Home

On:

Scientists have discovered that a parasite normally found in cat faeces could help them to formulate a cancer-fighting vaccine.

Though Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii), a single-celled parasite, is happiest when hanging out in a cat’s intestines, it can live in any warm blooded animal and affects about one-third of the world’s population, including 60 million Americans. Most people have no symptoms, but some experience a flu-like illness, particularly those with suppressed immune systems who can develop a serious infection if they encounter T. gondii. Pregnant women are also advised to take extra care not to come into contact with the bacteria as it can threaten the health of unborn babies and cause miscarriage, still birth or birth defects.
read more

On:

Figuring out how cat coloration comes about could help scientists understand our immune system’s resistance to infectious diseases.

On NPR.com, Joe Palca quotes researcher Stephen O’Brien as saying that they’re trying to explain why "some cats are spotted, some cats have stripes, some cats have what we call blotches, and other cats don’t have any of that, they just have a black or a lion-like color." The genetic variants that determine those patterns come from different mutations in the same genes.

Cats with narrow stripes have a working copy of one specific gene, but if a mutation turns that gene off, the cat ends up with a blotchy pattern.
read more

On:

Why adopt a pet from the pound when you can print out any kind of pet you want? Three-dimensional printing can make objects ranging from violins to pilotless aircraft, so why not a unique pet, designed especially for you.

The Economist writes: "The idea of printing organs such as kidneys for transplant has been around for several years. It works by growing separate cultures of individual cell types, and then spraying them out, layer by layer, in combination with a binding agent called a hydrogel, to build up the correct shape.
read more

On:

About 15 years ago, evolutionary biologist Jaroslav Flegr began to notice dramatic changes in himself and upon investigation, theorized that a tiny parasite that he caught from his cat was subtly manipulating his personality, causing him to behave in strange, often self-destructive ways. And if it was doing this to him, it was doing the same thing to other cat owners (but only if your cat is a "mouser").
read more