A few minutes on Twitter will convince you the human race has been lobotomized and couldn't even find its way home. However, there is still hope since we can always follow a trout because they can always do it and one hell of a lot better than humans.
In the spring when water temperatures start to rise, rainbow trout that have spent several years at sea traveling hundreds of miles from home manage, without maps or GPS, to find their way back to the rivers and streams where they were born for spawning.
In a study published April 26, 2017 in Biology Letters, researchers have identified genes that enable the fish to perform this extraordinary homing feat with help from Earth's magnetic field.
Science Daily: Genes that help trout find their way home
Let's see you do that, Paul Bunyan.
Scientists have identified genes that enable rainbow trout to use Earth’s magnetic field to find their way back to the streams where they were born.
Credit: Photo by Eric Engbretson, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
I believe there was some acceptance that magnetism had to be how they do it but the beauty part in this one is location of the genes which help them do it.
Note: that is one of the options we offer at Weyland-Yutani in our line of cyborgs and you may want to order that the chip we can implant in your brain for the SHP (i.e. Super Human Package). You won't believe the powers of navigation you acquire when, in effect, you become a human compass but only as a sub-function similar to the way we sometimes 'listen closely for something.'
Ref: "Aliens" as the company bankrolling capturing one of the aliens was Weyland-Yutani.
To work out the genetic basis, Duke University postdoctoral associate Bob Fitak and biology professor Sönke Johnsen and colleagues investigated changes in gene expression that take place across the rainbow trout genome when the animal's magnetic sense is disrupted.
In a basement aquarium on the Duke campus, they randomly scooped up one fish at a time from a tank into a small holding container, and placed the container inside a coil of wire. The coil was connected to a capacitor, which discharged an electric current to create a split-second magnetic pulse inside the coil, about 10 times weaker than the magnetic field generated by an MRI machine in a hospital.
- SD
Are you picking up the full vibe of the mad scientists playing with electricity in the basement. We're diggin' this.
Next the researchers sequenced all the gene readouts, or RNA transcripts, present in the brains of 10 treated fish and 10 controls to find out which genes were switched on and off in response to the magnetic pulse.
Disrupting the fish's internal compass with the magnetic pulse triggered changes in 181 out of the roughly 40,000 genes they examined.
Notably, the brains of treated fish showed increased expression of genes involved in making ferritin, a protein that stores and transports iron inside cells. Treated fish also showed changes in genes involved in the development of the optic nerve.
- SD
How are you liking the science so far since the Rockhouse thinks these are some great moves.
"The results suggest that the detection system is based on iron that may be connected with or inside the eyes," Johnsen said.
The findings are consistent with the idea, first proposed nearly 40 years ago, that animals have tiny magnetic particles of an iron-containing compound called magnetite in their bodies. The magnetite particles are thought to act like microscopic compass needles, relaying information to the nervous system by straining or twisting receptors in cells as they attempt to align with the Earth's magnetic field.
- SD
The interested student is invited to pursue further via the link to the article. Here at the Rockhouse, we're seeing confirmation of the thinking regarding magnetism insofar as they see how these magnetic 'devices' originate but there are still more genes to be discovered for how the fish uses them.
Salmon Sam can find his way back, in effect, to his own doorstep and that's more precise navigation than I have ever seen possible from a compass alone.
You bet they will keep chasing this one since as soon as they discover how salmon do it they will be able to make robos do it too.
Wayland-Yutani: we make those, by the way
In the spring when water temperatures start to rise, rainbow trout that have spent several years at sea traveling hundreds of miles from home manage, without maps or GPS, to find their way back to the rivers and streams where they were born for spawning.
In a study published April 26, 2017 in Biology Letters, researchers have identified genes that enable the fish to perform this extraordinary homing feat with help from Earth's magnetic field.
Science Daily: Genes that help trout find their way home
Let's see you do that, Paul Bunyan.
Scientists have identified genes that enable rainbow trout to use Earth’s magnetic field to find their way back to the streams where they were born.
Credit: Photo by Eric Engbretson, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
I believe there was some acceptance that magnetism had to be how they do it but the beauty part in this one is location of the genes which help them do it.
Note: that is one of the options we offer at Weyland-Yutani in our line of cyborgs and you may want to order that the chip we can implant in your brain for the SHP (i.e. Super Human Package). You won't believe the powers of navigation you acquire when, in effect, you become a human compass but only as a sub-function similar to the way we sometimes 'listen closely for something.'
Ref: "Aliens" as the company bankrolling capturing one of the aliens was Weyland-Yutani.
To work out the genetic basis, Duke University postdoctoral associate Bob Fitak and biology professor Sönke Johnsen and colleagues investigated changes in gene expression that take place across the rainbow trout genome when the animal's magnetic sense is disrupted.
In a basement aquarium on the Duke campus, they randomly scooped up one fish at a time from a tank into a small holding container, and placed the container inside a coil of wire. The coil was connected to a capacitor, which discharged an electric current to create a split-second magnetic pulse inside the coil, about 10 times weaker than the magnetic field generated by an MRI machine in a hospital.
- SD
Are you picking up the full vibe of the mad scientists playing with electricity in the basement. We're diggin' this.
Next the researchers sequenced all the gene readouts, or RNA transcripts, present in the brains of 10 treated fish and 10 controls to find out which genes were switched on and off in response to the magnetic pulse.
Disrupting the fish's internal compass with the magnetic pulse triggered changes in 181 out of the roughly 40,000 genes they examined.
Notably, the brains of treated fish showed increased expression of genes involved in making ferritin, a protein that stores and transports iron inside cells. Treated fish also showed changes in genes involved in the development of the optic nerve.
- SD
How are you liking the science so far since the Rockhouse thinks these are some great moves.
"The results suggest that the detection system is based on iron that may be connected with or inside the eyes," Johnsen said.
The findings are consistent with the idea, first proposed nearly 40 years ago, that animals have tiny magnetic particles of an iron-containing compound called magnetite in their bodies. The magnetite particles are thought to act like microscopic compass needles, relaying information to the nervous system by straining or twisting receptors in cells as they attempt to align with the Earth's magnetic field.
- SD
The interested student is invited to pursue further via the link to the article. Here at the Rockhouse, we're seeing confirmation of the thinking regarding magnetism insofar as they see how these magnetic 'devices' originate but there are still more genes to be discovered for how the fish uses them.
Salmon Sam can find his way back, in effect, to his own doorstep and that's more precise navigation than I have ever seen possible from a compass alone.
You bet they will keep chasing this one since as soon as they discover how salmon do it they will be able to make robos do it too.
Wayland-Yutani: we make those, by the way
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