Scientific News

There's oxygen on Rhea, but aliens? Don't hold your breath

2010-11-28T19:59:00.000+00:00

(Image: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)

On its journey around Saturn and its moons, the Cassini mission - jointly run by NASA and the European Space Agency - has made another breathtaking discovery. The findings, published in Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.1198366), show that Rhea, the second biggest moon of the giant planet, has an atmosphere that is 70 per cent oxygen and 30 per cent carbon dioxide. This adds to the picture of Rhea that Cassini has already provided by imaging its craters anddiscovering its rings.

"This really is the first time that we've seen oxygen directly in the atmosphere of another world", Andrew Coates, from University College London's Mullard Space Science Laboratory, t old The Guardian. Layers containing oxygen had already been detected around the Jovian moons Europa and Ganymede in the 1990s, but only from a distance using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.

This time, Cassini's instrument had the chance to "smell" that oxygen, as it flew through it over Rhea's north pole, just 97 kilometres above the surface, according to the details given on Space.com. This layer - with an oxygen density probably about 5 trillion times less than on Earth - was "too thin to be remotely detected", said Ben Teolis of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.

So where could this oxygen come from? "As the magnetic field rotates around Saturn, particles carried in the field slam into the hemisphere of Rhea that's facing their flow," Teolis told BBC News. "They hit that hemisphere and break water molecules on the surface. The atoms are then rearranging themselves to make oxygen molecules, which are sputtered from the surface by additional impacting particles." That process is likely to be ongoing, with the oxygen molecules created being constantly whipped out into space.

According to Teolis, "the new results suggest that active, complex chemistry involving oxygen may be quite common throughout the solar system and even our universe". Bad news for alien hunters, though, concludes Wired magazine."All evidence from Cassini indicates Rhea is too cold and devoid of liquid water necessary for life as we know it," Teolis told them.

Skin patch could offer pain relief with every flinch

2010-11-28T19:58:00.000+00:00

A SKIN patch could soon provide efficient pain relief whenever you flex sore muscles. The system would work by synchronising the release of drugs with movement of the underlying inflamed tissue.

The system could synchronise the release of drugs with movement of the inflamed muscle

Unyong Jeong's team at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea, covered a flexible rubber film with a sheet of corrugated microporous polystyrene, with gutters around 3 micrometres wide and 1 micrometre deep. The gutters were then filled with a liquid and sealed with another rubber film. Finally, the first rubber film was peeled away to expose the underside of the liquid-filled polystyrene gutters. Flexing the patch distorts the polystyrene tunnels enough to reduce their volume, squeezing the solution out through the pores in the plastic. Once the strain is removed, the tunnels spring back into shape, ready for the next use (Angewandte Chemie, DOI: 10.1002/anie.201004838).

Jeong and his team demonstrated the mechanism with a dye solution, but they are now moving on to therapeutic applications.

He envisages the first practical use will be skin patches for treating muscle pain and rheumatism. "Current [skin patches] are designed to just continuously release the active agents," he says. "If we can control the release rate responding to the motion of our muscles, it will make the patches more effective and prolong the time of use." He is also hoping to develop biodegradable strain-release patches to heal organs and damaged muscles inside the body.

Mauro Ferrari of the Methodist Hospital Research Institute in Houston, Texas, says the idea is clever. "I've never seen anything like it," he adds.

92 Years Later, A Sickle-Cell Surprise

2010-11-28T19:56:00.000+00:00

Dr. Jeffrey Taubenberger of the National Institutes of Health looked into a microscope this summer and saw something unexpected. He had been looking for evidence of a flu virus. Instead, he found the earliest known proof of sickle-cell anemia. Host Liane Hansen interviews Maryn McKenna ofWired magazine about the chance discovery of the first tissue sample of sickle-cell anemia.

LISTEN TO THE STORY

New discovery in the fight against Huntington’s disease

2010-11-28T19:54:00.002+00:00

Scientists have made a novel discovery in the fight against Huntington’s disease (HD).

HD is an incurable progressive neurodegenerative genetic disorder which affects motor coordination and leads to cognitive decline and dementia.

The disease pathology stems from a mutation in the huntingtin (Htt) gene, which results in the accumulation of toxic proteins leading to neuronal cell death.

Previous studies have clearly implicated caspases – enzymes that break down cells – as key players in the cascade of events involved in HD neuronal death.

Now scientists have identified three small molecules that inhibit the activity of those caspases, suppressing toxicity and rescuing neurons from cell death in cell culture.

The research was led by both Buck Institute faculty member Lisa Ellerby, and Yale University faculty member Jonathan Ellman. Dr. Ellerby is doing follow up studies in a mouse model of the disease.

Dr. Ellerby said a substrate based screening method was used to identify compounds that reacted with caspases. Based on those reactions, Jonathan Ellman, from the Yale University Department of Chemistry, converted the compounds to caspase inhibitors.

Dr. Ellerby said that the inhibitors are based on properties of a drug, which had entered Phase I clinical trials for the treatment of human liver preservation injury.

“These molecules shows particular promise. They cross the blood-brain barrier and acts selectively to block the processes involved in HD,” said Ellerby.

Dr. Ellerby said the caspase inhibitors both suppressed the proteolysis of Htt and rescued HD neurons that have begun to undergo cell death.

“We believe this is going to help us move the field forward because now we can test these compounds in live animals. Up until this point we have not identified a caspase inhibitor that has acted selectively against the toxic effects of the Htt mutation,” said Dr. Ellerby.

The study appears in the November 24th edition of Chemistry and Biology. (ANI)

Scientists image hydrogen atom directly for the first time

2010-11-28T19:53:00.000+00:00

Research team takes image of hydrogen atom

Kyodo News

A research team led by Yuichi Ikuhara, a professor of material science at the University of Tokyo, said Thursday they have succeeded in taking an image of a single hydrogen atom, the smallest and lightest of the chemical elements.

Nothing tinier: An arrow points at an image of a single hydrogen atom in this photo supplied by University of Tokyo professor Yuichi Ikuhara. KYODO PHOTO

Although it had been thought acquiring direct images of a hydrogen atom, whose diameter is about one-ten-millionth of a millimeter, was impossible, the team managed the feat with a state-of-the-art "scanning transmission electron microscope" while examining vanadium hydride, a hydrogen storage material.

The microscope scanned an electron beam onto a tiny spot, placed at a theoretically calculated location, on the specimen to enable a detector to catch and film the image of the hydrogen atom as well as the vanadium atom.

The same method can be used to take images of atoms of various kinds of specimens, according to the team. Earlier means of taking images of a hydrogen atom involved indirect methods, like image processing.

A technique for viewing a single hydrogen atom had been sought amid active research on hydrogen storage materials as a clean source of energy.

"Now we can view all atoms that exist in the world," Ikuhara said. "This will be a breakthrough toward future manufacturing that will be compelled to involve consideration of each individual atom and molecule."

The glorious mess of real scientific results

2010-11-07T12:56:00.000+00:00

Popular science is often triumphalist, presenting research as a set of completed answers, when in reality much of what gets published makes a glorious, necessary mess.

Here is an example. Solomon Asch’s legendary studies from the 1950s on conformity are among my favourite experiments of all time: some people in a room are asked to judge the length of a line; all but one are stooges, and they unanimously assert what is obviously an incorrect answer; but the one true unsuspecting experimental subject conforms to the majority view, despite knowing that it’s incorrect, about a third of the time.

It’s a chilling result that feels right, and over the past half a century researchers have replicated the study over 100 times in 17 countries, allowing hints of patterns to be spotted in the results. One analysis of US studies found that conformity has declined since the 1950s. Another found that “collectivist” countries tend to show higher levels of conformity than individualist ones.

This month the International Journal of Psychology published a new variant. Instead of one real subject in a room full of stranger stooges, they used polarising glasses – the same technology used to present a different image to the left and right eye for 3D films – to show participants different images on the same screen, at the same time, in the same room. This meant that friends could disagree, legitimately, and so exert social pressure, but without faking it.

The results were problematic. Overall, sometimes the minority people did conform to peer pressure, giving incorrect answers. But when the results were broken down, women did conform, a third of the time, but men did not. This poses a problem. Why were the results of this study different to the original study?

It could be that the subjects were different. The Asch experiments were only conducted in men, and they did conform. Perhaps modern Japanese undergraduates are different to 1950s US undergraduates (although cultural and generational differences have not previously been shown to be so large that they abolish the conformity effect completely).

It could be that the task, where you have to judge the length of a line, was slightly different. But if anything, the task in the new experiment was harder than the original, because the polarising glasses required that extra visual noise be added in, and if judgements were trickier, and therefore closer calls, then you might expect that conformity would increase, rather than decrease.

Or it could that the relationships were different. Perhaps conforming effects are less pronounced among people who know each other, rather than in a room full of stranger stooges: perhaps you feel more comfortable disagreeing with friends. This would be an important answer, if true, because when we extrapolate from the lab to the everyday, we’re probably more interested in conformity effects among acquaintances, because that’s what happens in a real community.

Maybe these questions will be resolved with a new experiment – you could probably design one yourself that would discriminate between the different possible explanations – but that will depend on whether someone is interested enough, and whether they can get the money and the time. Perhaps the paper will sink like a stone, and be ignored or overlooked, as sometimes happens with uncomfortable data.

But what you should know is this: alongside the triumphalism, and the answers, in reality, grey and conflicting results like these run deep in the research literature. They’re not an aberration, or a disappointment, in fact they are arguably the glorious norm, in the noise of over 20,000 academic journals, publishing well over a million articles every year. Alongside the giants, and the clean easy answers, challenging and ambiguous findings like these are what science is really made of.

Three Austrian men have taken their love of iPhones to a new level-by converting an iPhone into an iTable.

2010-11-07T12:52:00.001+00:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbSwOgNzZg

Three Austrian men have taken their love of iPhones to a new level-by converting an iPhone into an iTable.

As seen in a clip on video sharing website, YouTube, when the iPhone is connected to the specially modified table it beams the image of its screen on to the device.

With its special touch screen technology-called Table.Connect-they can then swipe the surface of the table and make it work just like an iPhone.

“At least two of us are real Apple fans, and this idea has stuck in our heads since at least 2 years,” the Sun quoted a spokesman for the Austrian trio, as saying.

“We don”t even remember what really sparked the idea.

“We plan to bring the Table.Connect system to as many devices as possible. Currently it only works with the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4.

“The most expensive part is the display, weeks of research not counting. For now we’re quite happy that we’ve found a development partner who can build such a display,” said the spokesman.

Money for Scientific Research May Be Scarce With a Republican-Led House

2010-11-07T12:48:00.000+00:00

Federal financing of science research, which has risen quickly since the Obama administration came to power, could fall back to pre-Obama levels if the incoming Republican leadership in the House of Representatives follows through on its list of campaign promises.

In the Republican platform, Pledge to America, the party vows to cut discretionary nonmilitary spending to 2008 levels. Under that plan, research and development at nonmilitary agencies — including those that sponsor science and health research — would fall 12.3 percent, to $57.8 billion, from the Mr. Obama’s request of $65.9 billion for fiscal year 2011.

An analysis by the American Association for the Advancement of Science looked at what would happen if all of the agencies were cut to the 2008 amounts. The National Institutes of Health would lose $2.9 billion, or 9 percent, of its research money. TheNational Science Foundation would lose more than $1 billion, or almost 19 percent, of its budget, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would lose $324 million, or 34 percent.

“These agencies would be more severely impacted by a rollback to 2008,” said Patrick Clemins, who directs budget programs at the association.

What will actually emerge from the final 2011 budget bills is “really unclear,” Mr. Clemins said. “The pledge is very vague in terms of what programs will be cut,” he said.

Mr. Clemins noted that Mr. Obama had already asked federal agencies to prepare for a 5 percent cut in their budgets for 2012.

The Democrats could try to push the budget bills through the Congress before the Republicans take power in January, but since the Democrats do not have the votes to end a Senate filibuster, success would be unlikely.

For the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, budget limbo is the new normal. NASA continues to operate on its 2010 budget and work on the program to send astronauts back to the moon, even though the Obama administration has pushed to cancel the moon program and Congress largely agreed.

Some Republicans were critical of the Obama proposal, saying it cut too deeply into the human space flight program and left the agency without a clear mission. On the other hand, the Republican push to rein in spending could lead to further cuts in that part of NASA’s budget.

Another uncertainty is money for stem cell research, which has been in flux since a federal judge ruled in August that any federal financing violated a Congressional ban against the destruction of embryos for research. “I think everyone is holding their breaths and seeing what happens in the courts,” said Joanne Carney, director of the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Center for Science, Technology and Congress.

SLUG-LIKE DUNES ON MARS

2010-11-07T12:43:00.000+00:00

Just in case you didn't think Mars could get any more alien, here's an intriguing photograph taken by the HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) in 2007. What are those dark objects? Giant slugs slithering over the Martian plains? Are the Sandworms from Frank Herbert's classic 1965 novel "Dune"real?

As much as I'd love to be announcing the discovery of an alien herd of rampaging giant invertebrates, alas (as you might have guessed) this is actually an image of some odd-looking dunes inside a 150 kilometer-wide Martian crater.

BIG PIC: Winter Frosted Mars Dunes

Uncovered by the Universe Today's ace writer Nancy Atkinson when she was browsing the latest photos from the Mars orbiter's website, these dunes are probably still active, gradually being shaped by the Martian winds to this day.

I've had a fascination with the dune features on Mars ever since the MRO first beamed these beautiful high-resolution pictures back to Earth. While the dunes often look alien and bizarre-shaped, there's a strange familiarity with the sand dunes we find on terrestrial beaches. They are, after all, shaped by the same thing: wind.

But why are the dunes in Proctor Crater so dark when the surrounding landscape appears to be scattered with brightly colored boulders and smaller dunes?

SLIDE SHOW: Phoenix Mars Lander's First Images

"The dark dunes are composed of basaltic sand that has collected on the bottom of the crater," remarks to Maria Banks, a geologist and planetary scientist from the University of Arizona.

It would appear that these large dunes were formed recently as they overlay the brighter rippled landscape. Basalt is formed as a product of volcanic activity, but over the eons, Mars' winds have eroded this rock into fine basaltic sand, eventually creating these dramatically contrasting sand dunes.

For more assorted Mars dunes, browse through the HiRISE database.

Scientists find damage to coral near BP well

2010-11-07T12:19:00.003+00:00

Enlarge

This undated photo provided by the Lophelia II 2010 research group, shows coral, several miles from the site of the blown-out BP well in the Gulf of Mexico, apparently covered with brown material. For the first time, federal scientists say they have found damage to deep sea coral and other marine life from the the Deepwater Horizon rig, but tests are needed to verify that the coral died from oil from released in the disaster. (AP Photo/Lophelia II 2010, NOAA, OER and BOEMRE) NO SALES

For the first time, federal scientists have found damage to deep sea coral and other marine life on the ocean floor several miles from the blown-out BP well - a strong indication that damage from the spill could be significantly greater than officials had previously acknowledged.

Tests are needed to verify that the coral died from oil that spewed into the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion, but the chief scientist who led the government-funded expedition said Friday he was convinced it was related.

"What we have at this point is the smoking gun," said Charles Fisher, a biologist with Penn State University who led the expedition aboard the Ronald Brown, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research vessel.

"There is an abundance of circumstantial data that suggests that what happened is related to the recent oil spill," Fisher said.

For the government, the findings were a departure from earlier statements. Until now, federal teams have painted relatively rosy pictures about the spill's effect on the sea and its ecosystem, saying they had not found any damage on the ocean floor.

In early August, a federal report said that nearly 70 percent of the 170 million gallons of oil that gushed from the well into the sea had dissolved naturally, or was burned, skimmed, dispersed or captured, with almost nothing left to see - at least on top of the water. The report was blasted by scientists.

Most of the Gulf's bottom is muddy, but coral colonies that pop up every once in a while are vital oases for marine life in the chilly ocean depths.

Coral is essential to the Gulf because it provides a habitat for fish and other organisms such as snails and crabs, making any large-scale death of coral a problem for many species. It might need years, or even decades, to grow back.

"It's cold on the bottom, and things don't grow as quickly," said Paul Montagna, a marine scientist at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University in Corpus Christi. He was not on the expedition.

Montagna said the affected area is so large, and scientists' ability to explore it with underwater robots so limited that "we'll never be able to see everything that happened down there."

Using a robot called Jason II, researchers found the dead coral in an area measuring up to 130 feet by 50 feet, about 4,600 feet under the surface.

"These kinds of coral are normally beautiful, brightly colored," Fisher said. "What you saw was a field of brown corals with exposed skeleton - white, brittle stars tightly wound around the skeleton, not waving their arms like they usually do."

Fisher described the soft and hard coral they found seven miles southwest of the well as an underwater graveyard. He said oil probably passed over the coral and killed it.

The coral has "been dying for months," he said. "What we are looking at is a combination of dead gooey tissues and sediment. Gunk is a good word for what it is."

Eric Cordes, a Temple University marine scientist on the expedition, said his colleagues have identified about 25 other sites in the vicinity of the well where similar damage may have occurred. An expedition is planned for next month to explore those sites.

When coral is threatened, its first reaction is to release large amounts of mucus, "and anything drifting by in the water column would get bound up in this mucus," Cordes said. "And that is what this (brown) substance would be: A variety of things bound up in the mucus."

About 90 percent of the large coral was damaged, Fisher said.

The expedition was funded by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The mission was part of a four-year study of the Gulf's depths, but it was expanded this year to look at oil spill damage.

In a statement released Thursday night, NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco said the expedition underscored that the damage to marine life from the oil spill is "not easily seen." She added that more research was needed to gain a "comprehensive understanding of impacts to the Gulf."

"Given the toxic nature of oil, and the unprecedented amount of oil spilled, it would be surprising if we did not find damage," she said.

NOAA did not provide any officials or scientists of its own who went on the expedition. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said its researcher on the expedition was unavailable.

Cordes said that the expedition did not find dramatic visual evidence of coral damage in other sites north of the well. But he said it was premature to say coral elsewhere in the Gulf was not damaged.

The new findings, though, could mean long-term trouble for the coral southwest of the well, where computer models and research cruises mapped much of the deepwater oil.

Referring to one type of coral known as "gorgonians," Cordes said he had never seen them "come back from having lost so much tissue. It would have to be re-colonization from scratch."

World's Earliest Wine (7000 years old) has been found in IRAN

2010-11-03T20:20:00.003+00:00

Found at a Neolithic village site in Iran, this jar was one of six vessels containing the remains of 7,000-year-old wine. (Courtesy The University of Pennsylvania Museum) [LARGER IMAGE]

Residue on a potsherd dating to the time of the first permanent settlements in the Middle East suggests that wine-making began 2,000 years earlier than previously thought. The sherd, ca. 7,000 years old, came from one of six two-and-one-half-gallon jars excavated two decades ago from the kitchen area of a mud-brick building in Hajji Firuz Tepe, a Neolithic village in Iran's northern Zagros Mountains. Using infrared spectrometry, liquid chromatography, and a wet chemical test, Patrick E. McGovern and a team from the University of Pennsylvania Museum found calcium salt from tartaric acid, which occurs naturally in large amounts only in grapes. Resin from the terebinth tree was also present, presumably used as a preservative, indicating that the wine was deliberately made and did not result from the unintentional fermentation of grape juice.

Analysis of the Hajji Firuz Tepe sherd comes in the wake of two other recent discoveries of early wine-making in this region where grapes grow in the wild. Residue from a jar from Godin Tepe, in the nearby middle Zagros Mountains, was dated to 5,100 years ago, until now the earliest evidence of wine-making. Grape presses dating to the late third millennium B.C. have been found at Titris Höyük in southeastern Turkey.

GOP to investigate ‘scientific fraud’ of global warming: report

2010-11-03T20:15:00.000+00:00

Fresh off a dramatic victory in which it retook the House leadership, the Republican Party intends to hold major hearings probing the supposed "scientific fraud" behind global warming.

The Atlantic's Marc Ambinderrelated the news in a little-noticed article Wednesday morning.

The effort is a likely attempt to out-step the White House on energy policy moving forward. Legislation on energy and climate change reform, one of President Barack Obama campaign promises, has yet to materialize, though Obama's EPA recently classified carbon dioxide as a pollutant.

Scientists say inaction will lead to an unmitigated spiral of polarized -- and over time rising -- temperatures, melting ice caps, rising sea levels and droughts, among other consequences.

The Republican belief to the contrary incubates the party's fervent opposition not only to cap and trade but to any measures reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The Obama administration has long anticipated efforts from the GOP to weaken the Environmental Protection Agency, and plan to strongly enforce environmental regulations.

The deeply differing views of the White House and likely energy chairman, Texas Republican Joe Barton, suggests that conflicts over the issue are inevitable in the new divided government.

Snake gives 'virgin birth' to extraordinary babies

2010-11-03T20:09:00.002+00:00

Snakes without fathers: one of the unusual baby boas

A female boa constrictor snake has given birth to two litters of extraordinary offspring.

Evidence suggests the mother snake has had multiple virgin births, producing 22 baby snakes that have no father.

More than that, the genetic make-up of the baby snakes is unlike any previously recorded among vertebrates, the group which includes almost all animals with a backbone.

Details are published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

Our finding up-ends decades of scientific theory on reptile reproduction

Biologist Dr Warren Booth

Virgin births do occur among animals.

Many invertebrates, such as insects, can produce offspring asexually, without ever having mated. They usually do this by cloning themselves, producing genetically identical offspring.

But among vertebrate animals, it remains a novelty, having been documented among less than 0.1% of vertebrate species.

In 2006, scientists discovered that two komodo dragons (Varanus komodoensis), the world's largest lizard species, had produced eggs that developed without being fertilised by sperm - a process called parthenogenesis.

Then in 2007, other scientists found that captive female hammerhead sharks (Sphyrna tiburo) could also reproduce without having sex.

But vertebrates generally reproduce sexually.

Not including genetic material from the father - essentially having just a single biological parent - reduces genetic diversity and makes it more difficult for organisms to adapt to, for example, changed environmental conditions or the emergence of a new disease.

Novel beginnings

Now, a team of scientists and snake experts based in the US has identified the first case of a boa snake having a virgin birth.

"Although parthenogenesis has been documented in a few snake species, our findings are truly novel for a number of reasons," says Dr Warren Booth of North Carolina State University in Raleigh, US.

He led the team that made the latest discovery, and also worked with the researchers who documented a virgin birth in a hammerhead shark.

VIRGIN BIRTHS

Many smaller invertebrate species embrace asexual reproduction, but almost all higher animals require sex to reproduce

On the rare occasions they do not, they usually give birth asexually via a process known as parthenogenesis

Read about how the world's largest lizard, the Komodo dragon, was discovered to be able to give birth to fatherless babies (pictured above)

Read about how a hammerhead shark also had an extremely rare 'virgin birth'

"The female [boa] has had not one virgin birth, but actually two, in spite of being housed with and observed to be courted by multiple males.

"All offspring are female. The offspring share only half the mother's genetic make-up," he told the BBC.

What is more, the female snake in question has produced offspring the like of which have never been seen before.

Special babies

In the two years following 2007, the captive-born female Boa constrictor produced two litters of live offspring, at the same time as being housed with four male snakes.

First impressions suggested there was something special about these babies: all were female and all had a particular, rare caramel colouration.

This colour is a rare recessive genetic trait, which is carried by the mother but not by any of the potential fathers.

So Dr Booth and colleagues conducted a series of genetic tests on the snakes to solve the enigma.

What they found was astonishing.

DNA fingerprinting revealed that the offspring had a number of genetic differences from any of their potential fathers, which ruled out all the males as sires of the litter.

That confirmed the first instance of a known virgin birth among boa snakes.

Half clones

All the offspring also had very unusual sex chromosomes.

Sex chromosomes are packages of DNA that drive the development of sexual characteristics; they essentially make animals genetically male or genetically female.

Humans for example have X or Y sex chromosomes; females have two X chromosomes and males have a combination of an X and a Y chromosome.

In place of X and Y, snakes and many other reptiles have Z and W chromosomes.

In all snakes, ZZ produces males and ZW produces females.

Bizarrely, all the snakes in these litters were WW.

This was further proof that the snakes inherited all their genetic material from their mother, as only females carry the W chromosome.

"Essentially they are half clones of their mother," says Dr Booth.

That is because the baby snakes have inherited two copies of one half of their mother's chromosomes, including one W chromosome.

SNAKES

Learn more about scaled reptiles: lizards, snakes and slowworms

More astonishing though, is that no vertebrate animal in which the females carry the odd sex chromosome (in this case the W chromosome) has ever been recorded naturally producing viable WW offspring via a virgin birth.

"For decades WW has been considered non-viable" says Dr Booth.

In such species, all known examples of babies that are the product of parthenogenesis are male, carrying a ZZ chromosomal arrangement.

The only previously known animals to carry this WW chromosome pairing were created by scientists in the laboratory, using intricate genetic techniques to artificially alter the way animal eggs develop.

"Essentially our finding up-ends decades of scientific theory on reptile reproduction," says Dr Booth.

One other mystery is what prompted the female snake to give birth this way.

"This female has given birth to sexually produced babies in the past, and only in years that she was housed with males has she produced offspring," Dr Booth explains.

"It appears that some interaction with a male is required.

"However, why she does not utilise his sperm is at present unknown."

Boas snakes are kept and bred all over the world as pets.

But, Dr Booth adds, "this study tells us we have much more to learn when it comes to reproduction in these primitive reptiles".