Life Lines by Dr. Dolittle

Tag Archive for ‘frog’

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2025 August Krogh Distinguished Lecturer, Dr. Michael Hedrick

We are delighted to announce that Dr. Michael Hedrick (Emeritus Professor, California State University – East Bay) received the 2025 August Krogh Distinguished Lectureship award at the 2025 American Physiology Summit! He shared his body of research on how frogs and toads (anurans) regulate their lymphatic system in a lecture entitled, “What Goes Down Must Come Up: Regulation of Lymph Movement in Anuran Amphibians.” Dr. Hedrick earned his Ph.D. in […]

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Lungless frogs are not so lungless after all

An article describing a “lungless” frog species residing in Borneo was retracted at the request of the lead author earlier this month in light of new data. Using traditional dissection and histology techniques, Dr. David Bickford (who worked at the National University of Singapore at the time) and colleagues had described the apparent lack of lungs in Barbourula kalimantanensis frogs, which would place this species among only a few known […]

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Is it just a fluke?

Lung flukes, Hematoloechus sp., are pesky little parasites. Up to 89 species of lung flukes have been identified to date. Their life cycle includes two intermediate hosts, the first of which are freshwater snails that swallow fluke eggs. After ingestion, the eggs hatch and produce a larval form of the parasite called cercaria, which are shed from the snails and taken up by damselflies or dragonflies. These are quite the […]

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Physiology on the Road: “Physiology in Ohio, The Heart of it All!”

The Ohio Physiological Society met October 6-7th at The University of Toledo located in Toledo, OH. True to the name of this year’s conference, the Keynote address was given by Dr. Joseph Wu, Director of the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute and current president of the American Heart Association. His research focuses on congenital heart disease in adults as well as cardiovascular imaging. His most recent clinical trials involve testing bone-derived stem […]

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Physiology on the road: What’s happening in Missouri

This time of year is perfect for catching up on local physiology news. For the next few posts, we are going to take a tour around the country to learn what’s going on in some of the chapters of the American Physiological Society… First stop: the Missouri Physiological Society, otherwise known as “mophys”. Mophys is an independent chapter of the American Physiological Society. They held their annual meeting on September […]

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The physiology of ‘frogsicles’ and the quest for life after death

Cope’s gray treefrogs, Dryophytes chrysoscelis, are remarkable animals that can actually survive being frozen…multiple times each year. In fact, these animals live in an environment in which temperatures commonly dip below freezing. When temperatures drop, up to 65% of their body water literally freezes. In anticipation of freezing temperatures, they begin to accumulate cryoprotectant chemicals during the fall to help protect their organs. Until now, the effects of repeated cycles […]

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Sodium is necessary to absorb some dietary nutrients

As frogs develop, their intestines become shorter and the cells on the inner lining of the intestine change. Researchers have suspected that these changes help the animals transition from a diet consisting of mainly algae as a tadpole to a carnivorous diet in adulthood. This was the subject of a recent study published in the American Journal of Physiology – Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology, which examined how the intestine […]

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Stranger than science fiction: treefrogs that freeze and live to tell the story

Today we have a guest blog written by Elizabeth Evans (pictured above), a graduate student at the University of Dayton working in the laboratory of Dr. Carissa Krane. She presented her research on freeze tolerance today at the 2022 Experimental Biology conference in Philadelphia. She wrote the award-winning blog entry below which earned the 2022 Dr. Dolittle Travel Award to attend the conference. Congratulations Elizabeth!! Stranger than science fiction: treefrogs […]

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Frogs are teaching researchers about autism

Dr. Helen Willsey at the University of California San Francisco is seeking to understand how autism develops with the help of frogs. Because frogs produce thousands of embryos at the same time, she is able to quickly study the effects of many different gene alterations in the offspring. While the embryos are at the two-cell stage of development, her laboratory alters genes in just one of the cells using CRISPR-Cas9 […]

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Exploring how temperature impacts the characteristics of animals

We are delighted to speak with Dr. Casey Mueller who is currently an Assistant Professor at California State University San Marcos. Dr. Mueller is a member of the Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology section of the American Physiological Society and was scheduled to present her research at the 2020 Experimental Biology conference last month. Unfortunately, the conference was cancelled due to Covid-19. Her researchappears in the May issue of the FASEB […]

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