Harvard biologists have brought new meaning to the term "fine print" by devising microscopic tiles made of DNA that self-assemble into letters, Chinese characters, emoticons and other shapes.
More than mere doodling, their advance, detailed this week in the journal Nature, could make it easier and cheaper to build tiny DNA devices capable of delivering drugs or aiding the study of biochemistry, scientists said.
"This technique will accelerate the research field of DNA nanotechnology," said Ebbe Sloth Andersen, a researcher at Aarhus University in Denmark who collaborated on an editorial that accompanied the report.
In its usual role as a warehouse for storing genetic information, DNA helps build humans and hummingbirds, maple trees and meerkats ? all sorts of complex organisms. But as a building material for machines smaller than the smallest bacterium, it has been tough to control.
Since the early 1980s, engineers have experimented with a variety of approaches to create structures out of DNA, including the use of tiles ? small bricks woven together out of several strands of DNA ? that could stick to one another and self-assemble into shapes.
But when researchers tried to construct precisely defined shapes, they ran into trouble, said Peng Yin, a systems biologist at Harvard's Wyss Institute in Boston and senior author of the Nature study. The tiles tended to stick together incorrectly, resulting in incomplete structures.
"People thought this couldn't work," Yin said.
But he and his collaborators pressed on, ultimately designing bricks out of single ? rather than multiple ? strands of DNA.
The strands each had four sequences of 10 or 11 bases, which could bind to complementary sequences of 10 or 11 bases on other tiles. If all four sequences on the edges of a tile bind with their matching counterparts on neighboring tiles, the tile assumes a rectangular shape.
The scientists programmed the tiles to stack up in a staggered formation, like a miniature brick wall. Then they created shapes by leaving out tiles at certain locations of their 64-by-103-nanometer "molecular canvas."
Yin compared the process to a group of people who figure out how to form a line when each of them knows only who they're supposed to be behind: Person No. 2 knows he should follow person No. 1, person No. 3 knows she should follow person No. 2, and so on.
Similarly, for every tile on the Harvard team's canvas, each linking edge should connect only with its perfect complement, Yin said.
"You just mix these 1,000 different molecules, and they know how to combine," he said. "There's only one position for them to fit."
Using the technique, the team initially attempted to construct 110 shapes. All but seven of them assembled properly.
The holdouts included the "@" sign, a hollow "H" and two Chinese characters. The researchers managed to successfully redesign four of the shapes.
To speed the assembly process, team members wrote a computer program that could analyze images and figure out which mix of edges would be necessary to get the modular tiles to self-assemble properly. They used a robot to pick the correct tiles to use in each batch.
The technique is "quite amazing," said Hao Yan, a professor at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University in Tempe who was not involved in the research.
It also could turn out to be quite efficient, because different combinations of the same tiles can create different shapes, Andersen said.
Astronomers at Arizona State University have found an exceptionally distant galaxy, ranked among the top 10 most distant objects currently known in space. Light from the recently detected galaxy left the object about 800 million years after the beginning of the universe, when the universe was in its infancy.
A team of astronomers, led by James Rhoads, Sangeeta Malhotra, and Pascale Hibon of the School of Earth and Space Exploration at ASU, identified the remote galaxy after scanning a moon-sized patch of sky with the IMACS instrument on the Magellan Telescopes at the Carnegie Institution's Las Campanas Observatory in Chile.
The observational data reveal a faint infant galaxy, located 13 billion light-years away. "This galaxy is being observed at a young age. We are seeing it as it was in the very distant past, when the universe was a mere 800 million years old," says Rhoads, an associate professor in the school. "This image is like a baby picture of this galaxy, taken when the universe was only 5 percent of its current age. Studying these very early galaxies is important because it helps us understand how galaxies form and grow."
The galaxy, designated LAEJ095950.99+021219.1, was first spotted in summer 2011. The find is a rare example of a galaxy from that early epoch, and will help astronomers make progress in understanding the process of galaxy formation. The find was enabled by the combination of the Magellan telescopes' tremendous light gathering capability and exquisite image quality, thanks to the mirrors built in Arizona's Steward Observatory; and by the unique ability of the IMACS instrument to obtain either images or spectra across a very wide field of view. The research, published in the June 1 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters, was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
This galaxy, like the others that Malhotra, Rhoads, and their team seek, is extremely faint and was detected by the light emitted by ionized hydrogen. The object was first identified as a candidate early-universe galaxy in a paper led by team member and former ASU postdoctoral researcher Hibon. The search employed a unique technique they pioneered that uses special narrow-band filters that allow a small wavelength range of light through.
A special filter fitted to the telescope camera was designed to catch light of narrow wavelength ranges, allowing the astronomers to conduct a very sensitive search in the infrared wavelength range. "We have been using this technique since 1998 and pushing it to ever-greater distances and sensitivities in our search for the first galaxies at the edge of the universe," says Malhotra, an associate professor in the school. "Young galaxies must be observed at infrared wavelengths and this is not easy to do using ground-based telescopes, since the Earth's atmosphere itself glows and large detectors are hard to make."
To be able to detect these very distant objects which were forming near the beginning of the universe, astronomers look for sources which have very high redshifts. Astronomers refer to an object's distance by a number called its "redshift," which relates to how much its light has stretched to longer, redder wavelengths due to the expansion of the universe. Objects with larger redshifts are farther away and are seen further back in time. LAEJ095950.99+021219.1 has a redshift of 7. Only a handful of galaxies have confirmed redshifts greater than 7, and none of the others is as faint as LAEJ095950.99+021219.1.
"We have used this search to find hundreds of objects at somewhat smaller distances. We have found several hundred galaxies at redshift 4.5, several at redshift 6.5, and now at redshift 7 we have found one," explains Rhoads. "We've pushed the experiment's design to a redshift of 7 ? it's the most distant we can do with well-established, mature technology, and it's about the most distant where people have been finding objects successfully up to now."
Malhotra adds, "With this search, we've not only found one of the furthest galaxies known, but also the faintest confirmed at that distance. Up to now, the redshift 7 galaxies we know about are literally the top one percent of galaxies. What we're doing here is to start examining some of the fainter ones ? thing that may better represent the other 99 percent."
Resolving the details of objects that are far away is challenging, which is why images of distant young galaxies such as this one appear small, faint, and blurry.
"As time goes by, these small blobs which are forming stars, they'll dance around each other, merge with each other and form bigger and bigger galaxies. Somewhere halfway through the age of the universe they start looking like the galaxies we see today ? and not before. Why, how, when, where that happens is a fairly active area of research," explains Malhotra.
In addition to Hibon, Malhotra, and Rhoads, the paper's authors include Michael Cooper of the University of California at Irvine, and Benjamin Weiner of the University of Arizona.
###
Arizona State University: http://asunews.asu.edu/
Thanks to Arizona State University for this article.
This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is reiterating that he won't join Mitt Romney on the GOP presidential ticket.
Bush says no one's asked him to submit personal documents to the team picking Romney's vice presidential nominee. He also says he's certain he won't be asked, either. Bush says he backs his "friend" and fellow Floridian, Sen. Marco Rubio, for the slot.
But the former governor did have some advice for whomever Romney chooses: "Have fun."
Bush was in Washington on Friday to testify at a House Budget Committee hearing. He told the panel he would support higher taxes if the ratio was $1 raised for every $10 cut from spending. But he said it's easy for him to go along with that because he's not a candidate for anything.
The stock market suffered its worst day of the year Friday after a surprisingly weak report about hiring and employment cast a pall of gloom over the U.S. economy. The Dow Jones industrial average plunged 275 points.
Traders stampeded into the safety of bonds, pushing the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note to a record low. Fearful investors bought gold, causing the price to spike nearly $60 an ounce, and concern about a global economic slowdown drove the price of oil to its lowest since October.
"The big worry now is that this economic slowdown is widening and accelerating," said Sam Stovall, chief equity strategist at S&P Capital IQ, a market research firm.
It was the Dow's steepest one-day drop since November.
The Standard & Poor's 500 index and Nasdaq composite index both fell more than 3 percent. The Nasdaq has dropped more than 10 percent since its peak ? what traders call a market correction. The S&P 500 is just a point above correction territory.
American employers added just 69,000 jobs in May, the fewest in a year, and the unemployment rate increased to 8.2 percent from 8.1 percent. Economists had forecast a gain of 158,000 jobs.
The report, considered the most important economic indicator each month, also said that hiring in March and April was considerably weaker than originally thought.
Earlier data showed weak economic conditions in Europe and Asia, too. Unemployment in the 17 countries that use the euro currency stayed at a record-high 11 percent in April, and unemployment spiked to almost 25 percent in Spain.
There were signs that growth in China, which helped sustain the global economy through the recession, is slowing significantly. China's manufacturing weakened in May, according to surveys released Friday.
The Dow closed down 274.88 points, or 2.2 percent, at 12,118.57. The Dow is off 0.8 percent for the year; two months ago, it was up more than 8 percent for the year.
The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 32.29 points, or 2.5 percent, to 1,278.04. The Nasdaq dropped 79.86, or 2.8 percent, to 2,747.48. Both indexes are still up for the year ? 1.6 percent for the S&P 500 and 5.5 percent for the Nasdaq.
Traders sold all types of risky investments and rushed to the safety of U.S. government bonds and gold. Bond prices rose sharply, briefly pushing the yield on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note down to 1.44 percent, the lowest on record. The yield ended the day at 1.46 percent.
Gold for August delivery climbed $57.90, nearly 4 percent, to $1,622.10 per ounce.
"Everybody's looking for a safe haven," said Adam Patti, CEO of IndexIQ, an asset management firm. He's skeptical of that strategy, believing the swing was driven by short-term traders "looking to flip in and out of things," rather than long-term investors willing to ride out a few bumps in the market.
May was the worst month for the stock market in two years by some measures. Investors' worries about Europe's debt crisis intensified as the month wore on. Greece's political future is uncertain, and it appears increasingly likely to stop using the euro currency. That could rattle financial markets and make Greece's economy ? already hobbled ? even weaker.
Friday's jobs report drew traders' attention back to the weakening U.S. economy, said Todd Salamone, director of research for Schaeffer's Investment Research in Cincinnati.
"The weaker jobs report translates into anticipation of slower growth ahead and weaker corporate earnings, and that ratchets stock prices lower," Salamone said.
The record-low yield on the 10-year Treasury note reflected rapid buying by traders with the biggest portfolios, including central banks, endowments and pension funds, said Ira Jersey, U.S. interest rate strategist at Credit Suisse. He said money managers were selling investments priced in euros and stashing their money in U.S. securities.
Several analysts raised the possibility that the weakening economy will prompt more action by governments and central banks seeking to juice global economic activity. Anticipation of some policy response prevented even deeper losses, Stovall said.
The Federal Reserve undertook programs in 2009 and 2010 to buy U.S. government bonds. Its goal was to lower interest rates and encourage people to buy riskier investments like stocks. At least in public, the central bank so far has resisted a third round of purchases, known as quantitative easing.
Anticipation of bond-buying by the Fed "might put in a little bit of a floor to the market, but the overall economic picture is still bad," said Bob Gelfond, CEO of MQS Asset Management, a New York hedge fund.
The dollar fell partly because traders expect more intervention by the Federal Reserve, Gelfond said.
The euro rose half a penny against the dollar to above $1.24. A day earlier, fears about Europe's finances had pushed the euro to a nearly two-year low against the dollar.
Only 17 of the 500 companies in the S&P index were higher for the day.
Homebuilder stocks fell the most, despite a report that construction spending rose for a second month in April. PulteGroup fell 11.8 percent, D.R. Horton 8.4 percent and Lennar 8.3 percent.
Boeing, the biggest U.S. exporter, fell 3.4 percent, one of the biggest declines among the 30 companies that make up the Dow. Traders fear that the economic slowdown will hurt global demand for its airplanes and defense technologies.
A slower global economy would reduce demand for energy. The price of a barrel of oil fell $3.49 to $83.04, extending a monthlong slide. The price of oil is at a 16-month low.
Stocks closed way down in Europe. Greece's benchmark stock index fell 4.4 percent, Germany's 3.4 percent and France's 2.2 percent.
___
AP business writers Matthew Craft, Joseph Pisani and Christina Rexrode in New York contributed to this report.
___
Daniel Wagner can be reached at www.twitter.com/wagnerreports.
Manipulating images for your website is such a tedious chore. You need to open Photoshop, click your mouse about ten thousand times, then save the file and upload it. Then next month you redesign your site and suddenly need to re-size all your image elements again! Startup Cloudinary has a good alternative for you: use custom URLs to transform your images in the cloud! I was a bit skeptical when I first read about Cloudinary, but after five minutes of goofing around with it I'm sold.
All Critics (106) | Top Critics (26) | Fresh (102) | Rotten (4)
The film should be required viewing for everyone who has lost faith in the power of random acts of kindness.
"The Kid With a Bike" vibrates with desperation, frustration and the simple unfairness of life, leavened with glimpses of hope.
Cyril is one of the most inspiringly resilient, self-aware young characters to arrive on-screen in recent memory...
"The Kid With A Bike'' is, remarkably, about hope - about the connections people forge when the ones they've been given desert them.
The Dardennes' quiet, naturalistic style strips this story of melodrama but not of emotion.
Without diminishing the boy's intensity or making him in any way ingratiating, the Dardennes take us into his mind, and we begin to appreciate not only his predicament but his resiliency.
A frank, no-nonsense drama filled with compassion for a lost soul kid abandoned by his father.
...a deeply humane movie that deserves to be compared with one of its obvious inspirations, Vittorio De Sica's neo-realist classic Bicycle Thieves
A moving, sweet and at times harrowing tale...
De France does a terrific job of balancing maternal instinct with matter-of-factness, in a performance that is more human than tender - and all the more powerful for it.
Unlike many films, it genuinely earns every feeling it evokes.
a complex interweaving of bitter reality and a deeply humane worldview that sees the possibility of redemption in even the cruelest of circumstances
A beautiful and stirring story of unconditional compassion, of emotional honesty, and -- above all -- of hope.
The Dardennes' style resists cheap sentimentality, yet in The Kid with a Bike it yields a deeply moving examination of love as a shield.
Dardenne brothers set an orphan in search of a father
Will bad breaks break a boy?
How the Dardennes, time and again, turn gritty, mundane subjects into transcendent moments of honesty and truth is one of the great cinematic wonders.
This is a film that's not always easy to watch, but just about impossible to forget.
It is crystal clear on at least one point: People are mysterious and beautiful, and they need each other.
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne offer another in their remarkable succession of contemporary neo-realist dramas in this quietly devastating but gently hopeful [film].
[It] gives obvious homage to a variety of films. ... But one inspiration shines throughout the movie ... The Red Balloon.
...the film delivers a final act as riveting as it is artistically satisfying. Not many films can claim a perfect ending. This one can.
...manages to balance a spiritual sense of grace with the earthy eye of a here-and-now realist.
Mystery of monarch migration takes new turnPublic release date: 31-May-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Beverly Clark beverly.clark@emory.edu 404-712-8780 Emory University
Emory University study finds strong evidence that eastern and western monarchs belong to a single genetic population
During the fall, hundreds of millions of monarch butterflies living in eastern North America fly up to 1,500 miles to the volcanic forests of Mexico to spend the winter, while monarchs west of the Rocky Mountains fly to the California coast. The phenomenon is both spectacular and mysterious: How do the insects learn these particular routes and why do they stick to them?
A prevailing theory contends that eastern and western monarchs are genetically distinct, and that genetic mechanisms trigger their divergent migratory paths.
An analysis led by Emory University biologists, however, finds that the two groups of monarchs are genetically mixed. Their research, published in the journal Molecular Ecology, suggests that environmental factors may be the key to the butterflies' choice of winter homes, and to where they wind up in the spring.
"Our data gives the strongest signal yet that the eastern and western monarchs belong to a single genetic population," says Emory biologist Jaap de Roode, who led the research. "This distinction is important to help us better understand the behavior of the organism, and to conserve the monarch flyways."
In addition to researchers in the de Roode lab, the study involved a scientist from the Institute of Integrative Biology in Zurich, Switzerland.
Biologists have long been fascinated by the innate and learned behaviors underlying animal migrations. When monarchs are breeding, for instance, they can live up to four weeks, but when they are migrating, they can live as long as six months.
"As the day length gets shorter, their sexual organs do not fully mature and they don't put energy into reproduction. That enables them to fly long distances to warmer zones, and survive the winter," de Roode says. "It's one of the basic lessons in biology: Reproduction is very costly, and if you don't use it, you can live much longer."
Mass movements of animals have huge ecological impacts. They are also visually arresting, from the spectacle of giant herds of wildebeest trekking across the Serengeti to hundreds of thousands of sandhill cranes flocking along the banks of Nebraska's Platte River.
In the case of long-lived mammals and birds, the younger animals may learn some of the behaviors associated with migration. That's not the case with the monarchs, notes Amanda Pierce, a graduate student in Emory's Population Biology, Ecology and Evolution program, and a co-author of the study.
"We know there is no learning component for the butterflies, because each migration is separated by two to three generations," Pierce says. "To me, that makes the problem even more interesting. How can these small, delicate animals travel thousands of kilometers and arrive at the same destination as their great-great grandparents?"
The question of whether eastern and western monarchs are genetically the same has been hotly debated, and may be an essential piece to the puzzle of their divergent migration patterns.
The researchers used 11 genetic markers to compare the genetic structures of eastern and western monarchs, as well as non-migratory monarch populations in Hawaii and New Zealand. The results showed extensive gene flow between the eastern and western monarchs, and a genetic divergence between these North American butterflies and those from Hawaii and New Zealand.
"In a sense, the genetic markers provide a DNA 'fingerprint' for the butterflies," de Roode says. "Just by looking at this fingerprint, you can easily separate the butterflies of North America from those in Hawaii and New Zealand, but you can't tell the difference between the eastern and western monarchs."
The Emory researchers have now joined a project headed by Harvard, which also involves the University of Georgia and the University of Massachusetts, to sequence the full genomes of monarch butterflies from places around the world. That data should rule out genetic differences between the eastern and western monarchs, or reveal whether any smaller genetic differences, beyond the 11 markers used in the study, may be at play between the two groups.
The idea that eastern and western monarchs are distinct populations has been bolstered by tagging-and-tracking efforts based in the United States. That data, gathered through citizen science, indicates that the butterflies stay on separate sides of the Rocky Mountains a formidable high-altitude barrier.
De Roode, however, theorizes that when spring signals the eastern monarchs to leave the overwintering grounds in Mexico, they may simply keep radiating out, reproducing and expanding as long as they find milkweed plants, the food for their caterpillars.
"Few people have tagged the monarchs within Mexico to see where they go," he notes, "because Mexico doesn't have as much citizen science as the U.S."
If the theory is correct, some of the monarchs leaving Mexico each spring may wind up in western North America, while others may filter into the eastern United States. This influx to the western U.S. could be crucial to survival of monarchs on that side of the continental divide.
"There are far fewer monarchs west of the Rockies," de Roode says. He notes that all of the overwintering monarchs on a typical overwintering site along the California coast consist of about the same number clustered onto a single big tree in Mexico's Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, where hundreds of millions of monarchs blanket the landscape in the winter.
The monarch butterfly migration has been called an endangered phenomenon, due to the loss of habitat along the routes. The Mexican overwintering sites, located in the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt region northwest of Mexico City, particularly suffer from deforestation. Drug trafficking in the region has decimated eco-tourism and hampered efforts to protect the trees.
"We hope our research can aid in the conservation of the monarch flyways," de Roode says.
Raising monarchs for release at weddings, memorials and other events is a growing industry, but U.S. Department of Agriculture regulations restrict shipping the butterflies across state lines.
De Roode stresses that this regulation should remain in force, even if further research confirms that eastern and western monarchs are genetically identical, because parasites that the butterflies carry can differ by region. "It's not a good idea to be shipping parasites around," he says.
###
For the latest Emory research news, visit www.emory.edu/esciencecommons.
Emory University is known for its demanding academics, outstanding undergraduate experience, highly ranked professional schools and state-of-the-art research facilities. Emory encompasses nine academic divisions as well as the Carlos Museum, The Carter Center, the Yerkes National Primate Research Center and Emory Healthcare, Georgia's largest and most comprehensive health care system.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Mystery of monarch migration takes new turnPublic release date: 31-May-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Beverly Clark beverly.clark@emory.edu 404-712-8780 Emory University
Emory University study finds strong evidence that eastern and western monarchs belong to a single genetic population
During the fall, hundreds of millions of monarch butterflies living in eastern North America fly up to 1,500 miles to the volcanic forests of Mexico to spend the winter, while monarchs west of the Rocky Mountains fly to the California coast. The phenomenon is both spectacular and mysterious: How do the insects learn these particular routes and why do they stick to them?
A prevailing theory contends that eastern and western monarchs are genetically distinct, and that genetic mechanisms trigger their divergent migratory paths.
An analysis led by Emory University biologists, however, finds that the two groups of monarchs are genetically mixed. Their research, published in the journal Molecular Ecology, suggests that environmental factors may be the key to the butterflies' choice of winter homes, and to where they wind up in the spring.
"Our data gives the strongest signal yet that the eastern and western monarchs belong to a single genetic population," says Emory biologist Jaap de Roode, who led the research. "This distinction is important to help us better understand the behavior of the organism, and to conserve the monarch flyways."
In addition to researchers in the de Roode lab, the study involved a scientist from the Institute of Integrative Biology in Zurich, Switzerland.
Biologists have long been fascinated by the innate and learned behaviors underlying animal migrations. When monarchs are breeding, for instance, they can live up to four weeks, but when they are migrating, they can live as long as six months.
"As the day length gets shorter, their sexual organs do not fully mature and they don't put energy into reproduction. That enables them to fly long distances to warmer zones, and survive the winter," de Roode says. "It's one of the basic lessons in biology: Reproduction is very costly, and if you don't use it, you can live much longer."
Mass movements of animals have huge ecological impacts. They are also visually arresting, from the spectacle of giant herds of wildebeest trekking across the Serengeti to hundreds of thousands of sandhill cranes flocking along the banks of Nebraska's Platte River.
In the case of long-lived mammals and birds, the younger animals may learn some of the behaviors associated with migration. That's not the case with the monarchs, notes Amanda Pierce, a graduate student in Emory's Population Biology, Ecology and Evolution program, and a co-author of the study.
"We know there is no learning component for the butterflies, because each migration is separated by two to three generations," Pierce says. "To me, that makes the problem even more interesting. How can these small, delicate animals travel thousands of kilometers and arrive at the same destination as their great-great grandparents?"
The question of whether eastern and western monarchs are genetically the same has been hotly debated, and may be an essential piece to the puzzle of their divergent migration patterns.
The researchers used 11 genetic markers to compare the genetic structures of eastern and western monarchs, as well as non-migratory monarch populations in Hawaii and New Zealand. The results showed extensive gene flow between the eastern and western monarchs, and a genetic divergence between these North American butterflies and those from Hawaii and New Zealand.
"In a sense, the genetic markers provide a DNA 'fingerprint' for the butterflies," de Roode says. "Just by looking at this fingerprint, you can easily separate the butterflies of North America from those in Hawaii and New Zealand, but you can't tell the difference between the eastern and western monarchs."
The Emory researchers have now joined a project headed by Harvard, which also involves the University of Georgia and the University of Massachusetts, to sequence the full genomes of monarch butterflies from places around the world. That data should rule out genetic differences between the eastern and western monarchs, or reveal whether any smaller genetic differences, beyond the 11 markers used in the study, may be at play between the two groups.
The idea that eastern and western monarchs are distinct populations has been bolstered by tagging-and-tracking efforts based in the United States. That data, gathered through citizen science, indicates that the butterflies stay on separate sides of the Rocky Mountains a formidable high-altitude barrier.
De Roode, however, theorizes that when spring signals the eastern monarchs to leave the overwintering grounds in Mexico, they may simply keep radiating out, reproducing and expanding as long as they find milkweed plants, the food for their caterpillars.
"Few people have tagged the monarchs within Mexico to see where they go," he notes, "because Mexico doesn't have as much citizen science as the U.S."
If the theory is correct, some of the monarchs leaving Mexico each spring may wind up in western North America, while others may filter into the eastern United States. This influx to the western U.S. could be crucial to survival of monarchs on that side of the continental divide.
"There are far fewer monarchs west of the Rockies," de Roode says. He notes that all of the overwintering monarchs on a typical overwintering site along the California coast consist of about the same number clustered onto a single big tree in Mexico's Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, where hundreds of millions of monarchs blanket the landscape in the winter.
The monarch butterfly migration has been called an endangered phenomenon, due to the loss of habitat along the routes. The Mexican overwintering sites, located in the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt region northwest of Mexico City, particularly suffer from deforestation. Drug trafficking in the region has decimated eco-tourism and hampered efforts to protect the trees.
"We hope our research can aid in the conservation of the monarch flyways," de Roode says.
Raising monarchs for release at weddings, memorials and other events is a growing industry, but U.S. Department of Agriculture regulations restrict shipping the butterflies across state lines.
De Roode stresses that this regulation should remain in force, even if further research confirms that eastern and western monarchs are genetically identical, because parasites that the butterflies carry can differ by region. "It's not a good idea to be shipping parasites around," he says.
###
For the latest Emory research news, visit www.emory.edu/esciencecommons.
Emory University is known for its demanding academics, outstanding undergraduate experience, highly ranked professional schools and state-of-the-art research facilities. Emory encompasses nine academic divisions as well as the Carlos Museum, The Carter Center, the Yerkes National Primate Research Center and Emory Healthcare, Georgia's largest and most comprehensive health care system.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Manipulating images for your website is such a tedious chore. You need to open Photoshop, click your mouse about ten thousand times, then save the file and upload it. Then next month you redesign your site and suddenly need to re-size all your image elements again! Startup ![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_ts3Jv2vMdxXaSyus4SSxylNKhIPsGby48fhho63zi6U76_fCl9AYUzOAIYOkplUrawqiVUwAwmubyeElczLzWNswncSczTXhGQ8itakKo=s0-d){kind=small}
Public release date: 31-May-2012
Share ]