Scientoon on Visitors to Antarctica may Harm Penguins by Infecting Them

Scientoon on Visitors to Antarctica may Harm Penguins by Infecting Them

New study, detected bacteria from humans (Salmonella and Campylobacter) in Antarctic and subantarctic animals, indicating the fragility of Antarctic ecosystems and warns about the risk of massive deaths and extinctions of local fauna populations due pathogens.

Kindly find the scientoon based on above fact.

Feel free to share it because it is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 International License.

Reference: Marta Cerdà-Cuéllar, Elisabet Moré, Teresa Ayats, Mònica Aguilera, Sara Muñoz-González, Noelia Antilles, Peter G. Ryan, Jacob González-Solís. Do humans spread zoonotic enteric bacteria in Antarctica? Science of The Total Environment, 2019; 654: 190

Penguins lost ability to taste fish

 

Sensing its biotic and abiotic environmental cues is critical to the survival and reproduction of any organism. Generally vertebrates can recognize sweet, umami, bitter, sour and salty. Genetic analysis shows that the sweet, umami, and bitter tastes have been lost in all penguins.

Zhang and colleagues made the determination after sequencing the genomes for Adelie and emperor penguins. The researchers were surprised that they couldn’t find some basic taste genes, so they took a closer look at penguin DNA. This led the scientists to conclude that all penguin species lack functional genes for the receptors of sweet, umami and bitter tastes.

Sweet, umami and bitter flavors are temperature sensitive. Such taste will not be sensed in cold region. This would be one reason that they lost the gene also. Further it is known fact that penguin is swallowing food, not masticating.

Link to general articles on it:

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-31490623?print=true

http://news.discovery.com/animals/endangered-species/penguins-have

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/penguins-it%E2%80%99s-matter-no-taste

Link to original research paper:

http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2815%2900057-3

Follow @vkmuliya