teeth painfully sensitive

Scientists are just starting to understand the tardigrade. It can survive boiling water, outer space, and extreme radiation. Following is a transcript of the video.

This funny looking little guy can survive boiling hot water, outer space, and decades without food or water. It's called a "tardigrade" or "water bear". It's just one of many aquatic invertebrates on the planet, but it's unlike any other life form that scientists know of.

Less than a millimeter in size, it can be found almost anywhere. The secret to its hardiness is a process called "cryptobiosis". The tardigrade releases almost all of its body water and turns into a shrunken little ball called a "tun". It can remain motionless this way for decades.

Astronauts left tardigrades unprotected in outer space for weeks. Radiation and lack of oxygen couldn't kill them. Tardigrades can also survive extreme pressure. They can withstand pressure 6x as great as the Mariana Trench. Scientists have found tardigrades frozen in ice for 30 years. When the ice melted, the tardigrades started swimming around.

Their radiation threshold is 1,000x that of humans. Researchers are even using tardigrade protein to help humans withstand more X-ray radiation. 

Tardigrades have survived all four mass extinctions. Scientists say they will survive many more until the sun envelops the Earth, in about 4 billion years. Hey, even a tough tardigrade has its limits

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• Researchers in Beijing found a way to engineer pigs that helps them stay warm and lean.
• After 6 months, test litters weighed in with 24% less body fat than regular pigs.
• The researchers say the gene editing technique could lead to more efficient pork production, reduced costs for farmers, and healthier pigs.

It sounds almost like an oxymoron: low-fat pork.

Researchers in Beijing have developed a new kind of pig with 24% less body fat than regular, lard-laden swine. The researchers say their technique could help pigs stay warmer, grow faster and healthier, all while reducing costs for breeders.

The successful pig experiment, announced Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is a first. In addition to being low-fat, the experimental pigs are unique in one important genetic way: they've got mice proteins in their system. 

Pigs have a reputation for being fatty, but they don’t carry the gene that produces brown fat — the stuff that helps most mammals stay warm and burn energy. That’s because they lack the requisite protein, known as UCP1. A team of researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences say they’ve found a way to build that protein into baby pigs, creating a new brown fat-carrying pig that can keep itself warmer, without putting on as much "white" fat — or, as you may know it, lard. 

Researchers added the protein using CRISPR/Cas9, a gene-editing technology that's kind of like a cut-and-paste function for genetic code. Snip a bit of the UCP1 mice protein into a pig embryo and voila: a pig that develops less fat is born. (Though it's not quite as easy as it sounds in practice: the scientists successfully birthed just 12 male piglets from a total of 2,553 embryos.)

The researchers think the lack of brown fat in regular pigs could be a key reason they get so chubby in the first place — it might be part of their feeble attempt to stay warm. Many piglets die from cold stress and the ones who survive often require heat lamps to stay warm in their first weeks of life. Exposed to cold, the UCP1 pigs managed to keep their body temperature stable for hours, while regular pigs' body temperatures dipped lower.

At 6 months old, when the brown fat pigs were finally slaughtered, they had 24% reduced fat content. They didn’t weigh much less than normal pigs, but they had a higher ratio of lean meat on their bodies and thinner back fat as well. 

But these piggies are probably not coming to market. 

"I very much doubt that this particular pig will ever be imported into the USA,” R. Michael Roberts, an animal sciences professor at the University of Missouri who edited the PNAS paper, told NPR. He also said the pig technology would probably never get FDA approval. Even if it did, Americans would likely be wary of the idea of genetically-altered bacon. 

Nutritionists say "low fat" food is not really all that healthy, anyway. Increasingly, sugar is being touted as the waistline-builder in modern diets, and while the saturated fat content in pork still gets a bad rap, health experts tend to encourage healthy overall eating habits instead of fat restriction.

Chinese scientists may have just successfully proven that they can engineer a skinnier pig than nature, but meat lovers probably won’t be frying up the lean bacon anytime soon.

SEE ALSO: Fat isn't nearly as bad for you as we thought — and another ingredient is likely worse

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NOW WATCH: An exercise scientist reveals the exercise regime that will burn the most fat

When NASA astronaut Scott Kelly stood up last March after spending a year in space, he was two inches taller.

Kelly is part of a study NASA is conducting to assess how the human body changes as a result of space travel, using Scott Kelly and his twin brother Mark Kelly as subjects. While Scott spent 340 days aboard the International Space Station, Mark stayed on Earth, giving NASA the rare opportunity to compare two identical sets of DNA— one that has been exposed to the stressors of space, and one that has not.

Temporary additions in height are just one of many alterations the researchers have documented so far. Scott and Mark have the same genes, but Scott's year in space appears to have strongly affected the way those genes are expressed.

"We can observe the entire human biological system responding to space flight," Christopher Mason, a principal investigator on the NASA Twins study and an associate professor at Weill Cornell Medical College, told Business Insider.

Researchers already knew that taking our bodies for a jaunt outside Earth's protective atmosphere has plenty of effects on the human body, like stretching your spine, shrinking your muscles, and messing up your sleep cycle— but the effects of long-term exposure to space have been less well-known.

The results of the twin study, though preliminary, are already giving scientists a ton to think about.

Mason said they've seen "thousands and thousands of genes change how they are turned on and turned off," almost immediately once an astronaut reaches space. Some of these changes stick around for days or even weeks after astronauts return to Earth.

The new findings about gene expression build on some preliminary results that NASA released in February. Researchers hope to use the full set of data, which could take some time to comb through completely, to better prepare for future deep-space missions.

Here are some of the most interesting results so far:

• Scott's telomeres got longer, then shrunk back to normal. Scott's telomeres, or the caps at the end of chromosomes, became longer than his brother's while he was in space, but quickly returned to their normal length once he returned home."That is exactly the opposite of what we thought,” Susan Bailey, a radiation biologist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, told Nature in Februrary. That's because shorter telomeres are generally associated with getting older. Scientists are still studying what this means, but it could be linked to more exercise and eating fewer calories while in space, according to NASA.
• Scott's genetic expression changed in a bunch of ways. Scott's genes showed both increased and decreased levels of methylation, a process that results in genes getting turned on and off. “Some of the most exciting things that we’ve seen from looking at gene expression in space is that we really see an explosion, like fireworks taking off, as soon as the human body gets into space,” Mason said in a recent statement. According to NASA, this could "indicate genes that are more sensitive to a changing environment whether on Earth or in space."
• The twins hosted different gut bacteria. Researchers noted differences between Scott's and Mark's gut bacteria (essentially the microbes that aid in digestion) throughout the year-long study. This was probably a result of their different diets and environments, NASA said.
• Scientists are looking for what they're calling a "space gene." By sequencing the RNA in the twins' white blood cells, researchers found more than 200,000 RNA molecules that were expressed differently between the brothers. It is normal for twins to have unique mutations in their genome, but scientists are "looking closer to see if a 'space gene' could have been activated while Scott was in space," NASA said.

SEE ALSO: I got my dog’s DNA tested and what I learned shocked me

DON'T MISS: 8 weird things that happen to your body if you live in space for a year

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