Link of the day- Red Clover and Images of Outerspace

Hi. Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful.

First link-of-the-day today is this article on "The Garden Lady"'s blog on the Red Clover- I can't endorse any of the author's comments about the plant's medicinal benefits since I know nothing about the scientific research on this (or even if there have been any studies of its pharmacology), but it's an interesting article none-the-less-

http://www.thegardenlady.org/2010/02/15/red-clover-pink-purifier/

Today's second link is this "dazzling" gallery of images of outerspace released by NASA and other agencies, such as the European Space Agency- they include images of Asteroids, the Sun, Cassiopea and the surface of Mars.

http://news.uk.msn.com/photos/photo-galleries.aspx?cp-documentid=154300290

Third link-of-the-day is to this article in the International Herald Tribune about the activities of the oil-slick degrading bacterium Alcinovorax borkumensis (Alkinovorax- roughly translates as alkane- eater) in digesting the giant oil slick off the coast of Mexico-

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/science/earth/05microbe.html?ref=science

I wrote on this blog back in May that this would be the most likely end result of the spill and that the clean-up process could be speeded up by introducing this bacterium to the water (it exists in very low concentrations in sea water naturally)- you can find the link to that here-
http://victorianeblik.blogspot.com/2010/05/horseshoe-crabs-and-oil-spill-in-gulf.html
so now, at last, it seems to be happening.

Actually, I got the idea for that (no doubt scores of other microbiologists were thinking exactly the same thing, privately) by reading a great research paper by Susan Schneiker and colleagues some time ago. The paper- published in volume 24 (issue 8) of the journal "Nature Biotechnology"- described the sequencing of this amazing bacterium's genome and -essentially- went some way towards explaining some of its remarkable metabolic abilities. For what it is worth, there is a brief summary of the paper here-
http://ezinearticles.com/?Bees-and-Bacteria&id=2883002

Horseshoe crabs and the Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico

Hi. Welcome to Weirdbeautiful.
Image of the week this week is this picture of Horseshoe crabs that I took during my recent trip to London Aquarium.


Limulus polyphemus Image by V. Neblik, 2010. (Copyright V. Neblik, 2010, all rights reserved)with thanks to London Aquarium.

These creatures- more closely related to spiders than crabs have a number of weird attributes- not least their blood, which is literally blue and spider-like "book-lungs". The reason for their blue blood is that, like the blood of molluscs and some arthropods- it contains a copper-based compound- haemocyanin- which transports oxygen and carbon dioxide, rather than haemoglobin, which fulfils the same function in human blood (and which gives our blood its characteristic red colouration). More information on this particular species-Limulus polyphemus- can be found here- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limulus_polyphemus )

I am probably one of only a small number of individuals to own one of these creatures, having been given the body of one some years ago by a Canadian icthyologist friend. It is a fascinating, if slightly grisly, gift. My friend had found it dead on the seashore many years prior to that, yet, the creature is in pristine condition despite never having been preserved. I find this surprising - insects keep very well without preservation, but the body of the horseshoe crab is fairly fleshy, underneath its exoskeleton, so it is interesting (to me, at least) that it remains so well intact.

Science Update.
The big science news this week also has a marine theme- it is the story of the enormous oil-spill in the gulf-of Mexico. The best article I have seen on this in the last few days is this one-
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20100504/sc_livescience/hurricaneseasoncouldhaltoilspillcleanup

One possible solution to the problem, which, oddly, has received no coverage so far, would seem to be that of seeding the spill with large quantities of the oil-slick-eating bacterium A. borkumensis. You can find out more information on this wonderful marine germ here- http://ezinearticles.com/?Bees-and-Bacteria&id=2883002 - this is an older article (the relevant section is towards the end of the article).