A genetically engineered pig kidney, raised in Iowa, is cleaned and prepared for transplantation to a human. Credit: Joe Carrotta for NYU Langone Health.
The day is nearing when doctors will safely transplant animal kidneys, hearts and other organs to ailing humans.
When they do, there’s a good chance that animals providing those body parts will be grown in Iowa – at least in the early stages.
In September, New York University surgeons connected a kidney from a genetically modified pig to a patient destined to die but kept alive on a ventilator. (The subject’s family consented to the experiment.) The kidney functioned normally, removing urine and other wastes from the person’s bloodstream, for more than two days. Because researchers had modified the pig’s genetic code, there were no signs of immediate – hyperacute – rejection from the patient’s immune system.
The Associated Press reported last month that the pig was part of a herd of 100 raised “in tightly controlled conditions at a facility in Iowa.”
I’ve identified the Iowa company that did the work and the facility’s likely, approximate location. What’s less clear is what animal-sourced organs could mean for the state.
The University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, one of the state regents institutions that a tenure ban would devastate. Credit: University of Northern Iowa.
With complete control of the governor’s office and both houses of the General Assembly, the Iowa Republican Party passed some terrible anti-science, anti-intellectual bills last year, in a pandemic-shortened session.
But that doesn’t compare with what they’re attempting this year.
The GOP increased its majority in both houses in the 2020 election, apparently emboldening its caucus. Besides further restricting voting, they’re considering expanding exemptions for vaccinations and forbidding businesses – even hospitals and clinics – from requiring vaccines for employees.
But the worst of a bad bunch might be the attempt to ban tenure, the policy that helps protect academic freedom, at the state universities.
A map of swine feeding operations in Iowa, with a big concentration in the state’s northwest corner. From Christopher Jones’ presentation to the Iowa Academy of Science.
When it comes to manure, research engineer Christopher Jones of IIHR – Hydrosciences & Engineering at the University of Iowa has a knack for putting quantities and consequences in stark terms.
In blog posts earlier this year, Jones calculated how much animal waste Iowa’s millions of hogs, cattle, chickens and turkeys produce – an amount equivalent to 134 million humans – and where that puts us in the manure hierarchy of U.S. states.
The data caused a stir, with The Des Moines Register and other media playing up the implications. Now you can hear Jones discuss his findings in person.
March for Science Iowa is bringing Jones to West Des Moines’ Twisted Vine Brewery, 3320 Westown Parkway (just off Interstate Highway 235) on Wednesday, August 7, for a discussion over snacks (free), microbrew beer (on your own) and soft drinks. We’ll gather starting at 6:30 and begin the program at 7.
It’s one of two science-driven events worth your attention in the coming week.
A March for Science Iowa comic by designer Miles Greb (@goldrushcomic) via the March for Science Iowa Facebook page. I think the model looks like a dark-haired Scarlett Johanssen.
Jordan Shaw was a lab technician working in food safety a few years ago when one of his supervisors, a researcher working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, published a study comparing eggs from organic and free-range chickens to standard eggs.
Time published her results: there was little difference in terms of safety or quality between the different eggs.
When the magazine posted the story on line, Shaw was stunned. “The comments on that were just unreal, like ‘you can’t trust the USDA because they’re the idiots who made the food pyramid,’” said Shaw, now a food safety consultant living in West Des Moines.
That made Shaw consider how to help the general public better understand science. “What we’re seeing now, really badly, is that science is elite, it’s liberal, all this stuff, and the problem is our populace just doesn’t understand, honest and truly, what is peer-reviewed science.”
His alarm increased when he read reports that the Donald Trump administration was suspending research grants and communications from key government science offices, especially those associated with the environment.
So Shaw – and others across the state – are taking action. They’re planning an Iowa version of a national march in Washington, D.C., to support science and research.
With one full tube already in hand, a healthcare worker draws a second blood specimen. It may never get lab testing. Credit: Lori Greig via photopin(license).
We’ve all experienced it: Waiting in the doctor’s office, hospital room or ER, perhaps in a flimsy, colorfully printed gown with your backside hanging out, for the friendly phlebotomist or nurse to come in with a rubber strap, a needle and a rack of tubes, each perhaps the size of your little finger.
The usual procedure, deftly performed in an efficient ballet: wrap the band around a bicep, have the patient flex until the vein bulges, swab the area and put in the needle.
If you’re lucky, the phlebotomist will stop at filling one tube. But often they suck out a second, a third, or more, until you’re sure you’ll be drained dry. Each tube has its own colored cap, designating the laboratory test for which it’s destined.
Unpleasant, but necessary, right? It’s all about finding out what’s wrong and how to fix it. Those extra tubes could provide the vital clues to a cure.
But what if they don’t? A study out last week from University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics (UIHC) had surprising findings about the fate of those blood-filled tubes. Read the rest of this entry »
In their cups: University of Iowa researchers grew multiple generations of tiny freshwater snails in the lab to study whether having multiple genomes provides advantages. Photo by Justin Torner from the U of I news website.
The snails are back. Or more precisely, researchers using snails as a model to understand the biological benefits of sexual reproduction are back with results.
I wrote about the research about two years ago, when conservative news outlets began ridiculing an $876,000 National Science Foundation grant to study “snail sex.” Two University of Iowa researchers, Maurine Neiman and John Logsdon, were among those receiving the grant.
Although multiple conservative outlets had reported and commented on the grant, none had asked the researchers to explain its significance. I was the first writer to contact them for any more than a cursory question. To me it was an example of a gap in science reporting in Iowa and conservative bias against government spending.
The bottom line: The tiny New Zealand snails are good models to study the evolutionary benefits of sexual reproduction, the true purpose of the study. The snails, Potamopyrgus antipodarum, have two genetic lines, one that reproduces sexually and another asexually, allowing the scientists to compare their genes for signs of advantages or disadvantages to sex.
Now results are coming out of this and related snail research, and the results are surprising. Sex and its biology, it turns out, aren’t as simple as scientists thought. Read the rest of this entry »
The cover to John Cisna’s book about his diet experiment and leap to fame, via Amazon.
So much science, so little time.
The last few weeks have seen Iowans and Iowa universities garnering attention for so many controversial, strange and cool science-related ventures it’s hard to keep up. For example:
An Iowa high school science teacher’s experiment with a McDonald’s-only diet made him famous. Now health advocates say his presentations to students around the country are thinly veiled commercials for the fast-food chain.
University of Iowa engineers are coming out of their shells to flex their electronic mussels. (Ba-dump ching!)
And teachers are using digital textbooks to spy on their students’ performance – with an eye on improving it, an Iowa State University professor says.
A conception of Pentecopterus, drawn by Yale University’s Patrick Lynch.
Decorah, generally known for its Norwegian-American museum, Luther College and spectacular Iowa River scenery, became famous for another reason in the last couple of weeks.
The Winneshiek County seat community has lent its name to an ancient resident: an intimidating, potentially man-sized sea creature armed with terrifying tentacle-like appendages.
Scientists at Yale University and the Iowa Geological Survey (IGS), based at the University of Iowa Oakdale campus, published the research in a recent issue of BMC Evolutionary Biology. The creature is so strange and menacing – and the artist’s rendition so eye-catching – that websites and newspapers around the world picked up the story.
Lost in the hoopla, however, is the deeper (literally) discovery behind the now-famous fossil.
A colorized transmission electron micrograph (TEM) image of an Ebola virus virion, created by U.S. Centers for Disease Control microbiologist Cynthia Goldsmith. Credit: CDC global Flickr stream.
Iowans and Iowa institutions have played roles in nationally and internationally significant science and technology developments in the last week, but sometimes you have to know the background to understand their involvement.
For instance, there was big news on Friday when the British medical journal The Lancet published results from an Ebola vaccine trial. The medicine appears highly effective – 100 percent, statistically – against the deadly disease. An Iowa company had a hand in it.
Just the day before, President Barack Obama signed an executive order putting the United States on course to build the most powerful computer ever. What few have noticed is the work a top University of Iowa official put in to helped set the stage for the program.
Meanwhile, Iowa State University students in Texas were celebrating after winning a race of sun-powered cars. And they not only won – they dominated, taking home the trophy for the first time since the team began racing 25 years ago.
The deteriorating sign marking the entrance to ISU’s Fick Observatory southwest of Boone.
For nearly 40 years, Iowa State University students and researchers made nightly drives west to a humble steel building in a wooded clearing southwest of Boone.
When skies were clear, they would roll back the roof and fire up a 24-inch reflector telescope and other, smaller instruments to focus on distant stars and galaxies.
But a visit to the Erwin W. Fick Observatory today finds no students or professors and little more than weeds. ISU has closed it and moved most of the telescopes and equipment to campus.
For the first time in decades, Iowa State has no major astronomical facility – and it’s unlikely to ever have one again.
For your Memorial Day weekend reading, here’s a review of some lesser-seen science news from Iowa universities over the last few weeks, including “addictive” cellphones, a hint at how to avoid Alzheimer’s disease and mineral water that could give you an unhealthy glow.
If you’re reading this on a mobile phone, you might want to pay special attention to the first item. Iowa State University researchers say their quiz can help determine whether you have an unhealthy attachment to your pocket brain. It could be an addiction. Or not.
Another ISU researcher’s study, meanwhile, has implications for the brain between your ears – the real one with hands-free access (unless, like me, you hold your head while thinking). The bottom line from his Alzheimer’s disease research may give you another reason to stop using your exercise bike as a clothesline.
And finally, a University of Iowa report suggests brackish underground water produced as a consequence of hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) for gas and oil may be more dangerous than previously thought.
Spectrographic MARSIS data from radar soundings of the Martian ionosphere midway between the equator and north pole at three different times. The horizontal axis is the MARSIS radio wave pulse frequency. The vertical axis is the estimated altitude above the planet’s surface. Increasing intensity is indicated by color-coding from blue to red, as shown by the scale. The normal ionospheric reflection can be seen extending up to about 2.8 megahertz on all three spectrograms, corresponding to an electron density of about 100,000 electrons per cubic centimeter. The top spectrogram shows conditions about eight minutes before the comet’s closest approach. The middle spectrogram shows conditions about seven hours later, when a temporary layer of enhanced electron density had formed within the ionosphere. It extends to very high frequencies, from about 2.8 to 3.8 megahertz, and corresponds to an electron density of about 200,000 electrons per cubic centimeter. This layer is at an altitude below the normal peak in the ionosphere. By comparison with the ground reflection, which can be seen at frequencies above 4 megahertz, the layer of enhanced ionization is estimated to be at an altitude of 50 to 60 miles. Credit: ASI/NASA/ESA/JPL/Univ. of Rome/Univ. of Iowa
Here’s a little bit of everything (almost) going on in Iowa science, from the interplanetary to the tiny and from the latest in robotics to the history of Iowa’s role in the atom bomb.
University of Iowa researchers last week released results from a probe that tracked the impact of a comet flyby on Mars’ atmosphere. The impact was something like a massive meteor shower.
On Earth, Iowa State University plant scientists plan to staff a high-tech growing facility with a robot. (Don’t worry, postdocs and grad students; I’m sure they’ll need some human help, too.)
Ames Laboratory researchers, meanwhile, have taken a mathematical look at the uncomfortable situation that occurs when tiny particles meet in a nanoparticle’s narrow pores. It’s a bit like people trying to squeeze past each other in a tight hallway.
And finally, for hardcore historians, there’s a look back at the war-era events behind the lab’s founding. Read the rest of this entry »
A brain diagram from the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary, published in Russia, 1890-1907. Credit: Double–M via photopincc
When I talked with Jason Radley, he was nearly back home in Iowa City after a weekend trip to Minnesota with his wife and two children, ages seven and 10.
Fortunately, the kids were riding in another car with grandma and grandpa, so Radley was feeling pretty good. The grandparents are “probably the ones who are stressed,” he said.
Given their ages, “we probably put them in undue risk, if you extrapolate my work” to humans, joked Radley, an assistant psychology professor at the University of Iowa.
That work, done in rats, suggests stress may cut into cognitive ability – specifically memory – as people age.
The research, published last month in The Journal of Neuroscience, found that older rats showing signs of stress – that is, elevated levels of a stress-related hormone – not only performed more poorly on memory tests; they also had structural changes in a key brain region responsible for short-term memory.
The report follows other research with similar conclusions, making chronic stress a likely addition to the cast of health villains that contribute to declining brain function late in life.
But don’t tell your significant other you’re spending your days playing video games and drinking beer, all in the name of reducing your stress to preserve your memory. There are caveats to the study, which included a fascinating experiment involving a T-shaped maze.
A quick post to spread the word about two lecture series now in progress for folks living in Central Iowa. If you have a Friday night or Saturday afternoon free, they’re great destinations for engaging talks on wildlife, astronomy, biology and more. They’re at no charge and in beautiful settings.
I’ll also note the accomplishments of a Williamsburg FIRST LEGO League team in this year’s Global Innovation Award competition.
A typical selection from my reporter’s notebook. Can you make out any of it?
Anyone who’s seen my handwriting would have a hard time mistaking it for someone else’s. The loops and slashes that fill my reporter’s notebooks are unmistakably mine, even if they’re indecipherable to most people. (Fortunately, I can read them… mostly.)
My typing, of course, is easily legible – even though my typing is pretty terrible. I’m able to erase the typos, blank spaces, merged words and other errors.
Now it turns out that my crappy typing is just as recognizable as my crappy handwriting. In fact, we each have a characteristic typing pattern, and some Iowa State University computer researchers are capitalizing on that to strengthen information security.
Iowa Science Interface 