Once again, to the bane of myth-makers and fans of historical intrigue, the simplest explanation may be the best: Scientists analyzing the DNA of the world-famous mummy of Tutankhamen say that he wasn’t done in by murder nor any of the exotic diseases put forth as explanations for his death at the age of 19. Rather, they say in the Journal of the American Medical Association, it was likely complications of malaria that killed King Tut, who was already frail thanks to royal inbreeding.

The team led by Egypt’s top archaeologist, Zahi Hawass, spent years taking CT scans and conducting genetic tests on mummies from the royal tombs. They say they confirmed that Tut was the son of Akhenaten, which is what scholars have long believed, but it hints at something else: It also identifies some of his grandparents and great-grandparents for the first time and suggests that his mother was Akhenaten’s sister [The Times]. A brother-sister pair wasn’t unusual during this period in ancient Egypt, medical historian Howard Markel says. Pharaohs were thought of as deities, so it makes sense that the only prospective mates who’d pass muster would be other deities [AP].

Unfortunately for King Tut, that incestuous tradition made him more susceptible to degenerative bone diseases. He may have had Koehler’s disease, as well as a club foot. Earlier discoveries had hinted at Tutankhamen’s frailty, including the 100-plus walking sticks that Howard Carter found when he unearthed the tomb in 1922. “This is confirmed by images that show him sitting while shooting an arrow, which normally would have been done standing up,” says Hawass. “He cannot stand” [TIME].

The researchers also found that Tut and his family were infected by a parasite that often brought with it a virulent form of malaria. If the young Tut was already frail and had a weakened immune system, a malarial infection could have been life-threatening, the team hypothesizes. Not everyone buys the parasite bit, however, including parasite scientist Sanjeev Krishna. “If you have the parasite and you get to the age of 19, the chances are you’ve developed some kind of immunity,” he said [The Times].

But while a sickly minor king who could barely walk isn’t exactly as romantic as the King Tut of popular culture, James Phillips of Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History says we shouldn’t expect the emerging facts to crush the myth. “Reality is reality, but it’s not going to change his place in the folk heroism of popular culture,” Phillips said. “The way he was found, what was found in his grave — even though he was a minor king, it has excited the imagination of people since 1922″ [AP].

Related Content:
DISCOVER: 5 Questions for the Mummy Doctor
80beats: Egypt Finds Tombs of Pyramid Builders, And More Evidence They Were Free Men
80beats: X-Rayed Mummies Reveal That Ancient Egyptians Had Heart Disease
Cosmic Variance: Tut-Tutting at Tut Tat

Image: flickr / Steve Evans

The next time, you’re taking shots straight out of a bottle of mezcal, the potent Mexican alcohol made from the agave or a maguey plant, remember what you’re drinking. Swirling in your mouth is not just the strong smoky alcohol guaranteed to knock you out, but also caterpillar DNA from the “worm” that is often found at the bottom of the bottle.

The worm is actually the larval form of the moth Hypopta agavis that lives on the agave plant and really has no business being in the bottle except to serve as a marketing gimmick. Still, many a drinker has set out to prove his iron will and iron stomach by swallowing the booze-soaked insect at the bottom. Turns out there’s no need for such dramatic gestures. Researchers have found that DNA from the caterpillar can be extracted from the alcohol it’s preserved in.

Ars technica reports on the scientists findings:

“We hypothesized that DNA from a preserved specimen can leak into its preservative medium, allowing the medium itself to be directly PCR amplified” the authors write. “We successfully tested this idea on mezcal—the alcoholic beverage famous for the ‘worm’ (a caterpillar) that is placed in the bottle of many brands—and indeed obtained amplifiable quantities of caterpillar DNA.”

This is great news for researchers trying to extract DNA samples from old specimens preserved in alcohol. Now, they don’t have to take pieces from a crumbling specimen and risk destroying it in the bargain, but can instead use the preservative liquid to obtain and sequence DNA. The scientists, however, warned that different specimens should not be placed in the same jar, as residual DNA would all swirl together.

So no mixing worms, snakes, and scorpions.

Related Content:
Discoblog: Caterpillars Beware: Parasitic Wasps Come in a Wide Variety
NCBI ROFL: NCBI ROFL: Lost in the sauce: the effects of alcohol on mind wandering

Image: Wikimedia

Around this time last year, an unexpected trip to the hospital led to an anesthesia mistake giving me aspiration pneumonia. Although I recognized how serious the situation was, I was also very sad to miss my favorite annual science event: The 2009 AAAS meeting in Chicago–including The Science of Kissing symposium I had helped organize for Valentine’s Day.

As you can imagine, one year later I’m extremely grateful to be healthy, fully recovered, and on my way to attend the 2010 meeting with David. And I’m also delighted to be joining the AAAS program committee. Most of all, I’m looking forward to catching up with friends in science, journalism, policy–and especially, a few former Sea Grant Fellows. And CM too of course.

Blogging may be light during the conference, but expect some upcoming posts on what’s happening in San Diego…

This is beyond brilliant. It is head-asplodey meta-hyper geekariffic.

If you aren’t familiar with the Hitler parody videos you can catch up here, but you really have to watch a few before seeing this, the transformative end-of-the-meme bringer. Anyone making a Downfall parody after this is basically an SEO professional getting a Twitter account now.

Ausgezeichnet.

[Update: The comments for this post have been... interesting. Opinions are all over the place on this. I know the Humor tag is small and easy to overlook, but I pretty much figured the tone of this post made it clear I was just being silly. Either I missed the mark, or I have a lot of commenters who did. Given that choice, I'll just assume I'm funny. Actually, rereading it, the skydiver I mentioned threw off the vibe of the post, so I removed it. Hopefully that'll bring the tone more to where I wanted it to be, and I certainly hope no one was offended.

Anyway, to be clear, I was kidding. This sounds like a fun sport, and it would be awesome to watch. However, I stand by the whole I'd-never-do-it-in-a-million-years thing. It takes a special kind of crazy to load a rocket motor onto the back of a plane. I'm happy it's being done, and a lot happier people other than me are doing it!]

I just received a very odd press release: the Tulsa Air and Space Museum is partnering with something called the Rocket Racing League to create — get this — a rocket racing show. Like an air show, but with rocket-powered vehicles. They have a poster and everything:

Now, as soon as I read this press release I had three thoughts barrel through my brain, willy-nilly, right on top of each other. They were, in order:

1) This must be a hoax.
2) No, I think this is real, and we live in THE FUTURE.
3) This is a really bad idea.

I’ve been to a few air shows. They make me nervous, not the least reason for which is all the footage you ever see of air shows on TV is when two planes slam into each other or the ground or the spectators or some other obstacle like a goose, the main feature of all these being the slamming.

So, doing this with a rocket motor strapped to your backside just strikes me as being, well, a terrible, terrible idea. Apparently they have some sort of course the rocketeers must go through — ostensibly without the circa 1991 Jennifer Connelly waiting for them when they land^* — and the audience at the show can follow along on giant TV screens using some sort of augmented reality system. People watching on TV can, according to the press release, "have the unique sensation of riding right alongside famed Rocket Racing League pilots."

Yeah, not so much for me. I think I’ll watch Spongebob reruns. Much safer. And that way I can just wait for the highlights on "America’s Funniest Rockets Slamming into Things Way Faster Than a Plane Can".

(If you haven’t yet heard the first episode of the new Point of Inquiry, you can listen here, and I also strongly encourage you to subscribe via iTunes from the same page.)

Perhaps the most alarming part of my conversation with Paul Offit came when he argued we’re already seeing many scary diseases return, thanks to reduced vaccination rates in certain communities around the U.S. I wasn’t sure whether there was clear evidence of this yet (save the obvious case of the measles in the UK). But Offit certainly sounded sure. I asked him the following question, “The public health fear is that diseases that were once vanquished or rare will return. How much evidence is there that that’s happening?” Here is his reply around minute 25:30:

Abundant evidence. I would have said ten years ago it was theoretical. And certainly, if we had immunization rates that dropped from 98 percent to 95 percent, or 94 percent, you wouldn’t see what we’re seeing now.

And frankly, just to take a step back, if you look at nationwide immunization rates, they’re excellent. And I think our country frankly asks a lot of its citizens when it asks children to receive vaccines against 14 different diseases in the first few years of life, which can mean 26 inoculations in the first few years, and as many as five shots at one time. I think that’s a lot to ask of parents, and for the most part, our immunization rates are excellent.

The problem is, there are certain communities or districts where the immunization rates are quite low: Ashland, Oregon; Vashon Island off Washington State; Southern California; Hasidic Jews in New York state. And so what you’re starting to see now is outbreaks of infectious diseases. Specifically, we had a measles epidemic in 2008 that was bigger than anything we’ve seen in more than a decade. We have outbreaks of pertussis now, or whooping cough, one of which occurred in Delaware in 2006, where the epidemiological pattern was exactly like one would see in the pre-vaccine era, meaning primarily 5 to 9 year olds. And we’ve had cases of bacterial meningitis, one particular type that is perfectly preventable by vaccines, that has caused deaths–one in Minnesota, three in the Philadelphia era.

I used to say that I think that the tide will turn when people start to see children die of these diseases. They’re seeing children die of these diseases. And so now I’ve changed to, “when enough children die.” But I think it is perfectly possible for diseases like polio to come back in the United States. Because it still occurs in the world, and only about 1 of every 200 to 500 people with polio actually becomes paralyzed with it, most people have no symptoms, but still are contagious. So let enough people stop getting vaccinated against polio, and there is every reason to believe it will come back.

Scary, scary stuff.

Again, you can listen to the podcast and subscribe here. And don’t forget to buy Paul Offit’s book Autism’s False Prophets if you don’t already own it…