Curio Cabinet

The tooth fairy is about to get a lesson in inflation. All the dental floss and toothpaste in the world can’t replace a missing tooth, which is why dentists remind their patients to be diligent with oral hygiene. But a team of scientists in Japan may be close to regrowing teeth in humans. In fact, they’ve already succeeded in animal trials. Currently, there are a handful of ways to deal with teeth that fall out or have to be removed. Patients can get implants, bridges or dentures, but none of these compare to the real deal. Even when patients have a mouthful of unhealthy teeth, dentists often consider extractions a last resort. That’s because even bad teeth can be better than implants, which are expensive and may need to be replaced periodically. Removing enough teeth can also lead to a receding jaw bone, which can make further dental work difficult or impossible. With enough bone loss, patients may even become unable to use dentures, which are already prone to causing irritation and other issues.
 
It’s no wonder that regrowing teeth has long been a dream of dentists and their patients. Now, according to scientists at Toregem Biopharma, a startup based in Kyoto, Japan, that dream may be within reach. Their treatment uses a drug that targets a gene called USAG-1, which is responsible for suppressing activity in tooth buds. Everyone has undeveloped tooth buds, and the idea is to stimulate them into growing. So far, the team has managed to regrow teeth in ferrets, which have separate sets of baby and adult teeth just like humans. Clinical trials in humans are set to begin next year, but they’re starting with people suffering from anodontia, a disorder that causes a partial or complete absence of teeth. If successful, researchers hope to segue their efforts into regrowing teeth that have been lost to cavities. Chew on that!

 
[Image description: A set of dentures against a black background.] Credit & copyright: dental-inno, Pixabay

The water’s perfect for an octopus party. In 2018, Scientists exploring the depths of the Pacific with a submersible discovered an underwater site off the coast of California where around 20,000 octopuses gather every year. That’s unusual, since octopuses tend to live solitary lives. After wondering for years what exactly made this spot special, researchers have now discovered the answer: the water’s just really nice down there.
 
The location, which has been dubbed the “octopus garden,” is located about two miles down in the Pacific Ocean. It seems unremarkable at a glance, but there was something drawing thousands of Muusoctopus robustus, a species of octopus the size of a grapefruit. The secret, it turns out, is warm water. This octopus garden is home to hydrothermal springs that spew hot water. The octopuses use the warmth to hatch their eggs more quickly. Once the site of an underwater volcano, the hydrothermal springs now raise the temperature of the frigid deepsea waters from 35 degrees Fahrenheit to a balmy 51 degrees Fahrenheit.
 
That’s a rare oasis of warmth in an environment where conserving energy is paramount to survival. Although the octopuses don’t need the springs to hatch their eggs, it certainly helps. Colder temperatures mean slower metabolisms, which in turn means slower growth. Longer hatch times also mean more time spent by the female octopuses guarding their broods, which can be particularly problematic since they can’t hunt and defend at the same time. Adult octopuses die soon after their part in the reproductive cycle is over, and hatchlings are imperiled by predators as soon as they emerge without anyone to protect them. As a result, most don’t survive into adulthood.
 
On the bright side, the discovery of this hydrothermal octopus nursery has made it easier for scientists to study octopus life cycles. They’ve even been able to set up cameras to monitor the animals’ development. There’s also a possibility that other marine animals might be taking advantage of these underwater hot springs. Clearly, things are heating up in the world of marine biology.

 
[Image description: A green-and-yellow octopus underwater.] Credit & copyright: Pia B, Pexels

If you’d like to be immune to most viruses, resilient against cancer, and have the ability to fly, what you actually want is to be a bat. A new study published by researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution works to reveal the secrets behind the winged mammals’ hale and hearty nature. The secret to bats’ extraordinary immunity to diseases (like ebola) that kill other mammals lies in their inflammation response—or, rather, their lack of one. In humans, many symptoms of illness are actually the result of our bodies’ own immune response. This includes inflammation. Bats don’t experience the same level of inflammation, allowing them to tolerate viral loads that would kill most other mammals. It’s also the reason that bats are famously disease-ridden (the technical term is viral reservoir) and easily spread diseases, even as they remain unaffected by them. Recently, after using long-read sequencing, which allows scientists to study much longer fragments of DNA than other methods, researchers found that the DNA of the Jamaican fruit bat (Artibeus jamaicensis) and the Mesoamerican mustached bat (Pteronotus mesoamericanus), lack the gene for interferon(INF)-alpha. This protein is produced by other mammals’ immune systems to fight viruses. Instead, bats rely on INF-omega, which is more potent. Researchers have theorized that targeting genes that produce INF-omega in humans could one day be used to treat viral illnesses. As for cancer, long-read sequencing revealed the presence of 6 DNA repair genes and 33 tumor-suppressor genes in bats. These are genes aren’t entirely unique to bats, but bats do seem to use them more effectively than other animals. It’s possible that, one day, gene therapy using bat immunity as a blueprint could treat cancer in humans as well. Seems like a good idea, as long as no one grows wings.

[Image description: A black-and-brown bat with brown eyes hanging from a green treetop.] Credit & copyright: Pixel-mixer, Pixabay
 

That’s no dog, that’s a dingo! A video from Australia, which showed a dingo committing literal daylight robbery, recently went viral. The tenacious pup swam to a boat where it proceeded to steal food and even a handbag. While dingoes may look similar to domesticated dogs, they’re considered wild animals. In fact, these pirate pests have actually carved out a niche for themselves in one of the planet’s harshest ecosystems.
 
Dingoes first arrived in Australia thousands of years ago, though it’s not known exactly when. Genetic analysis shows that dingoes are closely related to East Asian domestic dogs, meaning that they were likely brought over by humans who used them to hunt vermin. Archaeological evidence shows that dingoes have been in Australia for at least 3,500 years, but they likely arrived no earlier than 12,000 years ago. That’s around the time that rising sea levels separated Tasmania from the mainland, and no dingoes are found on Tasmania today. On the mainland, though, they went from human companions to apex predators.
 
Unfortunately, dingos were considered pests by many early Australian settlers looking to raise livestock. This led to massive culling programs in southeastern Australia that all but wiped out dingoes in the region. Then, farmers constructed a 5,600-kilometer-long fence meant to keep out rabbits, a more recently-introduced invasive species. The fence did little to keep rabbits out, but it did keep dingoes out. Settlers didn’t understand that dingoes had, by then, become an integral part of Australia’s ecosystem, even filling the ecological niche left over when thylacines (or Tasmanian tigers) went extinct. Without dingoes to keep kangaroos and other herbivore populations in check, the fenced-in area has become overgrazed, leading to a crash in biodiversity. The effects are so drastic that, today, the difference in vegetation levels on either side of the fence can be seen from space.
 
The dingo is listed as a vulnerable species by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Despite the fact that they weren’t originally wild animals, they’ve been part of the ecosystem for so long now that their demise would likely mean ecological disaster for Australia. Dingoes are still being baited, trapped, and hunted as pests, while conservationists work to educate the public about the valuable role dingoes play, as wild predators. It might be a long road ahead, but every dog has his day.

 
[Image description: A tan-colored dingo stands in green grass.] Credit & copyright: TheOtherKev, Pixabay