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Bacteria Encrypts Sperm, Encourages Speciation
Loiosh writes "EurekaAlert has an interesting short report concerning sperm.
Scientists have found the most convincing evidence yet that a parasite can contribute to splitting a species in two, thanks to a phenomenon where a wasp's damaged sperm can be "rescued" or fixed only by mating with particular females. A bacterium called Wolbachia prevents the successful development of embryos in matings between two very closely related wasp species that could otherwise produce viable offspring. Instead of merely helping its host compete against non-infected hosts as many parasites do, Wolbachia actively seeks to eliminate non-infected hosts by stopping them from reproducing. To do this, the parasite alters the sperm of its male host, rendering it infertile when paired with an uninfected female. If, however, the male mates with an infected female, the damaged reproductive cells are "rescued" by the female's parasite. It's as if the bacterium encodes the sperm cell, rendering it useless unless it encounters the de-coding bacterium from another infected wasp. The result is that infected males can only impregnate other infected females, not uninfected ones, and makes it difficult for uninfected females to find a compatible mate."
So does this mean that the US government is going to attempt to put restrictions/bans on the export of certain bacteria out of the country? Screen anyone leaving the US to make sure that they are not carrying this dangerous form of encryption within their bodies?
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Wow, this sounds like something that those wonderful people who develop biological weapons would love to get their hands on. Especially those with racial issues. Then they could ensure that the gene pool of their culture remains "pure" from adulteration by "lesser" beings...
Seriously though, this sounds like it has all kinds of ethical implications in the wrong hands. If someone thinks that a certain group shouldn't be allowed to spread their genes throughout a population, then a variation on this which lives in human hosts could ensure that if said group is infected then they can never breed outside of that group again. I can think of several groups that would probably love to get their hands on this kind of capability.
It just goes to show that Nature is still millions of years ahead of our best weapons developers when it comes to nasty techniques...
I'd like this explaned in terms of Alice, Bob and Eve.
I figure which ever way you look at it, Bob's going to be a pretty lucky guy.
But if I were Alice I wouldn't stand for this kind of philandering.
Just imagine what the RIAA and MPAA could do with this idea. Hope they don't read /....
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I generally find myself getting strange looks when I talk about things like this. But I think this is just awesome. It continues to amaze me how much scientific knowledge we are gaining all the time. I mean, who would even think of running an experiment on this.
It is kinda weird to think about what implications this might have though. If this sort of thing would really cause an offshoot of a species, maybe we as humanity were caused by some diseased apes.
This is sort of an encryption thing I guess. I mean the bacteria could itself wait until a properly infected host mates and then deposit its own bacteria into the fertilized embryo that would carry the bacteria to future generations there by causing a mutated species to occur. But if this species is succesful and surpass the original species would it be considered evolution? or maybe just one of those freak occurences that just happens?
It is good to hear about these sort of weird happenings and other cool things at Slashdot. Keep it up people I would hate to actually have to put a TV card in my computer to watch tv. Cant do both, tv is behind computer, although I could set up 2 mirrors to display the tv output on the wall above the computer monitor thereby not having to put a card in the computer. huh?? ok its too late and I need sleep. Later All
Lord Arathres
stainless steel
If these trials are successful, the government plan to infect the rest of the UK population with different strains of the bacteria. They intend to prevent the demise of the well established class system by only allowing subjects to mate within their own social group. It is hoped that by recreating the strict class system that existed in the times of The Empire, the UK may once again become a major world power.
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--
Donald "Don Juan" Kerr
Great news... Now I can say that I'm promoting the evolution of the species by not having that nasty rash down there treated.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
Oh great, encrypted sperm - does this mean we'll now all need a munitions licence to carry gonads across national borders?
Gives a whole new meaning to "playing with your weapon"...
-- Hi, I'm a
This reminds me of an old MSDOS virus that modified your FAT disks such that only computers infected with the virus could read the disks! So people with infected computers would reach the conclusion that there was something wrong with the un-infected PCs. Then they might offer their boot disk to the owners of un-infected PCs - "Try this... If it works, there's something wrong with your DOS disk"... And the whole cycle repeats :-)
Do you remember what this virus was called? Perhaps there were many that used this strategy.
YES! That's what the DVD-CCA/SDMI/CPRM proponents are! BACTERIA!
Wolbachia actively seeks to eliminate non-infected hosts by stopping them from reproducing.
Substitute "Microsoft" for "Wolbachia" and "Windows" for "infected" and suddenly the PC market begins to make sense...
heh.
-the wunderhorn
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
The result is that the stuck on men, who are set from box only with other stuck on women, not not.
This is the single funniest line I have see on Slashdot in the past six months.
--
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
Distributed.net released today the Beta version of its newest distributed code-cracking project. Code-name Get Lucky, it will help millions of men whose sperm has been encrypted by malicious bacteria. "This is a very important project" the team leader said Thursday, "this isn't just cracking encryption to see if we can do it. THis is a race against time." Apparently the winning team will split a $50 million reward, reportedly sponsored by anonymous sources.
I wonder what the vector for the bacterial infection is in the first place. It certainly isn't sex - otherwise the mating of an infected individual with an uninfected would infect the latter.
In a sense, it is sort of fitting, seeing as there are a number of wasp species that reproduce by laying their eggs in other animals (spiders, larvae, etc... depending on the species of wasp). Now there is a species of wasp that is itself a host to a parasite that modifies its reproductive behavior.
If you can't beat them, embrace and extend them.
Did you read the article?
Here's a relevant quote:
Instead of merely helping its host compete against non-infected hosts as many parasites do, Wolbachia actively seeks to eliminate non-infected hosts by stopping them from reproducing.
This suggests that it is relatively common for parasites to _help_ their hosts in some way, thereby securing the parasite's survival.
So how do you make the leap of logic that the wasps without the parasite will prevail?
Not representing or approved by my company or anybody else.
Or, yo express it even better, your view of the evolution is a little too naive.
First, nobody is out there "judging" creatures to see if they pass some kind of evolutive finals.
There are probably uncountable instances of parasitic relations where the existence or absence of the parasite has absolutely no influence in the creature survival capacity.
In this particular case, the bacteria probably installed itself by sexual transmission and probably gave some benefits to the host. Some hosts would not be afected. From there on the host population would be forever separated, even before any other speciation occurrred.
I will refrain from commenting on your last paragraph. But be careful with this line of reasoning. You are on the very edge of racism there.
...I can imagine Richard Simmons taking full advantage of this.
"Oh! Oh! Oh Mr. Guaaaaaard sir!! My sperm is enryyyypted! If you'll give me a cavety search I'll give you a saaaaaaample!"
But when you think about it, this sort of thing would make sense. If you based your encryption on some random individual's or animals or even plants DNA sequence, wouldn't that be much more complex than even the most hard core encoding we can use now? Of course, I have a hard time with anything more complex than pig Latin.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
Does this strike anyone as a really interesting form of birth control? Step one: man infects self with bacterium, becomes infertile with uninfected women. Step two: man dates uninfected women without fear of offspring. Step three: man finds woman he really really likes, they form a reasonably permanent relationship. Step four: couple decides they want children. Step five: woman infects self with bacterium. Step six: procreation.
Only problem is it only works for one generation, assuming the infection is passed from mother to child. But if it isn't, or if a woman can be "cured", then it could be really cool....
Pound! Bang! Bin! Bash! is this a shell script or a Batman comic?
I'm a computer geek who works in public health so I've been following the Wolbachia story for some time.
"Splitting a species in two is probably just a side effect of the bacteria's reproductive method, of their way of eliminating non-infected hosts."
Note that infected females can still breed with uninfected males, so the bacterium's "strategy" is to eliminate uninfected offspring. If speciation per se was beneficial to its strategy you'd expect infected females to be unable to breed with uninfected males.
This really is old news. As the article states, the effect was first discovered by entomologists in the 1950s and finally attributed to Wolbachia in the 1970s despite the fact that it was isolated in mosquitoes in the 1920s. Mosquito research is not the most aggressively funded field despite that the mosquito kills more people than any other animal on earth. Most animals we think of as "dangerous" (like sharks and grizzly bears) don't even come within five orders of magnitude of the Anopheles mosquitoes.
Wolbachia infects the reproductive organs of a wide variety of arthopods where it pulls a number interesting reengineering stunts, such as enabling virgin births.
Wolbachia has some interesting public health implications. Somebody did a paper last year that showed that some worms in the genus that causes river blindness have evolved to become dependent upon Wolbachia for survival -- and Wolbachia can be killed by tetracycline. Eighteen million people in Subsaharan Africa are infected with Onchocerca, which to date has had no effective treatment. This has tremendous economic impact in an underdeveloped region.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
If the species were split statically, this might be so. However, it is obviously possible for non-infected hosts to become infected hosts.
One would first have to have a group of hosts immune to the parasites to have two independent groups. Then one might imagine the immune group being successful.
But (and this is a big but) a resistant mutation would have a big hill to climb to establish a viable population. It's a neat trick: a sort of genetic embrace, extend, extingush.
Actually, that gives a good analogy: one might expect PCs with free (as in beer) operating systems to be more competitive than non-free ones. However, life ain't that simple.
This discovery could have great impact on how human beings use contraception. Every man could be infected with a modified parasite (modified just for that person) and then he will not have children until he really wants to and his mate also really wants, at which point she only has to be infected with the properly DNA modified parasite that would work with only her man. There will be no unwanted pregnancies, and both parents mutual consent would be needed to have a child. Of-course the child will inherit the parasite but that is just good for the next phase of contraception.
You can't handle the truth.
(At least I didn't say petrified. oops.)
In this case the thing is reversed - it's the male that's locked (no reproduction) and the female has to have the key (be infected).
Maybe nature can invent the thief (or the locksmith).
rr
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.
Wait, let me get this straight. On the frontpage of /., there is a story about a bug and its bug. A wasp that can't get its groove on because because of bacteria. Ok. Great.
Where is the frontpage mention of the instant orgasmatron that is being researched for women that can't have an orgasm??
...
BZZZZZTT!
Rami
--
rJames.org - illustration
Infected by which STD?
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
To be Numbered
A Standard for the Transmission of Encrypted IP Datagrams on WASP
Status of this Memo
This memo describes an experimental method for the encapsulation of IP datagrams on WASP (Wide-Area Sperm Protocol). This specification is primarily useful wooded areas. This is an experimental, not recommended standard. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
Overview and Rational
WASP transmissions offer encryption with the complexity of DNA encoding with the convenience of naturally-occuring encoding methods via reproductive methods. The connection topology is limited to any vessel which may carry the encrypted datagrams; however, encryption and decryption of the data must be done within the confines of the reproductive genitalia of a WASP carrier. Thusly, the throughput of data is limited to the ability of the WASP to make the necessary connections with other WASPs during the transmission interval. Note that high-bandwidth transmissions are not recommended, as the carrier may die from repeated use and packets will be lost.
Frame Format
The IP datagram is submitted in the form of a complex protein strand which the WASP ingests. This is then translated into a DNA fragment in the SM (Sperm Module) and encrypted by the bacterial cultures within the host carrier. Transmission may then commence. During transmission, various system messages may be transmitted via broadcast datagrams. Some of these possible messages are:
- "0100: SYSTEM: HONEY HAVE YOU COME YET?"
- "0233: SYSTEM: WATCH WHERE YOU'RE POKING THAT THING!"
- "0355:
/dev/penile0: Device not responding"
- "0556: module 'p0rn' not found: Unable to continue"
Upon transmission to the receiving host, the datagram is decrypted using similar methods and produces the requested result.Discussion
Transmission quality of service (QoS) is dependent upon the level of low-lighting and available singular-typed WASP carriers. High transmission rates are most often found in alleys behind popular adult establishments and in dorm rooms of universities.
Security Considerations
Security is guaranteed by the complex encoding system; however, precautions should be made to keep such transmissions away from RAID devices, as this could cause premature data loss. Other outside influences, such as TROJAN viruses, may keep the data from reaching its intended recipient.
Blog,Twitter
This is signing, i.e. there is no encoding going on, merely some info is added to the package such that it won't work without the added info.
-Shieldwolf
just = (My)Opinion.toCents();
I can see it now:
SWM seeks infected female for fun,
companionship, procreation.
Must have own Wolbachia. Hornets need not apply.
Just wait, 2600.com will get sued for posting a copy of DeWolbachia on their web site.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
Well, even assuming that was correct when he wrote that, that was twenty years ago. Maybe science has spent that time discovering new things? The way science works, a twenty year old book never has any sort of veto authority over new facts and new discoveries.
And, in any case, nothing in this wasp/bacteria tale deals with 'spontaneous' speciation, it deals with an identifiable factor which is providing the barrier to breeding that can facilitate a process of speciation. A process, not a miraculous, spontaneous event.
Oh. Care to explain what features of the DNA structure of the animal kingdom it is that prevents new species from being created?
Because, from everything I've read, species creation has been a constant process over the last 3 or 4 billion years or so. Existing species die out, leaving ecological niches where a new species can get a toehold, and the process of mutation and selection gives rise to species that can take advantage of the opportunity.
Nature hates a vacuum, as they say.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
Something like this came to evolve in the same way that everything else did. Nature runs *trillions* of experiments at a time, ruthlessly ditching the results of the ones which don't measure up, which is the vast majority of those trillions. A very small minority of those trillions get to reproduce, and their offspring get to participate in the nex round of the game.
Nature has been running this game for billions of years. Some of those experiments, especially for bacteria, can take as little as 20 minutes to run. That's 26,280 generations a year, times 3 billion year or so. *Lots* of time.
Mankind hasn't invested one quadrillionth of the effort or resources in developing living things that nature has, and I can't imagine we ever will.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
After all, there are 6 billion humans alone, and every one of those humans harbors on average 10^14 bacteria, or ten times the number of actual human cells. For human-hosted bacteria alone, that makes 6*10^23 bacteria, or 600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. That's 600 billion trillion bacteria living on humans alone. If we count all organisms living on the planet, that figure will probably go up by at least another factor of billion, or more.
So nature is running perhaps a million trillion trillion experiments at once, or more. There is no mystery at all that with that much going on at any given time, and with each of those experiments building on the successful results of some of the million billion trillion trillion experiments that went before, that nature should figure out how to let a bacteria fuck with a wasp's reproduction system.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
After all, that bit about a million billion trillion trillion experiments that went on before is assuming that each experiment takes a year to run. Some will take longer, most will take far less. Let's say that every thing living today benefits from a lineal subset of the million trillion trillion trillion experiments that went before.
Random chance throws some variation into those experiments, but I don't call the fact that a million trillion trillion trillion experiments has led to some good results chance, I call that inevitability.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
Huh?
That doesn't in any way contradict the notion that separation of breeding pools facilitates speciation. The Cambrian explosion is fascinating and there is obviously a lot to be studied there, but who ever said that evolution was allowed only one trick?
It's manifestly obvious that the process of evolution is susceptible to contingency. It happens all the time.. a virus mutates in a way that allows it access to an entirely new population of carriers, or it is merely brought into close enough contact with a new and vulnerable population, and you have plague. That plague may wipe out 75% or more of a population, giving tremendous evolutionary advantage to those whose genetics happens to afford some resistance or resiliance to the infection.
It is clear that discrete events can occur that force the ecological system out of a state of stability and into a chaotic period where living organisms have to adapt to the new reality, or perish (rabbits in Australia, anyone?). That is not inconsistent with the idea that separation of breeding pools can facilitate speciation. Biology is one of the most complex of subjects, and the number of processes and mechanisms that swirl around in the ecology are legion. Every mutation has an opportunity to change the playing field to a greater or lesser extent.
Perhaps I misspoke. I meant 'spontaneous' to mean 'without cause' and some shading of 'instantaneous'. The notion of 'outside intervention' is so unnecessary to my understanding of the world that it never occurred to me that one would read 'spontaneous' as meaning 'without outside intervention'. I believe speciation is always for cause, and that if we are fortunate enough to have intimate knowledge of a particular population as it goes through a speciation event that the reasons for the speciation can generally be observed.
In addition, two points about speciation events. First, speciation events may be slow (or fast) on a human timescale, but they are bound to be very fast on the geological time scale that most paleontology deals with. Second, if you stretch your point of view out long enough, you'll see the continual process of the ebb and flow of species I have been speaking of. Not a constant ebb and flow, in the sense of an unvarying rate of change, but continual and continuous in the sense that the process of species being born and destroyed has never yet ceased on Earth.
Well, something is wrong with the simplified model we are talking about here, yes. I'd recommend Darwin's Dangerous Idea by Daniel C. Dennett if you want a really good description of the structural nature of species and the process by which a genetic population drifts and clumps. It intelligently deals with some very important questions, like, 'what is a species?', that are really essential background for this kind of discussion.
It is a rather unworthy argument to simply fall back on calling your opponents cowards and liars. If there is a good argument to be made against some particular facet of evolutionary theory, it would be better to spend your energy finding the evidence to demonstrate your point of view, rather than disparaging others. It's hard work, because there is a mountain of evidence on the side of the modern evolutionary synthesis, but if you find something that others have missed you will surely make a great contribution to the world of science. If it turns out that you learn enough to doubt your current position, then that would also be valuable. Sacred cows certainly are troublesome, no matter whose side they are on.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX