Curio Cabinet

These humped heroes sure know how to beat the heat. As a heat dome scorches much of the U.S. this week, it’s a good time to learn about an animal who wouldn’t mind these temperatures at all. Camels are Earth’s largest desert-dwelling animals. While most desert animals evolved to be small so that they could escape the scorching heat by burrowing or seeking out slivers of shade, camels took a different approach. They evolved large, portable energy-conservation tanks in the form of humps.
 
Contrary to childhood legends, camels’ humps don’t actually contain water. Rather, they’re full of fat, from which their bodies draw energy throughout long treks in the heat. This allows them to eat and drink very little while on the move. In fact, camels can survive around a week without water and several months without food, even while walking up to 20 miles a day in scorching temperatures.
 
Camels are part of a group of animals called ungulates, most of which are hooved. Camels, however, have soft foot pads with two large, hard toenails. Though there are seven species in the family Camelidae, only three are commonly called camels: the dromedary camel, Bactrian camel, and wild Bactrian camel. Dromedaries have just one hump while bactrains have two, but that’s not the most important difference between them. Dromedaries are a completely domesticated species, while some bactrian camels still remain in the wild, living mostly in northwestern China and the Gobi Desert in southwest Mongolia. While bactrains are critically endangered, dromedaries are fairly common, making up about 94 percent of Earth’s camel population.
 
So, why domesticate camels? For people living near deserts, it makes perfect sense. Dromedary camels can comfortably carry up to 330 pounds over long distances, and even more during short trips. Humans can comfortably ride them, which makes them invaluable for crossing areas where roads are scarce. Camels can also be used for milk and even meat, making them one of the most versatile domesticated animals around. That’s not to say that all dromedaries live a sheltered life. Central Australia is home to a sizable population of feral dromedaries, whose ancestors were brought to Australia by 19th century European settlers. As an invasive species, they’ve caused some harm to local wildlife by eating native plants and drinking valuable water that native animals need to survive. A hunting program allows for a certain number of these feral camels to be killed each year, but their population remains fairly large. Some dromedaries are just determined to walk on the wild side.

 
[Image description: A dromedary camel walking on a road beside a wooden fence and green trees.] Credit & copyright: A1000, Wikimedia Commons. This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

You just can’t beat this heat. This year’s summer is getting off to a brutal start for much of the U.S. as a heat dome stretches over multiple states. Heat domes are defined by suffocating heat and humidity which have a synergistic effect and make it feel even hotter than it actually is. While heat domes can cause heat waves, the two meteorological phenomena are not the same. The source of a heat dome’s elevated temperatures and humidity is a lingering high-pressure system in the atmosphere that prevents heat on Earth’s surface from rising. The high pressure comes from the jet stream after it weakens and deviates beyond its normal course. Until the jet stream corrects itself, the heat dome will continue to persist, and the longer it lasts, the worse it gets. Because the high pressure also prevents cloud formation, the sun’s rays beat down on the ground, making the heat dome hotter over time. Temperatures can easily exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and it can feel tens of degrees hotter. Sometimes, a heat dome will dissipate after just a few days, but they can last for weeks.
 
In 1995, a particularly devastating heat dome claimed over 700 lives in the Chicago area in less than a week. Even worse, a heat dome over the southern Plains back in 1980 claimed around 10,000 lives. Part of what makes a heat dome so dangerous isn’t just the heat itself, but the humidity, which makes it impossible for sweat to effectively wick excess heat away from our bodies. When a heat dome forms over a given area, it’s best to avoid venturing outside. The best policy is to stay in a climate-controlled area and drink plenty of water until the heat dome dissipates. Some problems are better avoided than faced head on.

 
[Image description: The sun shining above a treetop in a clear blue sky.] Credit & copyright: TheUltimateGrass, Wikimedia Commons. This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

Chromosomes are fundamental to creating life, but you can have too much of a good thing. Just one extra copy of chromosome 21 is responsible for causing Down syndrome, which itself causes many different health problems. Now, scientists at Mie University in Japan have developed a way to remove the extra chromosome using CRISPR technology. The chromosome responsible for down syndrome is called trisomy 21. When someone is born with this chromosome, they end up with 47 total chromosomes, rather than the usual 46. This results in a range of health effects, including congenital heart problems and cognitive issues.
 
Until recently, genetic disorders like Down syndrome were considered untreatable, but medical advancements have been changing things. Back in 2023, the FDA approved Casgevy and Lyfgenia, both of which are cell-based gene therapies to treat sickle cell disease (SCD) in patients over age 12. The treatments were developed using CRISPR-Cas9, which utilizes enzymes to accurately target parts of the DNA strand responsible for the disease. It’s the same technology used by the scientists at Mie University, who targeted trisomy 21 in a process called allele-specific editing, or, as one of the researchers described, “Trisomic rescue via allele-specific multiple chromosome cleavage using CRISPR-Cas9 in trisomy 21 cells.” The process was performed on lab-grown cells which quickly recovered and began functioning like any other cells. It’s unlikely that this new development will signal an immediate reversal of Down syndrome, as it will be a while before the treatment can undergo human trials. One particular hurdle is that the treatment can sometimes target healthy chromosomes. Still, it shows that CRISPR-Cas9 can be used to remove entire chromosomes and that cells affected by trisomy 21 can make a full recovery with treatment. That’s a lot of medical advancement in one crisp swoop.

 
[Image description: A diagram of a DNA strand with a key for each labeled part. The key from top to bottom reads: Adenine, Thymine, Cytosine, Guanine, and phosphate backbone.] Credit & copyright: Forluvoft, Wikimedia Commons. The copyright holder of this work has released it into the public domain. This applies worldwide.

It seems they’re turning red meat into read meat. According to a paper published in Scientific Reports, scientists at São Paulo State University (UNESP) have identified genetic markers that are associated with higher quality meat in cows. Current, conventional practices can only do so much when it comes to producing quality beef. At the end of the day, and all else being equal, livestock producers rely on the breed of cattle to do the heavy lifting. Even then, quality can be inconsistent between individuals thanks to phenotypic variability. But the researchers at UNESP appear to have cracked the code while working with Nelore cattle, a breed of zebu which make up around 80 percent of the cattle raised for meat in Brazil. By collecting samples from 6,910 Nelore carcasses after slaughter and grading, they managed to identify specific markers that are responsible for marbling (the amount of intramuscular fat), subcutaneous fat thickness, and muscle development. One particularly interesting discovery involved a gene responsible for heat shock proteins, which can influence meat tenderness by affecting fiber degradation after slaughter. The tenderness of meat can vary greatly between individuals depending on how much the gene is expressed. While similar efforts have been made before, including by the researchers at UNESP, this study was uniquely able to produce results by taking a more comprehensive look at the biology of individual animals. As the first author of the study, Gabriela Frezarim, explained, "The group had already made significant progress using different 'omics' [genomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics] approaches, but it became increasingly clear that no single technique is sufficient to understand the complexity of the biological systems that control variation in meat and carcass quality.” It’s like herding scientific disciplines together.

[Image description: A brown-and-black zebu cow walking on grass.] Credit & copyright: Mammalwatcher, Wikimedia Commons. This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
 

Telling people apart is as easy as breathing. Researchers recently found that the pattern of a person’s breathing may be unique to the individual, much like their fingerprints. Currently, there are only a few surefire ways to identify someone: fingerprints, eye scans, and DNA tests. Soon, another option might be available in the form of breathing. Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel hypothesized that a person’s breathing pattern might be unique to them, and tested the idea with the help of 100 participants. The participants were equipped with special devices that tracked their breathing throughout the day, measuring the frequency and duration of each breath, along with the amount of air passing through their nasal cavities. Over the course of two years, the researchers entered the data they collected into a machine learning program, which learned to positively identify a person through their breathing alone with an accuracy of 96.8 percent.
 
There may be another use for this type of analysis besides identification. Researchers found that a person’s breathing revealed not only their identity, but information about their physical and mental health. People of similar body mass indexes share similarities in the way they breath, and so do those who suffer from depression or anxiety. Those with depression tend to exhale quickly, while those with anxiety have shorter inhales and pause their breathing more frequently during sleep. According to the researchers, their next step is to find out if and how breathing can be used as a diagnostics tool. In the future, they hope that it may even be possible to change peoples’ breathing patterns for the better. As Noam Sobel, a co-author of the study said in a statement, “We intuitively assume that how depressed or anxious you are changes the way you breathe. But it might be the other way around. Perhaps the way you breathe makes you anxious or depressed. If that’s true, we might be able to change the way you breathe to change those conditions.” We’ll be able to breathe easy, then.

 
[Image description: The black nose of a dog with brown fur. The rest of the dog’s face is not visible.] Credit & copyright: HTO, Wikimedia Commons. The copyright holder of this work has released it into the public domain. This applies worldwide.