Dropping Some Marine Science

I really enjoyed this op-ed, appearing in yesterday’s NYT, urging a greater public understanding of science. (I hesitate to start off with that because I feel all I ever link to are NYT articles.)

Angelenos, if you’re looking for a way to expand your understanding of science, but also maybe music or poetry or design, then go east, young man, to the Machine Project (here in Echo Park).

I went to their program on Friday – it was a lecture on sea slugs, followed by a performance from an electronica-ish band that had composed a song about sea slugs for the occasion. It was gratis, and fascinating. Did you know:

-There are some sea slugs that eat sea anemones and jellyfish, and their digestive systems isolate the nematocysts (the stinging cells that cover these animals’ tentacles), and don’t digest them, so that the slug can collect them and use them for itself!

-On the other side of the dietary spectrum, some sea slugs that eat algae can isolate the chloroplasts (the organelles within plant cells where photosynthesis is carried out), not digest them, and collect them and use them, i.e. live off the energy created by the continuing photosynthesis! And there’s a twist. Chloroplasts are similar to mitochondria in that they have their own DNA, but a chloroplast does not contain all of the DNA it requires to function – it would soon die if removed from the cell. Enter the retrovirus. There is a retrovirus that infects these algae-eating sea slugs that provides them with the extra DNA required to extend the life of the stolen chloroplasts for up to nine months. Eventually the retrovirus taketh away by killing the slug, but what a ride.

-Sea slugs are all simultaneous hermaphrodites, possessing both male and female sex organs at the same time. There is a particular kind of slug (actually the algae-eating kind referenced above) that has sex in an awfully violent way, using a method called hypodermic insemination. The penis of the slug is tipped with a needle, which it jams into any slug it can find (sometimes the wrong species, and sometimes itself), injecting sperm directly into the body of its mate, into any location on the mate’s body. The sperm then swim through the body of the mate, eventually making their way to the egg.

Past programs of the Machine Project include Build Your Own Robot, and Etymology & Entomology (two speakers, one on language, one on bugs, followed by refreshments of Edamame and Entenmann’s).