In the Aug. 19 SN: Bulletins from the tick wars, roots of Rwandan genocide, spin-resistant spiders, making mums blue, tardigrade saga continues, HIV antibodies from cows, Maxwell’s demon aces memory test and more.
DOUBLING UP A normal female mouse embryo (left) has only female reproductive tissue, called the Müllerian duct (pink). Removing a protein called COUP-TFII causes a female mouse embryo (right) to develop both the female duct and male tissue called the Wolffian duct (blue).
Yao Laboratory/NIEHS
TICK TIMES TWO It can be difficult to correctly diagnose tick-borne diseases in locales with both the black-legged tick (left), which spreads Lyme disease, and the lone star tick (right), which can transmit southern tick‒associated rash illness or STARI.
Scott Bauer/USDA; CDC
WOUND UP Archaea microbes wrap their DNA (represented in yellow) around proteins called histones (purple) akin to the way plants and animals do.
Francesca Mattiroli
