18 | New Scientist | 1 February 2020PalaeontologyCells grown in a lab
make snake venomSNAKE glands have for the first
time been grown in the lab as tiny
balls of cells called organoids that
become filled with venom. It
might mean the end of “milking”
snakes for their venom by hand
to produce treatments for bites.
The small clumps of cells, just
1 millimetre across, could also be
used for turning the biochemicals
in venom into medicines because
they have powerful effects on thePregnancy may
affect menopauseWOMEN who have been pregnant
or breastfed a baby are less likely
to experience an early menopause.
This may be because ovulation
stops while pregnant and slows
during breastfeeding, maintaining
a reserve of eggs for longer.
Several studies have suggested
that having a baby might affect the
timing of menopause, but most
have required people to accurately
recall when their menopause
started. This isn’t always easy
as periods can be erratic before
menopause, which is usually only
confirmed 12 months after periods
stop, says Christine Langton at the
University of Massachusetts.
Instead, Langton and her team
looked at health records in the
Nurses’ Health Study II – a project
that has asked volunteers for
information every two years since- The researchers studied the
pregnancy, breastfeeding and
Health^ MedicineTHE oldest confirmed fungi fossils
have been identified in a Belgian
museum, providing new evidence
for how life on Earth evolved.
The fossils are between 715 and
810 million years old, making them
more than 250 million years older
than the previous confirmed record
holder. Steeve Bonneville at the
Free University of Brussels says the
fossils had been in Belgium’s Royal
Museum for Central Africa for
decades without anyone analysing
them, having been originally
discovered in what is now the
Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Bonneville and his team were
initially unsure if the fossils, which
are trapped between pieces of rock,
were fungal or bacterial. The fossils
are dark and characterised by
networks of filaments. The key to
determining their fungal origins wasto find out if these networks are
made of chitin, a polymer that is
in the cell walls of all fungi but not
in those of bacteria.
By using powerful microscopy
to identify the presence of chitin,
the researchers were able to show
beyond reasonable doubt that
these fossils are fungal (Science
Advances, doi.org/ggjdbk).
The discovery sheds light on
early life. Fungi were always
suspected to be partners of the
first plants to colonise the planet,
says Bonneville, but previously
confirmed fungi fossils were too
young to support this idea.
Jonathan Leake at the University
of Sheffield, UK, says he believes
that even older fungi fossils have
been discovered but haven’t yet
been chemically confirmed to be
fungi. Jason Arunn MurugesuFungi were in the mix
715 million years ago
body, says Hans Clevers of Utrecht
University in the Netherlands.
His team created the organoids
by taking tiny clumps of gland
tissue either from snake embryos
inside eggs or, in one case, from a
pet snake that had to be put down
due to illness (Cell, doi.org/dkb6).
Antivenom is currently made
by keeping snakes in captivity and
extracting their venom. This is
injected in low doses into horses,
which make antibodies that can
be taken from their blood.
Being able to make venom in
the lab would cut out the snake
farming part of the process. It is
labour intensive, so only a few
kinds of snakes are kept in this
way, meaning we don’t have
antidotes for many snakebites.
In the longer term, antibodies
to lab-produced venom could be
made by immune cells grown in
a dish, avoiding all use of animals.
Several drugs for people have
also come from research on
venom, and the hope is such work
could be expanded. Clare Wilsonmenopause reports of 108,887
people over a 26-year period.
They found that people who
had pregnancies that lasted at
least six months had a lower risk
of experiencing early menopause,
defined as menopause before the
age of 45, than those who hadn’t.
The link isn’t explained by
infertility, says Langton. Her team
accounted for this by removing
people from the study sample who
had reported that they were trying
to conceive but hadn’t.
Breastfeeding was also linked
to a lower risk of early menopause.
People who breastfed for a total
of seven to 12 months over their
lifetime were 28 per cent less
likely to experience menopause
before the age of 45 than those
who breastfed for less than a
month. Those who exclusively
breastfed for a total of seven to
12 months over their lifetime
and who had three pregnancies
had a 32 per cent lower risk (JAMA
Network Open, doi.org/dkch).
Jessica HamzelouRO
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