DL Open Thread: Sunday, June 19, 2022

Who says I provide nothing but depressing news?  (Oh, that’s me. Nevermind.)

Mosquitoes’ Fatal Flaw? (No, we’re not looking at an All-Insect Edition…)  They’re lacking in the genes department:

Mosquitoes have no EcI gene at all!

Mosquitoes apparently lost EcI during evolution somewhere and had to rejigger another protein channel to handle this work. There are, it turns out, three other proteins that look similar to EcI in mosquitoes and other insects, now called EcI-2, EcI-3, and EcI-4.

Using CRISPR/Cas9 to knock these three genes out one at a time in mosquito larvae, Yamanaka’s group found out that the EcR/EcI-2 pair in mosquitoes has the same yin-yang relationship as EcR/EcI does in fruit flies. Mosquito larvae cannot develop properly if they’re missing either EcR or EcI-2.

In other words, knock out the genes, knock out the mosquitoes, and leave all other bugs intact.  Here’s where Sarah Palin was wrong in dissing fruit fly research:

Yamanaka’s group did this to (no kidding) 3,974 different genes in a bunch of fruit fly cells, and they set it up so that only one gene would be knocked out per cell.  Then they mixed all of the resulting cells together, and added ecdysone.  Only the cells that have had their ecdysone machinery broken by Cas9 are going to grow, and normal cells won’t.  So if you let this mix of cells grow for a while, you’re going to end up with a lot of cells with broken ecdysone machinery, and not a whole lot of normal cells.

When they sequenced the DNA of the mixture of ecdysone-grown cells and counted up the genes that had been whacked by Cas9, exactly TWO genes stood out like sore thumbs.  These encoded:

1) the known ecdysone receptor EcR (we knew that should show up — good sanity check!), and

2) a proten channel called Oatp74D (where Oatp stands for organic anion-transporting polypeptide).

…And that’s it.  Just those two.  You’ve got to love a clear result like that!

So now it was time to test Oatp74D for real.  Fruit fly larvae can’t develop normally without ecdysone signalling, so if the yin-yang ecdysone pair really is EcR-Oatp74D, then fruit fly larvae without either EcR or Oatp74D should be screwed up in development, and in the same way.

Translation: It works. They think.

This Killer Was A Licensed Gun Dealer.  Mugshot Of The Week.  Killed Three At An Alabama Church Pot Luck.  Someone invited him to eat with them. Wasn’t hungry.  Brought down by a ‘good guy with a chair’.

Florida Vs. Kids:  DeSantis Decrees No Vax Program For Children.

According to an analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, most counties in the Sunshine State are seeing “high” Covid community levels, a metric based on hospital capacity, hospital admissions, and new case numbers. With an average of about 10,618 new cases reported per day in the state and climbing hospitalization rates this week, more than 90 percent of Floridians fall into the “high” risk category, the Tampa Bay Times reports.

This week, the Florida Department of Health announced it would not be preordering vaccines for children under five years old, making it the only state in the country to do so. “States do not need to be involved in the convoluted vaccine distribution process, especially when the federal government has a track record of developing inconsistent and unsustainable COVID-19 policies,” the department said in a statement, according to Politico. “It is also no surprise we chose not to participate in distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine when the Department does not recommend it for all children.” (It’s worth noting that Florida’s recommendations against vaccination for healthy children, including those older than five, have received harsh criticism from health experts and pediatricians.)

“There’s not going to be any state programs that are going to be trying to, you know, get Covid jabs to infants and toddlers and newborns,” said Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, at a news conference Thursday.“That’s not something that we think is appropriate, and so that’s not where we’re going to be utilizing our resources in that regard.”

BTW, check out the CDC map of risk levels.  I’ve generally supported Gov. Carney’s Covid efforts (well, except for that nursing home disaster).  But, can someone please explain to me why NCC and Kent County are still at elevated risk levels?  Does that, or does that not, say anything about the effectiveness of our response to the threat here in Delaware? I’m asking b/c I honestly don’t know.  But it surprised me.

Crypto: When Robert Reich Says It’s A Ponzi Scheme, It’s A Ponzi Scheme:

Eighty-nine years ago, Franklin D Roosevelt signed into law the Banking Act of 1933 – also known as the Glass-Steagall Act. It separated commercial banking from investment banking – Main Street from Wall Street – to protect people who entrusted their savings to commercial banks from having their money gambled away.

But by the 1980s, America forgot the financial trauma of 1929. As the stock market soared, speculators noticed they could make lots more money if they could gamble with other people’s money – as speculators did in the 1920s. They pushed Congress to deregulate Wall Street, arguing that the United States financial sector would otherwise lose its competitive standing relative to other financial centers around the world.

Finally, in 1999, Bill Clinton and Congress agreed to ditch what remained of Glass-Steagall.

As a result, the American economy once again became a betting parlor. Inevitably, Wall Street suffered another near-death experience from excessive gambling. Its Ponzi schemes began toppling in 2008, just as they had in 1929.

The difference was this time the US government bailed out the biggest banks and financial institutions. The wreckage was contained. Still, millions of Americans lost their jobs, their savings, and their homes (and not a single banking executive went to jail).

Why isn’t this market regulated? Mainly because of intensive lobbying by the crypto industry, whose kingpins want the Ponzi scheme to continue.

I’ve likely exceeded fair use.  Gotta say, Robert Reich is one of the very few people whose views I largely accept on face value.  As I do here.

What do you want to talk about?