Drunk bugs wiggle their bodies to win the Ig Nobel Prize

teathat 34^Day The first annual Ig Nobel Prize Announced on September 12, 2024, the 10 accolades known for highlighting “research that makes people laugh and think” do not shy away from the spectrum of their unique topics. Plants that mimic plastic to Mammalian anal breathing.^1,2

Daniel BournePhysicist, and Sander BautersenA physical chemist and his colleagues at the University of Amsterdam have won a chemistry prize by racing drunk and sober bugs through a chromatography maze. Sort them out Their wriggling activity has helped us better understand polymer dynamics.³ “We’re very excited,” Bourne said. “We’ve had a hard time keeping our mouths shut about it.”

Much of Bonn’s work embraces the Ig Nobel ethos. He previously reported on how to build Ig Nobel. The perfect sand castle And why analogy The victim cannot be completely sank.^4,5 Recently, active polymers that are self-propelling and play biological roles in cell membrane structure and sperm motility have caught his attention. Because active polymers are difficult to produce and observe due to their microscopic size, Bon has developed a unique macroscopic model. Thin, aquatic Tubifex Tubifex Worms. Their segmented bodies resemble polymers made up of repeating units, and most importantly, they exhibit active movement. So Bon and his colleagues set out to explore the physics of these dynamic polymer-like bugs.

Chemists and other life science researchers often use column array chromatography to separate molecules through a maze of columns. For example, it can separate DNA strands and polymers of different lengths based on the time it takes each column to pass through the column. Woutersen came up with a unique use for this tool.

The biggest lesson from this experiment, at least for me, is that when a drunk bug is wrapped around a streetlight and a sober bug passes by, sometimes the drunk bug will follow along too.
– Daniel Bonn, University of Amsterdam

“We had the idea that we could sort the worms by length,” says Woutersen. “Obviously, the longer ones stick around the pole more easily, and since they’re the same length, we could sort them by activity.” They had to get the worms to be inactive. At first, they toyed with the morbid idea of ​​euthanizing the worms, but the team came up with a more humane way: anesthetizing the worms. alcohol.⁶

Instead of taking the bugs to a small bar, the researchers temporarily got them drunk by placing them in a 3-5% ethanol solution that also contained a small amount of methylene blue dye. “It worked like magic. [the worms] “You get completely drunk,” Woutersen said. “But if you put it back in the water, it comes back to life in 20 minutes and you’re sober again. No headaches or anything.”

To compare activity, they put the worms—naturally the red ones were sober, the blue ones drunk—in a maze, a hexagonal column assay with distilled water flowing down its length, and measured the time the worms spent in the passages. Woutersen expected that the drunk worms would get out of the maze more quickly, as they would “go with the flow,” while the active worms would get stuck in the columns. Surprisingly, the drunk worms were less active, while the sober worms tended to curl up and form knots, which helped them get through the columns. Within minutes, it became clear that the sober worms were finding it easier and quicker to traverse the maze and reach the finish line.

“But the sad conclusion is that the drunk bugs come home very late,” Woutersen said. Bonn likened the process to the aftermath of an all-night party at a bar, where drunks often hang from streetlights. “Our maze is actually a small pole, so the drunk bugs actually wrap themselves around the pole and never come home,” he said.

While this study answers some questions, it also raises new questions about using these wriggling worms as a model for studying the separation of active polymers. In any case, the worms resonate with the human perspective.

“I think the best lesson I got from the experiment, at least for me, is that when a drunken bug gets wrapped around a lamppost and a sober bug walks by, sometimes it takes the drunken bug with it. So the moral of the story is, when you go to a bar, someone has to stop drinking and bring everyone home,” Bourne said.