Lunar phobia, turning blue cheese red, and more stories you might have missed this week

What makes blue cheese blue? Does catching a whiff of a potential mate doom male mice to early death? And how did the Golgi apparatus evolve its weird, ribbony shape? Check out the answers below in some of our favorite selections from Science ’s daily newsletter, Science Adviser . What’s new? Blue cheeses that aren’t blue Naturally blue food is hard to find—except on a cheese platter. Roquefort, Gorgonzola, and blue Stilton are prized for their pungent tastes and characteristic blue veins. It turns out that the fungi that give these cheeses their flavors are also responsible for their signature color. And by disrupting the genes that create the hue, scientists can make blue cheeses that taste almost exactly the same, but are … well, not blue. In a study published last month in Science of Food , researchers tinkered with the genome of the mold Penicillium roqueforti to produce “blue” cheeses that were red, green, and white . Cheeses produced with mutated fungi taste a lot like the classic blue cheeses we know, but the altered colors seemed to change people’s perception of their flavor. Volunteers rated a light blue strain as milder, and said green and reddish brown strains were more fruity or tangy. Mammals in the moonlight In the hours after sunset, the floor of a tropical forest becomes shrouded in near-total darkness. But on moonlit nights, beams of lig...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research