Sealed with a kiss

The DNA behind a big smooch.

A long passionate kiss or a quick kiss on the lips does more than show feelings. Besides exchanging bacteria and mucus; you also leave your genetic code. The DNA left behind in a kiss will hang around for one hour. Good news for law enforcement. A person’s saliva could hold evidence in cases of assault or even infidelity.

Research done (in Slovakia) relied on detecting the Y chromosome; meaning only a man’s DNA in women’s saliva was detectable. They found that full DNA profiles were retrievable after one hour. Further research is being conducted to see if profiles can be obtained after longer periods and from corpses (New Scientist, 2013).

If the above wasn’t convincing enough; a London court sentenced an armed robber to 13 yrs. in prison, based on the genetic fingerprint that his saliva left behind on the bank’s security screen. You can read the story from the link below (Chicago Tribune).

DNA testing has advanced to the point that STRs profiles, useful for identification purposes, can now be retrieved from biological samples recovered after an explosion from highly burned and degraded bomb debris (Berti, et. al, 2011).

For those interested in forensic science, the library currently has holdings for 13 titles of online journals on forensics. Check out the link here.

References

New Scientists.  26 Jan 2013. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21729014.900-lingering-kiss-dna-persists-in-the-mouth-after-smooch.html

 

(Forensic Science International: Genetics, DOI: 10.1016/j.fsigen.2012.07.007).

DNA saliva test links man to bank robbery: [FINAL, M Edition]Chicago Tribune (pre-1997 Fulltext) [Chicago, Ill] 25 Mar 1992: 6.

Berti, F. Barni, A. Virgili, C. Colozza, F. Maiorino, M. Tocca, The recovery of DNA profiles from saliva and touch evidences after postal bomb explosion, Forensic Science International: Genetics Supplement Series, Volume 3, Issue 1, December 2011, Pages e471-e472, (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1875176811002368)

Image credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kuss.jpg

Homeward bound

Sea Turtle release in Juno Beach

The science outreach committee attended a turtle release at the Loggerhead Marinelife Center in Juno Beach, Feb 20, 2013. Three rehabilitated turtles were released back into the ocean.

Two of the turtles were sub-adult Loggerhead sea turtles "that stranded in the Cape Cod area cold-stunned. The turtles were suffering from hypothermia and were transferred to LMC to receive long-term treatment as facilities in the New England area were over-capacity with other cold-stunned sea turtles" (LMC, 2013). The third was a local Lake Worth rescue. He ingested a fishing hook at the Lake Worth pier.

The local rescue turtle was fitted with a tracking device so researchers can learn about his behavioral patterns and where he is from.

You can read about the center and all the patients in their care by going to this link.

The Loggerhead marinelife Center's website gives very useful information about what they do and why it is important. Check it out here:  http://www.marinelife.org

"LMC researchers have documented the nesting activity on 6 miles of beach in Juno and Jupiter since 1989, making our data set one of the longest-running in the State of Florida. Beginning in 2007, the staff expanded our program to include the beaches of Tequesta/Jupiter Colony and south of the Jupiter Inlet" (LMC, 2013).

The center is free and open to the public. There are many interactive programs available, as well as a gift shop. The Loggerhead Marinelife Center is a 501(c)3 non-profit education and ocean conservation facility.

Que cara, cara!

Species highlight: the crested caracara

I had my very first wild sighting of the Crested Caracara yesterday, so I decided to share my enthusiasm and highlight this raptor on this week’s blog post).

Crested Caracara (Polyborus plancus audubonii) (information extracted from the Fish and Wildlife Multi-species recovery Plan) [link below]

Federal Status: Threatened (July 6, 1987)

Critical Habitat: None Designated

Florida Status: Threatened

Recovery Plan Status: Revision (May 18, 1999)

Geographic Coverage: Rangewide

The crested Caracara is a non-migratory, diurnal raptor species that occurs in the southern United States and Central America. The Florida population is isolated from the remainder of the subspecies and is listed under the Endangered Species Act. There are no specific management activities for this species.

The following illustration shows distribution of the caracara in Florida. “The region of greatest abundance for this subspecies is a five-county area north and west of Lake Okeechobee, including Glades, Desoto, Highlands, Okeechobee, and Osceola counties” (FWS).

Habitat: The Florida population commonly occurs in praire areas (dry or wet), and scattered cabbage palms. Widespread land use changes have altered the preferred habitat of the Florida caracara. They now seem to have adapted to improved pasture land; with the seasonal appearance of wetlands to these areas being an important factor.

Diet:  Caracaras are opportunistic feeders. They eat both carrion and live prey; with a variety of species (e.g. fish, snakes, mammals, birds, insects).

Reproduction:  The Caracara live long lives and have been recorded 20+ years old. Little is known about their breeding habits or when breeding begins. Their pair bond is strong and the birds remain together until a mate dies. Clutch size is two eggs. Incubation lasts for about 28 days and is shared by both sexes. Ordinarily only one brood is raised per season (FWS).

Status and Trends: Their populations in the United States have been in decline. Actual estimates are hard to assess. In 1991, Stevenson estimated the adult population in Florida to be 300; and the immature population to be 100-200, making the statewide population to be 400-500 birds.

The Crested Caracara is listed as threatened by the ESA in the United States. For more details you may read the full species recovery plan at the link below.

Reference: 

FWS http://www.fws.gov/verobeach/MSRPPDFs/AudubonsCrestedCaracara.pdf

Image credit:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Caracara_cheriway_Roma_TX.jpg

Where's the Beef?

Where’s the Beef?

Apparently not in burgers in the U.K.! According to CNN, all beef in the UK is being tested after beef lasagna sold by the U.K. firm Findus, was found to contain horsemeat. This happening only weeks after horse and pig DNA was found in “all beef” burgers. Food inspectors found 60-100% horsemeat in samples of the Findus lasagna. They have also pulled Bolognese, shepherd’s pie and moussaka for the same reason.

 Horsemeat  (pictured on the left) can be consumed without health risks, but the unauthorized use of it raises concerns on whether it may contain phenylbutazone,  a drug commonly used to treat horses and that poses a risk to human health. Not to mention eating horsemeat is taboo in the U.K. ( and in the U.S.). People do consume horsemeat in other countries (i.e. France ,China, Russia, Kazakhstan and Italy).

  

“The discovery of pig DNA in beef products is of particular concern to Jews and Muslims, whose dietary laws proscribe the consumption of pig products. Jewish dietary laws also ban the eating of horsemeat”(Smith-Spark, 2013).

Food safety confidence can have a major impact on retail businesses, as well as raise health concerns.

To read the full story from CNN; go here.

Side note: Sorry for two beef stories in a row, but the food industry and agriculture are big business and there is much to report on. Students remember you can look for more topics relating to beef safety by using our online databases here:

http://www.fau.edu/library/ecollect/searchwise.php

reference:

Smith-Spark, laura, 2013. CNN. UK beef products tested as horsemeat found in lasagna; Sweden also acts. Fri February 8, 2013. Online: http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/08/world/europe/uk-horsemeat-probe

Image credit: basashi. Sliced horse meat. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Basashi.jpg

The grass is always greener

Can grass fed cows help save the planet?

Cows in this country are raised in a feedlot and eat grain their entire lives. This makes them grow fatter and faster for the $79 billion beef industry. Those cows that are left outside in the pasture to eat grass, are sold as “grass-fed” meat. This process takes longer, but produces leaner meat. It also has a stronger taste, which sometimes make it not as desirable; because most of us are raised on the fatty version of beef. Because of the longer time in pasture, the cost for production is greater and is passed on to the consumer.

The trend in grass-fed beef is growing. With rising costs of corn and grains, some farmers are looking at other options. Besides being a healthier choice, grazing pastures provide habitat for lots of other creatures, not just cows. “When managed properly, they can store carbon in much the same way that a forest does. Finishing cows on the range eliminates the need for concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, which sully water quality from little creeks all the way down the Mississippi River and into the Gulf of Mexico” Weber, 2013).

An ecologically diverse rangeland will hold up in adverse weather conditions and allow for continuous grazing all year long. Much land is used now to grow the grain that is fed to the cows. This land could be converted back into graze land, which would have many ecological benefits.

Raising cattle on grass fed fields is a science, and farmers need to be re-trained on what their options are. Right now it all depends on if the public is willing to adjust to the taste and the higher prices.

To read more of this story go here.

Reference:

Weber, Chris, 2013. Upping the steaks: How grass-fed beef is reshaping ag and helping the planet. Online. Available at:  http://grist.org/food/upping-the-steaks-how-grass-fed-beef-is-reshaping-ag-and-helping-the-planet/

 

Image credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hereford.jpg

Out of Bounds

Transboundary Diseases and why we should pay attention to them:

[this entire post was borrowed from the  FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations)]

"All animal diseases have the potential to adversely affect human populations by reducing the quantity and quality of food, other livestock products (hides, skins, fibers) and animal power (traction, transport) that can be obtained from a given quantity of resources and by reducing people's assets. Of these, transboundary animal diseases tend to have the most serious consequences.

Transboundary Animal Diseases (TADs) may be defined as those epidemic diseases which are highly contagious or transmissible and have the potential for very rapid spread, irrespective of national borders, causing serious socio-economic and possibly public health consequences.

These diseases which cause a high morbidity and mortality in susceptible animal populations, constitute a constant threat to the livelihood of livestock farmers.
Furthermore, their potential consequences are of such a magnitude that their occurrence may also have a significant detrimental effect on national economies.

Transboundary animal diseases have the potential to:

	threaten food security through serious loss of animal protein and/or loss of draught animal power for cropping;
	increase poverty levels particularly in poor communities that have a high incidence dependence on livestock farming for sustenance;
	cause major production losses for livetsock products such as meat; milk and other dairy products; wooland other fibers and skins and hides, thereby reducing farm incomes. They may also restrict opportunities for upgrading the production potential of local livestock industries by making it difficult to utilise exotic high producing breeds which tend to be very susceptible to the transboundary disease;
	add significantly to the cost of livestock production through the necessity to apply costly disease control measures;
	seriously disrupt or inhibit trade in livestock and livestock products either within a country or internationally. Their occurrence may thereby cause major losses in national export income in significant livestock-producing countries;
	cause public health consequences in the case of those transboundary animal diseases which can be transmitted to humans (i.e. zoonoses);
	cause environmental consequences through die-offs in wildlife populations in some cases, and;
	cause pain and suffering for affected animals" (FAO, 2013). _______________________________________________________ Websites and governmental organizations to learn more about animal diseases: 1. APHIS animal health and diseases here 2. Center for Food security and Public Health  disease list here 3. OIE World Organizations for animal Health info here 4. USDA/FAO Unites States Department of Agriculture transboundary disease here ___________________________________________________________ references: FAO. Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, 2013. online. available at:  http://www.fao.org/ag/againfo/programmes/en/empres/diseases.asp image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wild_Pig_KSC02pd0873.jpg

“I’m ready for my close up, Mr. Demille”

Photo id software for wildlife conservation

Understanding movements of individual animals is vital to biologists  and can lead to a better understanding of “social interactions, migratory routes, preferred habitats, behaviors within certain settings, life spans, and reproduction rates of various species” (GNB, 2013).

Some of the methods used include radio tagging, banding, notching, branding, and photo id. Most of the methods are labor intensive, expensive and are not guaranteed to stay in place due to outside circumstances.  Photo id is noninvasive and causes no behavioral changes that can occur with the other methods. However, getting good photos that can be compared is not easy.

A new software program, StripeSpotter, is becoming more widely used and more readily available. “With StripeSpotter, a computer program is able to identify individual zebras from a single photograph, field ecologists simply upload a digital photo of a particular animal’s flank. StripeSpotter then analyzes the pixels and assigns a “stripecode.” When a future photo of a zebra is uploaded, it’s run against the stripecode” (GNB, 2013).  The software is highly accurate and is currently being used in Kenya to track zebra.

According to researchers, the software is very useful because it is “tolerant of different sizes of animals in the images, exposure and mild perspective skews. It can be applied to any animal that has a coat with distinct markings. It provides feedback to the user about matching results”(Staeder, 2013).

The article related to the research of this type of photo id can be found here.

References:

( GNB) Good Nature blog, 2013. Online. Available at: http://goodnature.nathab.com/could-new-animal-id-software-aid-in-conservation-efforts/

M. Lahiri, C. Tantipathananandh, R. Warungu, D.I. Rubenstein, T.Y. Berger-Wolf. Biometric Animal Databases from Field Photographs: Identification of Individual Zebra in the Wild. Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Multimedia Retrieval (ICMR 2011), Trento, Italy, 2011.

Staeder, 2013. MSNBC news. Online. Available here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42500680/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/new-animal-barcode-scanner-earns-its-stripes/#.UQALcPLq3Tq

Image credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Plains_Zebra_Equus_quagga.jpg