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The Tadpole Experiment

@thetadpoleexpt.bsky.social
20 followers 0 following 29 posts

Pop-up experiment on the effects of weak magnetic fields in biology. Ran in open science mode, Apr to Sep 24, by @ClariceDAiello @LodesaniA @geoffanders. Follow us at TheTadpoleExperiment.org!

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The Tadpole Experiment @thetadpoleexpt.bsky.social · 16/10/2024
Dear tadpolers! We're delighted to present our results: biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Tadpoles, indeed, can sense the absence of Earth's tiny magnetic field. How they do so can have major implications for health, ecology, and space travel. Follow the continuation of our work at @QuantumBioOrg!
biorxiv.org
Weak magnetic field effects in biology are measurable— accelerated Xenopus embryogenesis in the absence of the geomagnetic field
Despite decades of reports of weak magnetic field effects in biology across the tree of life and on a broad range of cell types, the evidence to date remains met with skepticism. To remedy this, we pr...
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The Tadpole Experiment @thetadpoleexpt.bsky.social · 09/05/2024
Beyond #TheTadpoleExperiment, we aim to find a mechanistic explanation of how magnetic fields affect biology, to learn how to deterministically, not haphazardly, electromagnetically tweak cellular processes leading to disease prevention and reversal. Dive deeper: www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...
linkedin.com
The Tadpole Experiment on LinkedIn: #thetadpoleexperiment #thetadpoleexperiment
Can we cure disease by driving cellular processes with weak magnetic fields? There is an understudied fact in biology that is long overdue to be rationally…
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The Tadpole Experiment @thetadpoleexpt.bsky.social · 09/05/2024
Can we cure disease by driving cellular processes with weak magnetic fields? For decades, scientists have been finding weak magnetic fields that "do stuff" to biological systems.
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The Tadpole Experiment @thetadpoleexpt.bsky.social · 03/05/2024
This is to say that we do not yet know what results we will observe. Will we reproduce our collaborators' results that tadpoles are deformed at a super high rate? Will we find something completely different? Join us in this open-science discovery journey at thetadpoleexperiment.org!
thetadpoleexperiment.org
Home | TheTadpoleExperiment
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The Tadpole Experiment @thetadpoleexpt.bsky.social · 03/05/2024
Previous to #TheTadpoleExperiment, we had never worked with tadpoles or with such a strong hypomagnetic chamber! Our chamber shields Earth's field by orders of magnitude, and we made a research visit to the National Xenopus Resource at @mblscience.bsky.social to make sure we got the biology right.
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The Tadpole Experiment @thetadpoleexpt.bsky.social · 03/05/2024
Thus, we decided to join forces to perform a limited time, "pop-up" experiment that might engage not only scientists, but the general public, to think about the effects of weak magnetic fields in biology.
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The Tadpole Experiment @thetadpoleexpt.bsky.social · 03/05/2024
Enter @LeverageRes, an organization that identifies and studies scientific fields that are currently blocked. Having studied the history of many such "once blocked fields", they suggested that public replications of key experiments might turn skepticism into enlightened curiosity.
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The Tadpole Experiment @thetadpoleexpt.bsky.social · 03/05/2024
Whatever the biological mechanism, it was crystal clear that tadpoles were "sensing" (the absence of) Earth's tiny magnetic field, in a big way.
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The Tadpole Experiment @thetadpoleexpt.bsky.social · 03/05/2024
And many times,people "finally got" what we were talking about when we shared(with appropriate credit and permission) the results of our collaborators in Germany (Peter Fierlinger @TU_Muenchen and Dima Budker @uni_mainz)showing super high rates of deformed tadpoles raised in a hypomagnetic chamber.
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The Tadpole Experiment @thetadpoleexpt.bsky.social · 03/05/2024
Here's how #TheTadpoleExperiment started. Our lab, the @QuBiT_Lab, studies the effects of weak magnetic fields in biology. Most times, people were skeptic.
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The Tadpole Experiment @thetadpoleexpt.bsky.social · 01/05/2024
Tadpoles and zebrafish are relatively easy to work with: they don't require to be fed for many days; they do not require the temperature, gas and environment control of an "incubator" (which is where cell cultures must be maintained). And they're cute!!!
cute zebrafish embryo
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The Tadpole Experiment @thetadpoleexpt.bsky.social · 01/05/2024
Even though this is #TheTadpoleExperiment, we will also have zebrafish inside the hypomagnetic chamber! On Monday, we did put about 480 zebrafish embryos inside the chamber, each in an individual plastic "well" (or tiny pond). Zebrafish is also a also well-studied "model organism" in biology.
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The Tadpole Experiment @thetadpoleexpt.bsky.social · 30/04/2024
These frogs are a very well known “model organism” in biology for the study, among other things, of vertebrate embryogenesis. If you’re a human or a toad of another species that not Xenopus laevis, you can continue to follow our daily lab activities in the Lab Book at thetadpoleexperiment.org!
Not a Xenopus laevis
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The Tadpole Experiment @thetadpoleexpt.bsky.social · 30/04/2024
On Wed we will “squeeze” Fifi and Veronika for eggs, and externally fertilize such eggs with sperm from the testes. Our species of frogs is the African clawed frog, or Xenopus laevis (thanks to @wikipedia.bsky.social, we now know that Xenopus means “strange foot” and laevis means “smooth”).
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The Tadpole Experiment @thetadpoleexpt.bsky.social · 30/04/2024
This week at #TheTadpoleExperiment we will be performing the first embryo fertilizations in the lab! Our two resident frogs, Fifi and Veronika, who have been acclimatizing in our lab for a couple of weeks, are being “boosted” with hormones on Mon and Tue; Frog testes from will arrive on Tue.
Fifi and Veronika, frogs
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The Tadpole Experiment @thetadpoleexpt.bsky.social · 26/04/2024
Wanna see some some cool, #OpenScience? Follow #TheTadpoleExperiment! For the next 3 mo, in real time and in #OpenScience mode, we will explore the extent to which weak magnetic fields have an effect on life. What do you think we will find out? Engage with the experiment: TheTadpoleExperiment.org!
Cool, open science
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The Tadpole Experiment @thetadpoleexpt.bsky.social · 26/04/2024
With the experimental results of #TheTadpoleExperiment visible to both scientists and the public, it may become clearer whether effects from weak magnetic fields are real, even before a clear causal mechanism is established. Read more in our @LinkedIn post: www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...
linkedin.com
The Tadpole Experiment on LinkedIn: Home | TheTadpoleExperiment
But do cells and organisms really react to weak magnetic fields, you ask? For over 50 years, scientists have been gathering evidence of the biological impacts…
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The Tadpole Experiment @thetadpoleexpt.bsky.social · 26/04/2024
The result has been uncertainty in the scientific community, with some researchers unwilling to admit the existence of weak magnetic field effects before a causal mechanism can be established.
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The Tadpole Experiment @thetadpoleexpt.bsky.social · 26/04/2024
But do cells and organisms really react to weak magnetic fields, you ask? Organisms have been proposed to react to magnetic fields using different mechanisms: *chunks of magnetite; *conduction channels; *a quantum phenomenon involving electron spins: no unambiguous scientific proof for this one!
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The Tadpole Experiment @thetadpoleexpt.bsky.social · 24/04/2024
Stay tuned to find out how we handled this game of chamber Tetris :) Now inside the lab, the chamber continues to amaze Tadgeneer Alessandro Lodesani and Tadpoler-in-chief @claricedaiello.bsky.social as a wonderful feat of engineering!
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The Tadpole Experiment @thetadpoleexpt.bsky.social · 24/04/2024
The chamber arrived in a package weighing slightly more than half a ton. The weigh comes from layers and layers of a particular type of material called "mu-metal". The delivery of the chamber went well, but not without a slight complication: You're going to need a bigger boat, ooops no, door!
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The Tadpole Experiment @thetadpoleexpt.bsky.social · 24/04/2024
Here are some posts paying homage to our exquisite big box of metal! The hypomagnetic chamber used in #TheTadpoleExperiment was custom-made by @Mumetalshields. It has a residual magnetic field inside of 9 nT -- orders of magnitude smaller than Earth's (already tiny) 50 muT!
Hypomagnetic chamber
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The Tadpole Experiment @thetadpoleexpt.bsky.social · 23/04/2024
🚀🌌Finally, Phase 3 (July) takes us to Mars—figuratively! We'll simulate Mars' 1 uT magnetic field to study tadpole growth. Understanding life in weaker magnetic fields is crucial for future space exploration. What will we learn about potential life beyond Earth? Follow along!
Star Wars meme
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The Tadpole Experiment @thetadpoleexpt.bsky.social · 23/04/2024
🌍Phase 2 (June) shifts to a magnetic field of 50 uT (microtesla), mirroring Earth’s. Observing tadpoles in this setting helps validate that the results come from the chamber’s magnetic field conditions only, ensuring a control condition. It’s all about building a solid foundation for science.
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The Tadpole Experiment @thetadpoleexpt.bsky.social · 23/04/2024
Let’s dive into the phases of #TheTadpoleExperiment: 🐸In Phase 1 (May), we monitor tadpole growth under a magnetic field of 9 nT (nanotesla)—the most extreme condition our chamber can handle. Why? To push the boundaries of what we know about biological responses in very weak magnetic environments.
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The Tadpole Experiment @thetadpoleexpt.bsky.social · 22/04/2024
In the meantime, stay tuned and join us on this journey of discovery of the life magnetic. And remember that you can do #OpenScience with us too!
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The Tadpole Experiment @thetadpoleexpt.bsky.social · 22/04/2024
You can support us by liking, sharing and engaging with each other about our discoveries on Taddit. We also invite you to be a part of this groundbreaking journey by supporting our crowdfunding campaign at: experiment.com/projects/oou... Join us in making science accessible to all!
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The Tadpole Experiment @thetadpoleexpt.bsky.social · 22/04/2024
We’re rolling out 3 interactive website resources: Lab Book: our lab’s full internal online notes, with daily new observations! Data Pond: an interactive live data platform! Taddit: a Reddit-style forum to ask questions, share resources, and discuss with us and each other!
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The Tadpole Experiment @thetadpoleexpt.bsky.social · 22/04/2024
Yay! thetadpoleexperiment.org is live, delving into the intriguing effects of magnetic fields on life. Over the next 3 mo, we will test the effects of varying magnetic fields on the biological development of tadpoles and zebrafish. #TheTadpoleExperiment #OpenScience
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