The genes of this fish, sometimes called a living fossil, reveal much about the origins of tetrapods, the evolutionary line that gave rise to amphibians, birds and mammals
By Chris Woolston and Nature magazine
The African coelacanth is a close relative of the first fishes to venture onto land.Image: Flickr/Tetsushi Tsunemi
The South African fisherman who pulled a prehistoric-looking blue creature out of his net in 1938 had unwittingly snagged one of the zoological finds of the century: a 1.5-meter-long coelacanth, a type of fish that had been thought to have become extinct 70 million years earlier.
Since then, scientists have identified two species of coelacanth, one African and one Indonesian. With their fleshy, lobed fins ? complete with bones and joints ? and round, paddle-like tails, they look strikingly similar to the coelacanths that lived during the Cretaceous period, when dinosaurs still roamed Earth.
Now, an international team of scientists has sequenced and analyzed the genome of the African coelacanth, Latimeria chalumnae; the findings are reported on page 311.
Like lungfish, the other surviving lineage of lobe-finned fishes, coelacanths are actually more closely related to humans and other mammals than to ray-finned fishes such as tuna and trout. Ancient lobe fins were the first vertebrates to brave the land, and the coelacanth genome is expected to reveal much about the origins of tetrapods, the evolutionary line that gave rise to amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, says lead author Chris Amemiya, a biologist at the University of Washington in Seattle. ?The coelacanth is a cornerstone for our attempt to understand tetrapod evolution,? he says.
Ending one long-standing argument, analysis of the coelacanth genome clearly shows that it is not the closest living fishy relative to tetrapods, Amemiya says: that honor belongs to the lungfish. However, he adds, the lungfish genome is unlikely to be sequenced any time soon because it is much larger and more complicated than that of the coelacanth.
Although coelacanths are often called ?living fossils?, these fish haven?t really been frozen in time, says co-author Kerstin Lindblad-Toh, a comparative genomicist at Uppsala University in Sweden. Comparison of protein-coding genes in coelacanths with those of cartilaginous fishes shows that the coelacanths have been steadily accruing DNA changes.
But the rate of change has been remarkably slow. The latest analysis shows that the genes of modern coelacanths can themselves be considered living fossils, says James Noonan, a geneticist at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
Scientists already had hints of the coelacanth?s sluggish evolution. In a 2012 study, researchers in Japan and Tanzania compared the DNA of the African and Indonesian coelacanths. Specifically, they looked at HOX genes, which help to guide embryonic development (K.?Higasa et al. Gene 505, 324?332; 2012). Even though the two species separated, by one estimate, perhaps 6?million years ago, their genes are remarkably similar. For these particular genes, the difference between the two species of coelacanth was about 11 times smaller than that between the HOX genes of humans and chimps, two species that parted ways perhaps 6?million to 8?million years ago.
Slow to change It is impossible to say for sure, but the slow rate of coelacanth evolution could be due to a lack of natural-selection pressure, Lindblad-Toh says. Modern coelacanths, like their ancestors, ?live far down in the ocean, where life is pretty stable?, she says. ?We can hypothesize that there has been very little reason to change.? And it is possible that the slow genetic change explains why the fish show such a striking resemblance to their fossilized ancestors.
The analysis showed that not all parts of the coelacanth genome are slow to evolve. The genome has a large number of transposable elements ? non-coding parts of the genome that have an important role in gene regulation ? that have been moving around in the genome at a relatively rapid pace. Non-coding DNA could be a significant source of evolutionary change, Lindblad-Toh says. But Amemiya adds that, for now, the role of non-coding DNA in speciation is ?speculative?, and its significance in coelacanth evolution is not clear.
BEIJING (AP) ? After China reported quarterly economic growth of 7.7 percent this week ? far above anemic U.S. and European performance ? global markets reacted by falling, wiping billions of dollars off stock prices.
The reason? Growth came in under the 8 percent expected by private sector forecasters who relied on Chinese trade and other data.
The market plunge highlighted complaints about the possible inaccuracy of Beijing's official data and the intense, possibly excessive importance traders attach to a handful of Chinese economic indicators.
What matters more than a difference of a few tenths of a percentage point in growth from quarter to quarter is whether Chinese leaders are allowing the private sector to flourish by reducing the role of state industry in the economy, said Ben Simpfendorfer, managing director of Silk Road Associates, a consulting firm in Hong Kong.
"There is an obsession with these GDP numbers, and what really matters at this point is reform," said Simpfendorfer, a former Royal Bank of Scotland economist.
China is watched especially closely because it is a major market for foreign goods from iron ore to smartphones and is relatively healthy, fueling hopes Chinese demand can help offset weakness in the U.S., Europe and Japan.
Confusion about how fast China is growing can hamper foreign and private companies in industries from construction to chemicals to consumer goods as they make plans for business and investment.
Beijing's problems in keeping track of its economy stem in part from the fact that while it is surpassed only by the United States in size, China is growing and changing much faster than any rich country.
An understaffed bureaucracy inherited from the era of central planning is struggling to keep up with changes in trade, finance, manufacturing and city growth. Chinese companies have an incentive to avoid taxes or boost export rebates by misreporting sales and profits. Secrecy surrounding the collection and processing of official statistics leaves open the possibility they might be altered for political reasons.
Foreign and private companies look at government data with skepticism. Many rely on watching their own industries and markets more closely. The government still is the only source for most nationwide data, but a growing number of banks and research firms are developing their own based on surveys of companies and consumers.
"I think everyone doing business in China is skeptical of the data," said analyst Alistair Thornton of IHS Global Insight.
Thornton said three of China's most closely watched yardsticks are rife with potential problems ? exports, real estate sales and credit.
Export data have gotten the most attention lately after some analysts suggested companies might be inflating values on customs declarations. That might be intended to let them evade currency controls and move money into China. Reporting rising prices while exporting the same amount of goods might give a false impression of higher production.
The customs agency defended itself this month, saying its reports were based on goods that really were exported. However, that would not prevent exporters from submitting inflated values for them.
March exports were "substantially lower than reported numbers," which might have helped lead to the discrepancy between GDP forecasts and the government report, said RBS economists Louis Kuijs and Tiffany Qiu in a report.
Monday's unexpected decline in reported growth from 7.9 percent in the final quarter of 2012 was severe enough that economists responded by cutting their growth outlook for China this year.
JP Morgan economist Hongbin Qu scaled back his forecast from 8.2 percent to a still-healthy 7.8 percent, while Kuijs and Qiu at RBS reduced theirs from 8.4 percent to 7.8 percent.
Data showing rising bank loans and other credit, another key indicator, also might be inflated, according to Thornton. He said official figures might mistakenly count the same money two, three or more times as credit is extended from one company to another and then to a third.
Government figures on home sales also might give a false picture of the strength of the housing market because they rely on seller-reported prices without independent measurement.
Chinese economic growth figures are, like those of other countries, estimates that are often revised later.
Unlike other countries, though, China's revisions can be huge. In 2009, Beijing raised its official 2007 growth rate from an already eye-popping 11.9 percent to 13 percent. That suggested its earlier estimate failed to take account of tens of billions of dollars in economic activity.
Economists also note that even where Chinese data are reliable, they can be pumped up by investment or government spending that might do little for long-term prosperity.
Chinese leaders are trying to nurture more self-sustaining growth based on domestic consumption rather than exports and investment. That will drag down the overall growth rate in the short run.
The World Bank and other advisers have warned that to keep growth strong, Beijing needs to curb the dominance of state industry and encourage free-market competition ? a factor that isn't reflected in the headline numbers.
On Monday, China's surprise growth hiccup triggered selling in Western and Asian stock markets. The Dow ended at 14,648, a drop of 1.4 percent and the Standard & Poor's 500 slumped 1.9 percent to 1,559.
Thornton noted that last week, global stocks rose after China's report of stronger March trade, even though analysts said the data probably were inaccurate and exports weaker than they appeared.
"We all know markets are not particularly rational and overshoot or undershoot and wipe billions of dollars off market cap off indices over what we think is a misreading of various data points," he said.
Premie?r Khoso replac?es Sindh Chief Secret?ary Raja Abbas with Chaudh?ry Ijaz.
PM Khoso appoints Dr Chaudhry hours before a Pakistani team was scheduled to leave for the United States to attend IMF-World Bank spring meetings. PHOTO: AFP/ FILE
ISLAMABAD:?
Caretaker Prime Minister Mir Hazar Khan Khoso has brought Dr Waqar Masood ? the man who negotiated the last International Monetary Fund programme ? back into the finance ministry as finance secretary. An economics professor, Dr Shahid Amjad Chaudhry, was appointed as the premier?s adviser on finance.
The development came hours before a Pakistani team was scheduled to leave for the United States to attend IMF-World Bank spring meetings. Now, Dr Chaudhry will lead the delegation. Dr Masood, State Bank Governor Yaseen Anwar and the Economic Affairs Division secretary will accompany him. Dr Masood has replaced Nasir Khoso, who has been appointed as textiles secretary.
On the sidelines, the Pakistani team plans to hold talks with the IMF for a second bailout programme in five years. According to a finance ministry official, if both sides make some progress an IMF team will visit the country soon.
Analysts said Pakistan?s intention to seek a bailout programme is linked to the fast depleting foreign currency reserves due to payments made to the IMF. Jarringly, the reserves have depleted to $6.7 billion, including $2.3 billion that have already been pledged in forward contracts for imports. The current level of reserves, excluding forward contracts, can only supplement a one-month import bill which surged to $4.4 billion last month.
Previously, Dr Masood had held talks with the IMF for the $11.3 billion bailout programme signed in October 2008, for 25 months. However, it terminated prematurely, due to the inability of economic managers to implement taxation and energy reforms.
Also on Monday, Premier Khoso replaced Sindh Chief Secretary Raja Abbas with Chaudhry Ijaz, Secretary, National Harmony Ministry. According to an official statement, Abbas has been posted as secretary Board of Investment, a role that was previously being fulfilled by Ijaz.
Khoso has also approved the transfer of some other federal secretaries. Secretary Information Taimur Azmat Usman has been appointed secretary, ministry of food security. Usman replaced Ahmed Baksh Lehri, who now will serve as establishment secretary.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 16th, 2013.
Science magazine prize goes to undergrad course that incorporates faculty researchPublic release date: 28-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Natasha Pinol npinol@aaas.org 202-326-6440 American Association for the Advancement of Science
Format has been shown to boost engagement in science and enthusiasm for experimentation
A Stanford biology class that involves undergraduates in their instructors' research and has been shown to engage students much more effectively than standard lab classes has been awarded the Science Prize for Inquiry-Based Instruction (IBI).
"Teaching and research don't have to be either-or," says the Stanford assistant professor of biology Tadashi Fukami, who teaches the class. "Even if faculty professors are expected to be doing research and are really busy with that, they can do inquiry-based teaching combined with research in the area of science that they are good at. That can be a great combination."
Science's IBI Prize was developed to showcase outstanding materials, usable in a wide range of schools and settings, for teaching introductory science courses at the college level. The materials must be designed to encourage students' natural curiosity about how the world works, rather than to deliver facts and principles about what scientists have already discovered. Organized as one free-standing "module," the materials should offer real understanding of the nature of science, as well as providing an experience in generating and evaluating scientific evidence. Each month, Science publishes an essay by a recipient of the award, which explains the winning project. The essay about Stanford's inquiry-based Biology 44Y class will be published on March 29.
"We want to recognize innovators in science education, as well as the institutions that support them," says Bruce Alberts, editor-in-chief of Science. "At the same time, this competition will promote those inquiry-based laboratory modules with the most potential to benefit science students and teachers. The publication of an essay in Science on each winning module will encourage more college teachers to use these outstanding resources, thereby promoting science literacy."
Fukami was exposed to conventional "cookbook" labs, where students re-create experiments with known outcomes, in high school and college in Japan and was unimpressed. Luckily, he had a high school biology teacher who thought it was important for students to know the natural history of where they live. The teacher devoted a part of each class to teaching his students about the plants and wildlife in the environment around the school. Fukami, who grew up just outside of Tokyo but had loved exploring nature at his grandparents' house in the country, felt his childhood curiosity reinvigorated.
"That reminded me of how much I liked being outside and catching insects when I was little," he says.
Hired at Stanford in 2008, Fukami was intrigued by the idea of combining teaching and research so that they could be mutually beneficial, a concept advocated by Stanford's Center for Teaching and Learning staff. Meanwhile, Stanford's biology department had begun an effort to bring inquiry-based instructionthat is, curriculum involving real researchto its undergraduate classes. During that process, a survey of recent graduates showed that the cookbook-style lab classes were the department's least popular classes.
"The classes were about following the manual, not creative or inspiring," Fukami says.
Fukami and his colleagues initiated an inquiry-based class in which students could design their own experiments based on Fukami's area of researchin this case, the ecological interactions between a species of flowering plant, hummingbirds and insect pollinators, and the microorganisms that inhabit the floral nectar of the plants and "hitchhike" from flower to flower on the pollinators. Interestingly, the biology department continued the traditional lab exercise classes for two years, as the new class was implemented.
Having the two types of classes running concurrently allowed researchers to compare the students in the two groups. They found that the students who engaged in authentic research were more comfortable making hypotheses, analyzing data and presenting results. The researchers also noted that the students in the new class were more interested in continuing basic science research, according to a paper that was published in the Journal of College Science Teaching.
Also extremely important, the students were learning how scientific research really works.
"The students come to realize that science is a trial-and-error process," says Fukami, "that it's okay to have failure. They just have to keep working with the data and reformulate their questions."
Such an understanding of the scientific process, Fukami says, is crucial to all students, not only those who will continue in biology. Many environmental, agricultural and medical issues facing every citizen, he says, require that understanding of how science works.
Toward the end of the class involving authentic research, Fukami says, the students were apt to engage in animated discussion, sometimes hashing out differences in the results they had gotten. "This gets them thinking about science as collaborative," Fukami says. "Often you get better results if you critique each other."
Almost incidental to the overarching goal of allowing students to conduct real research and "feel" how science works, many of the student-designed experiments have yielded actual discoveries. For example, the students collected data on the relationship between nectar pH and microbial abundance, and those data were used in peer-reviewed papers and credited to the students, an accomplishment that Science Associate Editor Melissa McCartney credits to the authentic, hands-on nature of the class.
"The best way to learn is by doing," says McCartney. "In this educational module, students are participating in experiments at the leading edge of the field and making real contributions to relevant and open-ended questions."
As a recipient of the IBI prize, Fukami hopes that other university researchers will read his essay in Science and adopt similar approaches to their teaching. "You don't have to sacrifice the quality of your instruction because of your research. You can combine the two," he says. "My experience leaves me optimistic that inquiry-based instruction can become widespread through integration of teaching with faculty research programs."
###
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the world's largest general scientific society, and publisher of the journal, Science (http://www.sciencemag.org) as well as Science Translational Medicine (http://www.sciencetranslationalmedicine.org) and Science Signaling (http://www.sciencesignaling.org). AAAS was founded in 1848, and includes some 261 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals. Science has the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general science journal in the world, with an estimated total readership of 1 million. The non-profit AAAS (http://www.aaas.org) is open to all and fulfills its mission to "advance science and serve society" through initiatives in science policy; international programs; science education; and more. For the latest research news, log onto EurekAlert!, http://www.eurekalert.org, the premier science-news Web site, a service of AAAS.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Science magazine prize goes to undergrad course that incorporates faculty researchPublic release date: 28-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Natasha Pinol npinol@aaas.org 202-326-6440 American Association for the Advancement of Science
Format has been shown to boost engagement in science and enthusiasm for experimentation
A Stanford biology class that involves undergraduates in their instructors' research and has been shown to engage students much more effectively than standard lab classes has been awarded the Science Prize for Inquiry-Based Instruction (IBI).
"Teaching and research don't have to be either-or," says the Stanford assistant professor of biology Tadashi Fukami, who teaches the class. "Even if faculty professors are expected to be doing research and are really busy with that, they can do inquiry-based teaching combined with research in the area of science that they are good at. That can be a great combination."
Science's IBI Prize was developed to showcase outstanding materials, usable in a wide range of schools and settings, for teaching introductory science courses at the college level. The materials must be designed to encourage students' natural curiosity about how the world works, rather than to deliver facts and principles about what scientists have already discovered. Organized as one free-standing "module," the materials should offer real understanding of the nature of science, as well as providing an experience in generating and evaluating scientific evidence. Each month, Science publishes an essay by a recipient of the award, which explains the winning project. The essay about Stanford's inquiry-based Biology 44Y class will be published on March 29.
"We want to recognize innovators in science education, as well as the institutions that support them," says Bruce Alberts, editor-in-chief of Science. "At the same time, this competition will promote those inquiry-based laboratory modules with the most potential to benefit science students and teachers. The publication of an essay in Science on each winning module will encourage more college teachers to use these outstanding resources, thereby promoting science literacy."
Fukami was exposed to conventional "cookbook" labs, where students re-create experiments with known outcomes, in high school and college in Japan and was unimpressed. Luckily, he had a high school biology teacher who thought it was important for students to know the natural history of where they live. The teacher devoted a part of each class to teaching his students about the plants and wildlife in the environment around the school. Fukami, who grew up just outside of Tokyo but had loved exploring nature at his grandparents' house in the country, felt his childhood curiosity reinvigorated.
"That reminded me of how much I liked being outside and catching insects when I was little," he says.
Hired at Stanford in 2008, Fukami was intrigued by the idea of combining teaching and research so that they could be mutually beneficial, a concept advocated by Stanford's Center for Teaching and Learning staff. Meanwhile, Stanford's biology department had begun an effort to bring inquiry-based instructionthat is, curriculum involving real researchto its undergraduate classes. During that process, a survey of recent graduates showed that the cookbook-style lab classes were the department's least popular classes.
"The classes were about following the manual, not creative or inspiring," Fukami says.
Fukami and his colleagues initiated an inquiry-based class in which students could design their own experiments based on Fukami's area of researchin this case, the ecological interactions between a species of flowering plant, hummingbirds and insect pollinators, and the microorganisms that inhabit the floral nectar of the plants and "hitchhike" from flower to flower on the pollinators. Interestingly, the biology department continued the traditional lab exercise classes for two years, as the new class was implemented.
Having the two types of classes running concurrently allowed researchers to compare the students in the two groups. They found that the students who engaged in authentic research were more comfortable making hypotheses, analyzing data and presenting results. The researchers also noted that the students in the new class were more interested in continuing basic science research, according to a paper that was published in the Journal of College Science Teaching.
Also extremely important, the students were learning how scientific research really works.
"The students come to realize that science is a trial-and-error process," says Fukami, "that it's okay to have failure. They just have to keep working with the data and reformulate their questions."
Such an understanding of the scientific process, Fukami says, is crucial to all students, not only those who will continue in biology. Many environmental, agricultural and medical issues facing every citizen, he says, require that understanding of how science works.
Toward the end of the class involving authentic research, Fukami says, the students were apt to engage in animated discussion, sometimes hashing out differences in the results they had gotten. "This gets them thinking about science as collaborative," Fukami says. "Often you get better results if you critique each other."
Almost incidental to the overarching goal of allowing students to conduct real research and "feel" how science works, many of the student-designed experiments have yielded actual discoveries. For example, the students collected data on the relationship between nectar pH and microbial abundance, and those data were used in peer-reviewed papers and credited to the students, an accomplishment that Science Associate Editor Melissa McCartney credits to the authentic, hands-on nature of the class.
"The best way to learn is by doing," says McCartney. "In this educational module, students are participating in experiments at the leading edge of the field and making real contributions to relevant and open-ended questions."
As a recipient of the IBI prize, Fukami hopes that other university researchers will read his essay in Science and adopt similar approaches to their teaching. "You don't have to sacrifice the quality of your instruction because of your research. You can combine the two," he says. "My experience leaves me optimistic that inquiry-based instruction can become widespread through integration of teaching with faculty research programs."
###
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the world's largest general scientific society, and publisher of the journal, Science (http://www.sciencemag.org) as well as Science Translational Medicine (http://www.sciencetranslationalmedicine.org) and Science Signaling (http://www.sciencesignaling.org). AAAS was founded in 1848, and includes some 261 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals. Science has the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general science journal in the world, with an estimated total readership of 1 million. The non-profit AAAS (http://www.aaas.org) is open to all and fulfills its mission to "advance science and serve society" through initiatives in science policy; international programs; science education; and more. For the latest research news, log onto EurekAlert!, http://www.eurekalert.org, the premier science-news Web site, a service of AAAS.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
I haven?t been watching NFL Network today.? (I know, I know.? I?m better than that.)
But others have, and a tweet from Greg Bedard of the Boston Globe intrigued me.? Bedard heard some background noise during a segment featuring Scott Hansen and former Chiefs G.M. Scott Pioli, regarding the Patriots? draft plans.
So I dialed up NFLN, and hit the rewind button.
When the segment starts, it sounds like Pioli?s microphone was off.? But someone else?s was on, off camera.? (Bedard thinks it was Warren Sapp.)
?No, no, no.? It?s the same f?king [inaudible] we had Mike Lombardi do,? the person can be heard whispering, while Pioli is talking.? ?The f?king Bill Belichick f?king angle.?
Technical problems happen when doing live TV.? But when wearing a microphone that could be hot when the show is live, the best approach is to say nothing.
At a minimum, the best approach is not to drop a stream of ?F? bombs.
Besides, people care about ?the f?king Bill Belichick f?king angle.?? Last time we checked, ?the f?king Bill Belichick f?king angle? was building a team that contends for championships, every year.
At least we now have a new way to refer to any stories about the Patriots.
UPDATE 8:00 p.m. ET:? And, of course, the sound already is on YouTube.
Are you good at Twitter? Do you know how to book that face? Perhaps even post more pictures than just food and cats on Instagram? Well, if you're a quick talker and a proud minute man or woman, Pizza Hut would like to interview you for 140 seconds about its Social Media Manager job. More »
Border fences are really tall so it's not like you can just throw your packages of marijuana over them. No, you'd need something like a weed-apult or, better yet, a weed cannon to heave them over the wall. More »
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