Scientific Adventures: "Assisted evolution" may save reefs from extinction

Header image for Interrobang article CREDIT: UNFOLDINGIMAGE / ISTOCK / THINKSTOCK
With the use of innovative scientific advances, we may be able to save the coral reef.

Several new medical discoveries were published this month including the first ever case of using gene-editing to save a one-year-old from terminal cancer.

There was also a technique performed in Toronto, which penetrated the human blood-brain barrier without surgery to deliver drugs to a brain tumour. A man in South America who became infected with cancerous tapeworm cells, was the first case of zoonotic transfer of cancer cells to humans.

Though it wasn’t just medical science that advanced. Marine biologists and robotics also received new data to study.

Coral reef extinction

With 10 to twenty per cent of worldwide coral reefs expected to die off this year due to bleaching, increased acidity and warming of the oceans, researchers from the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology have been successfully performing “assisted evolution” experiments on corals species from the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

“Assisted evolution” is the same process by which the ancient tseonite plant was shaped and nudged by humans into todays forearm sized corn plant.

The process first begins by taking healthy pieces of remaining coral from dying reefs and binding the calcium exoskeleton of live coral species to ceramic tiles.

By subjecting these samples to increasing acidic and higher temperature conditions, the team of scientists have began to show success in making their coral samples grow at a more accelerated rate.

Healthy Orbicella faveolata, Pseudodiploria clivosa and Porites lobate coral pieces were separated into one-centimeter sized squares. These were then epoxied onto the tiles, and placed in a grid formation.

After a year of growth, individual fragments of the coral were no longer visible as they had entirely fused and grown over the testing surface.

Scientists are now looking at promising applications in a real world setting, including jumpstarting new, sturdier varieties of coral species for future reefs to grow into, and to fill in dead spots of living reefs throughout the oceans.

Origami

Researchers from China have recently used the ancient art of origami as an inspiration for their most recent invention, a folding robot no larger than the size of a fingernail.

The secret to the micro robot is the material it is made of with, grapheme. This material is a form of pure carbon, formed into a hexagonal two-dimensional lattice.

The graphene paper was made with specific features to allow different folding maneuvers.

But what’s science without adding some lasers?

By shooting the robot with laser pulses, it was able to perform bending, folding and pleating moves. By shooting the robot with lasers it heated the material and allowed it to move. When heated, the paper would then fold along the predetermined lines.

The heat produced by the lasers was actually cooking away moisture in the graphene paper. By removing the moisture, the paper was able to revert to a preformed shape.

With co-ordinated laser pulses, the origami inspired robot was able to move around from a flat resting position, and could “walk” and turn around corners, much like an inchworm does, with the object contracting upwards.

The team of researchers is now looking at incorporating this technology into existing robotics, sensor applications and in the production of artificial muscles. But for now, we’ll have to accept pieces of paper that can move around like a caterpillar.

Local Nobel Prize winners

But interesting research is also being performed closer to home. Physicists working in Sudbury in conjunction with Japanese researchers won the 2015 Nobel Prize in physics in October.

They won the prize for their work showing that neutrinos-subatomic particles that are produced by radioactive decay have distinct “flavours” that they change into, giving evidence that neutrinos have mass.

The same teams then went on to win the $3-million Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, sharing with a third team from China.

Scientists are looking deep into space, under the earth’s surface and within our own bodies to discover new and intriguing information everyday.