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Biology

Ancient Fossils Rewrite Evolutionary Timeline of Complex Animals

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When I say the word, “fossil,” what do you think of? Probably the dinosaur bones on display in your local museum or that ammonite shell your grandparents bought for your eighth birthday. Well, not all fossils are the hardened remains of ancient animals; some are just the footprints left by ancient animals. These fossils might not seem important compared to the larger, more physically impressive bones and shells, but since fossils are relatively rare, every little bit helps scientists better understand the ancient, primordial Earth, especially if those fossils predate almost every other fossil ever discovered.

Earlier today, the University of Manchester announced it discovered the fossils of half-a-billion year old organisms, specifically their tracks and burrows. These burrows were found in the Corumbá region of western Brazil, near the Bolivian border, by an international team of paleontologists. The burrows measure between 50 and 600 microns. For the sake of comparison, human hairs range from 40 to 300 microns in width. That’s tiny.

You probably wonder why the discovery of these literally microscopic burrows are important. According to Dr. Russel Garwood of Manchester’s School of Earth and Environmental Sciencies, “This is an especially exciting find due to the age of the rocks — these fossils are found in rock layers which actually pre-date the oldest fossils of complex animals — at least that is what all current fossil records would suggest.” The fossils come from from what paleontologists call the Ediacaran-Cambrian transition, which ranged from 635 million to 541 million years ago. Again, for the sake of comparison, dinosaurs were only around from 230 million to 65 million years ago. Dr. Garwood also stated, “The evolutionary events during the Ediacaran-Cambrian transition are unparalleled in Earth history. That’s because current fossil records suggests that many animal groups alive today appeared in a really short time interval.”

Dr. Garwood’s team believes the burrows were created by “nematoid-like organisms” not unlike modern roundworms. This discovery might rewrite the evolutionary timeline of complex animal life, as, according to lead University of Bristol author Dr. Luke Parry, “[These] fossils show that complex animals with muscle control were around approximately 550 million years ago, and they have been overlooked previously because they are so tiny.” While the tracks and burrows are similar to those made by nematoids, they actually predate what the current fossil record would consider to be nematoid-like organisms, which is why this discovery is so important.

These tiny fossil burrows demonstrate paleontologists have much to learn and discover about ancient life on Earth. The burrows might only have been discoverable via x-ray microtomography, but they are just as important as the femur of the largest sauropod in our never-ending discovery to understand life before humankind.

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Biology

The First 3D-Printed Vegan Salmon Is In Stores

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Revo Foods’ “THE FILET – Inspired By Salmon” salmon fillet may be the first 3D-printed food to hit store shelves. said that firm CEO Robin Simsa remarked, “With the milestone of industrial-scale 3D food printing, we are entering a creative food revolution, an era where food is being crafted exactly according to customer needs.”

Mycoprotein from filamentous fungi is used to make the salmon alternative and other meat substitutes. Vitamins and omega-3 fatty acids are in the product, like in animals. Is high in protein, at 9.5 grams per 100 grams, although less than conventional salmon.

Revo Foods and Mycorena developed 3D-printable mycoprotein. Years of research have led to laser-cooked cheesecakes and stacked lab-grown meats.

One reason for this push is because printed food alternatives may make food production more sustainable, which worries the fishing sector. Overfishing reduces fish populations in 34% of worldwide fish stocks.

Over 25% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions come from food production, with 31% from livestock and fish farms and 18% from supply chain components including processing and shipping. According to Revo Foods’ website, vegan salmon fillet production consumes 77 to 86% less carbon dioxide and 95% less freshwater than conventional salmon harvesting and processing.

The salmon alternative’s sales potential is unknown. In order to succeed, Revo Foods believes that such goods must “recreate an authentic taste that appeals to the flexitarian market.”

The commercial distribution of 3D-printed food could change food production.

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Artificial Intelligence

Open-source Microsoft Novel protein-generating AI EvoDiff

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All diseases are based on proteins, natural molecules that perform vital cellular functions. Characterizing proteins can reveal disease mechanisms and ways to slow or reverse them, while creating proteins can lead to new drug classes.

The lab’s protein design process is computationally and human resource-intensive. It involves creating a protein structure that could perform a specific function in the body and then finding a protein sequence that could “fold” into that structure. To function, proteins must fold correctly into three-dimensional shapes.

Not everything has to be complicated.

Microsoft introduced EvoDiff, a general-purpose framework that generates “high-fidelity,” “diverse” proteins from protein sequences, this week. Unlike other protein-generating frameworks, EvoDiff doesn’t need target protein structure, eliminating the most laborious step.

Microsoft senior researcher Kevin Yang says EvoDiff, which is open source, could be used to create enzymes for new therapeutics, drug delivery, and industrial chemical reactions.

Yang, one of EvoDiff’s co-creators, told n an email interview that the platform will advance protein engineering beyond structure-function to sequence-first design. EvoDiff shows that ‘protein sequence is all you need’ to controllably design new proteins.

A 640-million-parameter model trained on data from all protein species and functional classes underpins EvoDiff. “Parameters” are the parts of an AI model learned from training data that define its skill at a problem, in this case protein generation. The model was trained using OpenFold sequence alignment data and UniRef50, a subset of UniProt, the UniProt consortium’s protein sequence and functional information database.

Modern image-generating models like Stable Diffusion and DALL-E 2 are diffusion models like EvoDiff. EvoDiff slowly subtracts noise from a protein made almost entirely of noise to move it closer to a protein sequence.

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Beyond image generation, diffusion models are being used to design novel proteins like EvoDiff, create music, and synthesize speech.

“If there’s one thing to take away [from EvoDiff], I think it’s this idea that we can — and should — do protein generation over sequence because of the generality, scale, and modularity we can achieve,” Microsoft senior researcher Ava Amini, another co-contributor, said via email. “Our diffusion framework lets us do that and control how we design these proteins to meet functional goals.”

EvoDiff can create new proteins and fill protein design “gaps,” as Amini noted. A protein amino acid sequence that meets criteria can be generated by the model from a part that binds to another protein.

EvoDiff can synthesize “disordered proteins” that don’t fold into a three-dimensional structure because it designs proteins in “sequence space” rather than structure. Disordered proteins enhance or decrease protein activity in biology and disease, like normal proteins.

EvoDiff research isn’t peer-reviewed yet. Microsoft data scientist Sarah Alamdari says the framework needs “a lot more scaling work” before it can be used commercially.

“This is just a 640-million-parameter model, and we may see improved generation quality if we scale up to billions,” Alamdari emailed. WeAI emonstrated some coarse-grained strategies, but to achieve even finer control, we would want to condition EvoDiff on text, chemical information, or other ways to specify the desired function.”

Next, the EvoDiff team will test the model’s lab-generated proteins for viability. Those who are will start work on the next framework.

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Biology

Chinese Dinosaur Might Have Been as Iridescent as a Hummingbird

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Earlier this month, I wrote an article on a toy line of scientifically accurate Velociraptor action figures with plumage inspired by modern birds. I mused how impressive it would be if prehistoric raptors had been covered by feather patterns not unlike those in the toy line. Little did I know that two weeks later, researchers would reveal that some theropods had iridescent feathers that outshine David Silva’s velocifigures.

The Caihong juji, Mandarin for “rainbow with a big crest” (or just Caihong for short), was a “paravian theropod,” a clade commonly known for its winged forelimbs (even though many weren’t capable of flight) and enlarged sickle foot claws. In 2014, a farmer in the Qinlong County in the Hebei Province of Northeastern China gave a nearly complete Caihong fossil, feathers included, to The Paleontological Museum of Liaoning. Finding a complete skeleton is rare in paleontology and proved very helpful to the researchers. However, you might wonder just how scientists were able to determine the iridescent nature of the Caihong’s plumage. Two words: fossilized melanosomes.

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Melanosomes are organelles that create, store, and transport melanin, which determines the pigments/colors of animal hair, fur, skin, scales, and feathers. Upon examining the Caihong’s head, crest, and tail feathers with an electron microscope, scientists discovered platelet-shaped structures similar in shape to the melanosomes that give hummingbirds their iridescent coloring. The rest of the body feathers had melanosome structures similar to those in the grey and black feathers of penguins, which would have made for an odd sight: a duck-sized dinosaur with body feathers as drab as a raven’s and head and neck feathers more colorful than a peacock’s.

The inferred feather coloration of the Caihong is not its only unusual feature, though. The dinosaur had longer arm and leg feathers than its relatives, and its tail feathers created a “tail surface area” that was larger than the famous proto-bird the Archaeopteryx.  Furthermore, the Caihong had bony crests, which while common among most dinosaurs, are almost unheard of among paravian theropods. But, more importantly, it had proportionally long forearms, which is a feature of flight-capable theropods, even though scientists believe the Caihong didn’t fly. While this dinosaur apparently has the earliest examples of proportionally long forearms in the theropod fossil records, it still falls in line with the belief that the evolution of flight-capable feathers outpaced the evolution of flight-capable skeletons. The melanosomes, however, are the more intriguing discovery, since they are the earliest examples of “organized platlet-shaped nanostructures…in dinosaurian feathers.”

While paleontologists are confident the Caihong’s platelet structures are melanosomes, the researchers understand that their discovery is based partially on inference and could potentially be incorrect. If the structures aren’t melanosomes, well, that invalidates this entire article. But that’s what paleontology is all about: examining the evidence, creating inferences supported by that evidence, and changing those inferences when new information becomes available. Still, the concept of dinosaurs with iridescent feathers is pretty cool. If you want to learn more about the Caihong juji, you can read the original article on Nature.

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