Keep time to music: also Bonobos stay on beat!

Some animals, like humans, can sense and respond to a musical beat, a finding that has implications for understanding how the skill evolved.
A study of bonobos (Species P. paniscus), closely related to chimpanzees, shows they have an innate ability to match tempo and synchronise a beat with human experimenters. Bonobos are very attuned to sound. They hear above our range of hearing.

For the study, researchers designed a highly resonate, bonobo-friendly drum able to withstand 500 pounds of jumping pressure, chewing, and other ape-like behaviours.
Scientists suspect that the musical and rhythmic abilities of humans evolved to strengthen social bonds, "so, one might think that a common ancestor to humans and the bonobo would have some of these capabilities," said Patricia Gray a biomusic program director at University of North Carolina in Greensboro.

Working with a group of language-competent bonobos at the Great Ape of Trust of Iowa, several whom have recorded with Peter Gabriel and Paul McCartney, and compose melodies using synthesizers, and in collaboration with renowned scientist, Dr. Savage-Rumbaugh, the research focuses on both empirical and theoretical inquiries in music cognition and perception, origins of culture, and theory of mind.
Experimenters beat a drum at a tempo favored by bonobos roughly 280 beats per minute, or the cadence that humans speak syllables.
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Follow the Chain Reaction

Before the PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) the life for a biologist was so hard.

We can just imagine the way of dealing of a resercher before start an experiment with the few picomoles of DNA (10 to minus 12 mole of DNA)...scare and anxiety of loosing the precious sample maybe fruit of the previous weeks of work.

But fortunatly, one evening in the spring 1983, the breakthrough appeared.

Kary Mullis, a chemist working at that time for a private company, was driving his Honda from San Francisco to Mendocino, with his girlfriend and collegue, in order to enjoy a cabin week-end. In the meanwhile he is completely immersed in his thoughts about some experimental tricks that always tormented the lame life of a researchers, when... .

"But... wait a moment... not it is no possible... maybe someone already tried something similar... but I have never heard something about it before..."

Suddenly his mind was involved in the flux of brain that will revolutionized the way to do molecular biology,  biochemistry and medicine. And of course which will bring him to Stockholm.

In fact in this car, Kary Mullis started to figure out the PCR, a molecular reaction inspired to what happen normally in Nature, that allows to the todays researcher to count on a major amount of DNA for their lab routine and to start to perform all of series of different researches (Genomic Sequencing, DNA Cloning, Synthetic Biology, ecc.) inaccesible before the introduction of PCR.

The key aspect of the PCR reaction is the simplicity and the rapidity for the production of consistent quantity of DNA. It is based on cycles of temperatures alternation and on the use of an enzyme able to retain an activity in those temperature sudden jumps.  And of course Nature already knew a good guy for this job: the DNA Polymerase of Thermophilus aquaticus.  In fact this bacterium can live at high temperature and consequently also its molecular machine retains activity at such temperatures.

So, after performing  twenty or more cycles of PCR you can achieve the exponential amplification of your initial DNA sample with the possibility of carry out a series of investigations inimmaginable before!

Ok, everything sounds like a weird discovery made by a weird lab rat.

But the whole image of Kary Mullis get in another frame when we consider his biography-like best seller, Dancing naked in the mind fild.

The Nobel Prize Kary Mullis ready to surf some nice waves

In this book, Mullis explores all the Science panorama, from the climatic change to the AIDS, from the neurobiology to the biotechnology until dealing with some borderline scientific issues, as the extraterrestrial life and the telephaty. Everything dressed with some LSD experiences and surf session that make the all story much more catchy and intriguer.

Hence,  the first post of this new scientific blog by Bamboo Prodution is dedicated to Kary Mullis, a scientist which made possible the last shift of paradigm, at least from a technical point of view, in the Life Science and which with his extravagance deserves one of the honorous citizenship of ScientiaBilly community!

And at the same time such post is in honour of PCR it-self, which makes our everydays lab life not so shitty as it could have been without this  mix of oligos, nucleotides , salt and enzyme!

P.S.: Enjoy, but could be very hard, our music playlist about Chain Reaction!