Is it just me or does that fish look horrified?

I’m working with a student this summer on a project to measure the dynamics of a migrating cell population, and in addition to making pretty pictures and collecting data, we’re going over papers in the scientific literature. One of those papers is about filopodia as sensors.

For those of you who don’t know your cellular anatomy, migrating cells have this kind amoeboid movement in which their cytoplasm oozes in a kind of bulk flow into expanding volumes of membrane, but they also may make long, spindly, delicate ‘antennae’ that reach out in multiple directions. These filamentous processes are called filopodia. Moving cells probe their environment by sending out these little scouts that can sense signals, either repulsive signals that tell the cell to not go that way, or attractive signals that can trigger the cell to flow in a particular direction.

The illustrations in this paper are kind of quirky, but nice. To show how cells respond to signals in the environment, they use an octopus as a stand-in for the cell, with its arms representing filopodia.

Despite the blatant octopomorphization, something about this appeals to me. I’ve been describing these cells we’re watching as spidery, but clearly I’ve been using the wrong phylum as a metaphor.

I like the bandaged arm image. One of the things we’re sometimes seeing is that cells don’t just retract and limp away, sometimes they literally die and explode into little fragments. This needs an octopoid illustration.

Almost a year ago, I briefly wrote up the results of the cephalopod genome sequence— a sequence, which thanks to a few off-the-cuff, silly remarks by one of the authors, had turned into an assertion by irresponsible journalists that science had proven that octopuses were aliens. They haven’t. Researchers actually found many commonalities — cephalopods are a branch of the animal family tree, and share genes with all other organisms on the planet.

But hey, what do you know, deja vu all over again. Inanity re-emerges, with a recent article titled SCIENTISTS CONCLUDE OCTUPUS DNA IS NOT FROM THIS WORLD.

Thanks to the first-ever full genome sequence, researchers have found that octopuses (NOT Octopi) are in fact entirely different from any other animals on our planet. Their genome shows a never-before-seen level of complexity with a staggering 33,000 protein-coding genes identified, more than in a human being.

US researcher Dr. Clifton Ragsdale, from the University of Chicago, said: The octopus appears to be utterly different from all other animals, even other molluscs, with its eight prehensile arms, its large brain, and its clever problem-solving abilities.

“The late British zoologist Martin Wells said the octopus is an alien. In this sense, then, our paper describes the first sequenced genome from an alien.”

What Wells said is what is known on planet Earth as a “joke”. An exaggeration for humorous effect.

Apparently, scientists have just proven that journalists are aliens, lacking normal human feeling and appearing incapable of comprehending the behavior of bipedal mammals.

They are also prone to lying.

Octopuses have an alien genetic baggage. The scientific report mainly concluded that Octopuses share ‘Alien’ genes.This has been a ground shaking claim in the scientific community which caused an upheaval among marine biologists who seemed to be shocked and intrigued at the same time.

None of this is true at all.

Casey Coates Danson, you are an incompetent, dishonest hack. Resign from your job. Never ever even attempt any science reporting ever again.

I hate it. Mainly because I get swamped with people asking me to explain crap, and even more, because there’s a whole lot of people who enthusiastically embrace the crap. The crap in question is this press release from the University of Leiden, Second layer of information in DNA confirmed.

The press release is bullshit, OK? But for some reason, people really want to hear that there is some other magical kind of external information that, I don’t know, frees them from the tyranny of genetics, or something. See also epigenetics, which also appeals to the lay public for all the wrong reasons. The paper isn’t talking about a “second layer of information” — it’s talking about mechanical effects of the nucleotide sequence. That’s it. Everyone can calm down now.

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Who among you has taught or studied vertebrate anatomy? I have. It’s cool. Skeletal and muscular anatomy are weird, though, because we so take the principles for granted that we’re often not aware of it. We can move because we have a jointed framework, a collection of levers that are moved by the contractions of muscle fibers, which have distinctive attachments and insertions via tendons on those bones (or, in some cases, the muscles attach to sheets of connective tissue called fascia). The musculoskeletal part of anatomy classes consists of a lot of memorization of muscles, their origins and insertions, and the effect of the action of contracting the muscle. In some ways, vertebrate limbs are actually rather crude, made up of bony rods with joints that are prone to failure (I am very aware of that as I get older), with a collection of long muscles cobbled together to carry out specific movements.

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I keep telling students that the key thing in photography is lighting.

That’s not a meal, that’s her newborn baby!