Giving mice better color vision

It's finals week here, so I haven't had much time for blogging, but I will mention a really cool study that involved giving mice a human photoreceptor gene, then testing to see if they could actually see in all the colors as humans (mice normally only have two color receptors, humans have three). Scientific American's popular-level explanation is here, and the full paper from Science is here (subscription required). It's quite a cool experiment.

It got me thinking, birds have four color receptors, meaning that they can see in colors we can't even fathom (the article I read this in compared it to having a 3D color map instead of 2D like ours). Could we engineer humans to see color like birds? Or some insects see into the ultraviolet (and some other animals into the infrared), so could we potentially expand our vision into those fields? It's probably unethical, at least right now, but it's a cool possibility.

New Form of Biodiesel Created

Biodiesel is being touted as a wave of the future, one of the best ways to reduce dependence on oil and cut non-renewable fuel use. Unfortunately it’s made from the same plants we eat, and if it became widely used, it would have to compete with food for space on farms.

Fortunately, that may be about to change, thanks to a team of German scientists lead by Alexander Steinbüchel from the University of Munster. The team modified some E. coli bacteria to make alcohol from sugar, and then combine that alcohol with oil. This produces a fatty-acid fuel that can be burned in a diesel engine, and has been dubbed “microdiesel”.

One benefit is that this fuel produces no toxic byproducts, unlike traditional biodiesel. Additionally, the researchers say that further modifications could eliminate the need to use oil as a constituent, enabling the bacteria to produce fuel from only plant waste byproducts resulting from normal food processing.

That fact is this methods greatest asset, reducing the cost of producing the fuel and the need for dedicated farm land. These are the two main obstacles preventing biodiesel from becoming practical, and they’re close to being surpassed. Hopefully Steinbüchel and his team will surmount the remaining challenges and make biodiesel practical. If the alarmists are right, our very world could depend on it.