Ask Biologists 🙋👨‍🔬 🧬

Recently, I have been reading more and more articles saying that Alaskan lupines (Lupinus nootkatensis) are hindering the growth of trees in Iceland. Unfortunately, however, I could not find any valid reasons why this is so? The story goes that in 1945, the then director of the forest service brought two spoonfuls of seeds from Alaska to amfortify the nutrient-poor Icelandic soil, stop erosion in Iceland and prevent sandstorms. After all I know, lupines draw nitrogen from the air and store it in the soil. So why is that not good for native tree species, such as birch or larch?

There's herbivores, omnivores, and carnivores, but is there any category of animal life that can sustain itself on anything else that isn't related to living organisms?

Is the only known example of this at the moment basically...Plants, give or take the particular species & how one may interpret the question of relation to other life?

There are 5 kingdoms; Kingdom Animalia, Kingdom Plantae, Kingdom Fungi, Kingdom Minera, and Kingdom Protistae. Why isn't there another one for viruses, since they fit in neither of these kingdoms, due to the lack of DNA?

Anyone who knows how a skeleton looks like knows that there are spaces between the ribs. However, why does it have gaps between them? Why isn't it a single shell?

From my understanding, (a) the brain has no nerves, which is why you can talk to people while doing brain surgery on them; and (b) headache is caused by blood vessels constricting. Now, I am unsure whether migraines are also caused by blood vessels constricting, but in any case - what is it that is doing the sensing of this pain? Or is it a(nother) case of the brain just making shit up because it hates me?

Whenever there is something wrong in a cell, the lysosome will digesting the cell itself, so that it doesn't disrupt any of the other cells. However, an example of when this should happen in cancer. Why don't lysosomes digest the cell then?

If so, what are the potential consequences they pose to other animals or plants?

I know in a pinch people could maybe tolerate small amounts of saltwater, but if I'm not mistaken, I'm pretty sure you can't survive off it alone, and so...How'd that happen?

It seems kind of bizarre, but I guess the further inland people went the more advantageous it was to shed any such capacity to process saltwater?

Shouldn't they have disappeared via beign overriden by dominant genes a long time ago?

Too many sci-fi movies make it seem like you've got minutes before catastrophic symptoms appear after being exposed, but what's the most realistic timeframe for an infection to cause a severe response?

I stumbled upon this channel long time ago. Since then he claims to have Grown Real Spider Silk Using Yeast or taught rat neurons to play Doom.
The way he presents the content doesn't sound like a complete fantasy but my understanding of the topics is very rudimentary.

What do Lemmy biologists think about this channel?

Would you burn your fingers due to how hot it is?

So as most of you know, scientists inject germs into horses, since horse blood can easily create a antibody which can then be used to create a type of vaccine.

However, instead of injecting the disease into the horse blood, why can't horse blood be injected into humans? The immune system of the horse can create an antibody for every disease in our body as soon as we get it?

The diseases that horses get can be negated by the horse blood as well, since it is already used to diseases that horses can get.

Not really a question for just biologists but I can't imagine too many nonbiologists knowing enough microbes to answer it haha.

When you see images of skulls from 100,000 years ago, they have seemingly perfect teeth.

Today, modern humans have terrible dental health. I understand sugar causes a number of issues- the growth of bacteria which decays enamel.

What is the process teeth go through in the modern world to cause this? How quickly after consuming a sugary drink for example does this degradation start to occur?

And as a follow up, how does tooth paste help prevent this?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/661145

And a direct link to the embedded article at nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12127

More information is coming. 🧱🔨⚠️ WORK IN PROGRESS

Feel free to ask away already!