From the Editor Don’t miss the the DFW Section meeting on April 23, a virtual celebration of Earth Week. The section also has two running contests: elemental art and photography (the latter with cash prizes). The virtual Meeting-in-Miniature will air on May 1st; registration is open until April 21st. My favorite Press Room Release this month concerns drugs isolated from Baltic Amber, aptly called Paleopharmaceuticals. Resin oozing from trees acts as a defense agent against bacteria and fungi, and the insects that are trapped in the resin that might otherwise harm the trees. So the amber samples contain—still—the antibiotics that were produced in response to those invaders, The researchers also obtained a Japanese umbrella pine, the closest living species to the trees that produced the resin that became Baltic amber. In resin from the needles and stem was found sclarene, a molecule present in the extracts that could theoretically undergo chemical transformations to produce the bioactive compounds found in the amber. Note from Wikipedia: Sciadopitys verticillata, the kōyamaki or Japanese umbrella-pine, is a unique conifer endemic to Japan. It is the sole member of the family Sciadopityaceae and genus Sciadopitys, a living fossil with no close relatives, and present in the fossil record for about 230 million years.
April 2021
The Southwest RETORT
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