Slashdot Mirror
Couch Potato Gene Identified In Fruit Flies
Pickens writes "University of Pennsylvania biologists have discovered a mutation in fruit flies aptly named the 'couch potato' gene that allows them to simply chill out — entering a mild state of quasi-hibernation known as diapause, when winter arrives. 'It's not like they're bears sleeping in a cave,' says Paul Schmidt. 'They just look like they're a little bit more sluggish.' The couch potato gene, first discovered in the early 1990s, got its nickname because flies with mutations in the gene became really sluggish and behaved abnormally. Little is known about the underlying evolutionary genetic architecture, but in diapause, the slacking off is far less severe. The flies' bodily functions slow down, and they are better able to tolerate stress. The fruit fly gene may have implications for human health, as it can help biologists study the function of the nervous system and diseases such as epilepsy, refuting a recent statement by a political candidate that fruit fly research has 'little or nothing to do with the public good.'"
Wouldn't this make them potato flies?
According to a vice-presidential candidate whose name escapes me, research using fruit flies is UnAmerican.
You know for five years John McCain was FORCED to be a couch potato.
refuting a recent statement by a political candidate that fruit fly research has 'little or nothing to do with the public good.'
It might be fashionable to make fun of Palin on Slashdot, where people pretend to be constitutional purists and libertarians. But this type of thinking, "don't cut my program" is why America is $10T in debt, not counting the 79 million baby boomers about to retire and demand their Social Security and Medicare.
The question isn't whether government programs are well intentioned or often lead to good results (although maybe more often lead to bad results). The question is, can we afford every Utopian goal? Every time an executive, state or federal, tries to "cut" the budget (more likely, slightly reduce the increase in the budget), we invariably hear cries of "but the children," "the homeless will freeze to death!" or "but medical research funding!" Not one single recipient of government funding ever says, "yeah, we'll take on for the team." It's always a good idea to fund programs, and not one of them can ever be cut back or cut altogether, even though few if any of them are mentioned in the Constitution and our country got along fine without them for 150 years. Even the slightest paring back of government programs and living within our means would lead to an apocalyptic unraveling of the social fabric of the country.
Just tell your grandkids, as you exhale yur last breaths on your deathbed, who paying all of this off with exorbitant tax rates, "I did it for you."
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
I'm one step closer to getting my disability check when they identify the gene for humans. It's not laziness, it's a disease.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
Couch potatoes like a banana fritter. With syrup.
So, this "mutation" occurs in fruit flies and that is news because...we haven't found it before except in other flies in the 90s? Do we have a better grasp on this couch potato gene thanks to fruit fly research? Are you sure that some researcher wasn't just toking up in the lab? I mean, seems I get sluggish and act abnormally when I get high - I don't go hibernate like a bear, I just do things slower and differently.
High flies.
Did you know that...
Barack Obama's education was paid for by Saudi Arabian oil princes?
Barack Obama plans to enslave all of the hard-working, white Americans as part of black reparations?
Barack Obama paid $200,000 to the German Nazi organization UMLAUT to drive up attendance to his Berlin rally?
Michelle Obama retains her youthful look by bathing in the blood of infants?
Both Obamas are trained in the art of voodoo witchcraft?
Obama's supporters have engaged in a campaign of violence to terrorize God-fearing McCain supporters, including an underground vault where they torture and kill McCain campaign volunteers?
Obama's third-grade essay claimed that his personal heroes included Stalin, Mao, and Caligula?
The More You Know.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
I guess that political candidate has some mutations in his brain also.
"It might be fashionable to make fun of Palin on Slashdot, where people pretend to be constitutional purists and libertarians. But this type of thinking, "don't cut my program" is why America is $10T in debt, not counting the 79 million baby boomers about to retire and demand their Social Security and Medicare."
When Bush took over the debt was 5 Trillion and was shrinking under budget surpluses.
Large unsustainable tax cuts with a trillion dollar war of choice are the main culprits in the current 10 Trillion Debt level. Your grand children will suffer mainly from the Bush legacy. Not fruit file research.
How amny ridiculous genes do we have already? And now the couch potato gene. It's just dumbing down results of research too much so the public can understand it. Please stop this nonsense.
-- Cheers!
This story is completely bogus. When I lived in California, I did not see even a single fruit fly on my couch!
I like how she's careful to include that obviously rehearsed "Paris, France" barb. First of all there's still this negative attitude toward France for trying to warn us against a disastrous war. Second there's this implicit mockery of the fact that we're investigating an invasive species from the Mediterranean at a research facility in liberal FRANCE instead of one in the Good Old USA where the flies can escape to infest surrounding areas.
I'm really going to miss this lady.
That scientific paper the politician had in his hands had "couch", "potato", "fruit", "fly" and "diapause" in it.
Try publishing a paper with the words "penis", "growth", "stamina", "huge", "could beat an animal to death with it in the forest" and see how fast you get bipartisan funding.
Duh! Everyone knows potato is a vegetable.
the crack spider's bitch?
If I wanted political commentary, I would have signed up for the "politics" section. Just give me the science and technology, please.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Yes, this war was unnecessary in that we were not attacked by Iraq and it costs money. But put away your emotion and knee-jerk ideology and Bush Derangement Syndrome and note some important facts:
1) Compared to the chief role of the US government today - redistribution of wealth - The Iraq War is a mere drop in the bucket;
2) Compared to other wars, this one is rather cheap, and we are spending about 38% on the military today compared to what we did in 1960;
3) The war won't last forever. Government programs will.
I am not ignoring the costs of the war. It all adds up. But for God's sake people, we are spending 60% of our budget on entitlements (not called for by the Constitution) while we spend 17% on the military (called for in the Constitution). Get some perspective.
I'll be reasonable and say the war costs money. OK, that's bad. Now it's your turn to be reasonable and say that spending $1.8 trillion of our $3 trillion budget with a $10T debt - and the $75T off-budget Social Security and Medicare liability looming - is a larger problem than any temporary war, and is not only bad, but really really bad.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Yes, there is unnecessary government spending but to say that the money spent scientific research is the reason the country is in debt is laughable
This is exactly my point. It's only a million here, a million there. Somehow, we get to $3 Trillion. 60 percent of which is spent on entitlements ($1.8T). As grandparent poster, my point is that this kind of thinking, "it's only XX million," and "not my program" is how we get there.
You see, when spending other peoples' money, "it's only XX million" doesn't sound so bad. Because those voting all these appropriations will be long dead once the real bills come due.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
I'm not quite sure why we even consider the ludicrousness of our government expenditures. The U.S. government spends millions on funding fictitious colleges, medicare abuses, frivolous lawsuits, and studies that remind me of the song, "Things that make you go hmmm". I would sure like to know why my co-workers are so lazy and why we cant create more "worker bees" in this world. And how did this turn to politics anyway? Weren't we talking about flies???
That people who don't believe in science should just stop trying to talk about it.
Typical liberal. Try to be reasonable and calmly discuss the facts with them, but they shriek like children, stomp their feet, and call you names.
Lame.
Nice name-calling. If a Republican tried that kind of country-bashing, it would be modded flamebait by indignant liberals (much like my grandparent post has been for daring to dissent from liberal nanny state orthodoxy).
But the United States didn't become the world's lone economic superpower in a mere two hundred years through Marxism. It was through rugged individualism, self-reliance, initiative, innovation, and plain hard work. Never before has so much capital been amassed in such a short time. You see, in America, many of us believe that making yourself better by yourself is a much more equitable system than making everyone the same, regardless of their talents or industriousness. As Winnie said,
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent vice of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
But at least with capitalism, you have a choice.
No, we Americans are not extinct, oh self-righteous one. Yes, the US economy has hit a speed bump, but even on our worst day, we still have better growth and lower unemployment than any of your holier-than-thou Western European social democracies, most of which have been around at least five times as long as the US. And as I have argued before, it was through government tinkering with the economy - setting artificially low interest rates, creating government-sponsored ATMs like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Congress leaning on banks to make poor people with bad credit homeowners, etc. - that caused this, government control of markets, not capitalism.
It is funny though, how socialism has failed over and over, yet the left just won't quit trying to force it on people. But (government-tainted) capitalism has a bad year, and suddenly it's a failure.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Fruit flies like a banana.
I had a biology class where we did experimentations with fruit flies to study genetics. We would put the fruit flies into sealed tubes, and then place the tube into cold water. The drop in temperature would "put them to sleep" allowing you to place them under a stereoscope to identify gender and any mutations from breeding.
Anyone else do this biology experiment in high school?
Does anyone care about this mod abuse?
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Something to keep in mind -- there is always a fair chance that humans may turn out to have some related version of this gene. Even if it may no longer perform the same types of function in the same place as the fly.
Famous example might be the hedgehog genes, loss-of-function mutations in them turned fruitfly embryos into little hedgehog-shapes. Much later, homologues were found in humans, with involvement in congenital defects (Leading to unfortunate situations where a doctor has to tell a mom her child has a Sonic hedgehog mutation).
So does this have a counterpart in humans? I have no idea. But I'd be interested to know if this has any involvement in depression. It's sometimes been argued that some forms of depression may result from an evolutionary trait gone haywire, in which the goal was to direct a person to conserve resources and hunker down.
Call names and hide behind anonymity. So typical.
Why can't the left just debate instead of call people names (and mod them down) when someone disagrees with them?
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you