Instant insight: Think outside the cell

It has been known that cells contain sophisticated quality control mechanisms that ensure that proteins fold correctly. This article discusses some of the extracellular proteins that perform a similar role.

"When it is considered that cells and their surrounds (extracellular spaces) are densely packed with thousands of different proteins, and are exposed to many stresses capable of unfolding proteins, it seems miraculous that there are not more of these PDDs..."

"This quality control machinery includes molecular chaperones, which bind to hydrophobic regions normally buried inside the native shape of a protein, and sophisticated degradation machinery such as the proteasome. There is little doubt that these intracellular mechanisms protect our bodies from PDDs that would otherwise produce harmful protein deposits inside cells..."

"Recently, it was discovered that a small group of human blood proteins are able to chaperone misfolded proteins, keeping them soluble and inhibiting their aggregation."

To curious aliens, Earth would stand out as living planet

Years ago NASA Astronomer John O'Keefe said, "[T]o the astronomer, the Earth is a very sheltered and protected place. There is a marvelous picture from Apollo 8 of the blue and cloud-wrapped Earth, seen just at the horizon of the black cratered, torn and smashed lunar landscape. The contrast would not be lost on any creature; the thought 'God loves those people' cannot be resisted."

The fact remains that Earth is a peculiar place to the astronomer. It stands out; it is different from the 'everyday' planet. Scientists at the University of Florida have reaffirmed this thinking, and believe that any potential aliens with the right technology would be able to determine the habitability of the Earth from afar.

[And just in case you were wondering, I do not believe in aliens as I subscribe to the Rare Earth hypothesis.]

"[W]hat if aliens were hunting life outside their own planet? Armed with telescopes only a bit bigger and more powerful than our own, could they peer through the vastness of space and lock in onto Earth as a likely home to life?"

"That’s the question at the heart of paper co-authored by a University of Florida astronomer that appeared this week in the online edition of Astrophysical Journal. The answer, the authors say, is a qualified “yes.” With a space telescope larger than the Hubble Space Telescope pointed directly at our sun, they say, “hypothetical observers” could measure Earth’s 24-hour rotation period, leading to observations of oceans and the chance of life.

Earth's magnetic field could help protect astronauts working on the moon

Our magnetic field provides robust protection from solar radiation - so much so that the magnetic field even "covers" part of the moon.

Needless to say, such protection is required for planet habitability, but in more ways than one. In addition to directly protecting life from harmful rays, the magnetic field deflects the solar wind that would otherwise erode our atmosphere. Read the following quote from the book "Rare Earth"...

"One of the most critical shortcomings of the planet Mars, form the point of view of hospitality to life, is that it almost entirely lacks a global magnetic field. Thus electrically charged particles (the solar wind) flowing outward from the sun played a major role in sputtering the Martian atmosphere off into space. A substantial, Earth-like magnetic field deflects the solar wind and protects the atmosphere from erosion."

Now a few quotes from the linked article...

"Earth is largely protected by its magnetic field, or magnetosphere, but new University of Washington research shows that some parts of the moon also are protected by the magnetosphere for seven days during the 28-day orbit around Earth."

"We found that there were areas of the moon that would be completely protected by the magnetosphere and other areas that are not protected at all," said Erika Harnett, a UW assistant research professor of Earth and space sciences."

Our reliable sun -- long may it shine

We take our sun for granted, but the fact of the matter is that if it wasn't for its particular characteristics, our planet could not support life. Consider this text from the book Rare Earth: "[T]he first step is preparing the way for a habitable environment is the formation of a suitable star: one that will burn long enough to let evolution work its wonders, one that does not pulse or rapidly change its energy output, one without too much ultraviolet radiation, and most important, perhaps one that is large enough. Of the 100 applicants, perhaps only two to five will yield a star as large as our sun. The vast majority of stars in the Universe are smaller than our sun, and although smaller stars could have planets with life, most would be so dim that Earth-like planets would have to orbit very close to their star to receive energy sufficient to melt water. But being close enough to get adequate energy from a small star leads to another problem: tidal lock, the condition where the same side of the planet always faces the sun. A tidally locked planet is probably unsuitable for animal life."

This article highlights the reliability of the sun and reviews our past pagan relationship with it.

"The Sun has been steadily burning for close to five billion years. Five billion years of steady, consistent light and heat. This allowed the past four billion years for life to evolve on the Earth.

Some stars are manic-depressive, going through changes and disruptions that would char any nearby world to a crisp cinder. But our dependable Sun takes good care of us."

Divine Evolution

I usually do not post op-ed pieces but this one by Gerson is a worthwhile read. He points out a critical difference between evolution and naturalism that many fail to recognize.

"Critics seem to argue that the laws of nature are somehow less miraculous than their divine suspension. But the elegant formulas of physics, and the complex mechanisms of evolution, strike me as an equal tribute to the Creator..."

"There is a large distinction between the scientific theory of evolution and naturalism. Naturalism -- the belief that the material world is all that is or ever will be -- is a philosophy, and a dangerous one."

Sticky questions tackled in gecko research

Scientists are looking at the designs that exist in nature as models or templates for human engineering. This is one example.

"Researchers and corporations around the world are racing to create the first synthetic “gecko glue” and the U.S. military is leading the way in trying to create gecko-inspired robots that can scale any surface."

“The goal is to create a completely dry adhesive that doesn’t leave any residue behind and will remain attached as long as you apply a load to it and can be re-used an unlimited number of times,” Russell said. “Once we conquer how it works it could be reasonably cheap to manufacture and the possible uses are endless.”

Russell says learning from how species are designed by nature to deal with environmental challenges provides key lessons for human innovations.

“This nano-technology has been around for over 50 million years and we are only just beginning to understand how it works,” he said.

Found in France, a 30 million-year-old hummingbird fossil

There are two points of interest in this article. First note the stasis exhibited by hummingbirds in that they haven't changed in a very long time. Second, note the odd 20 million year "gap" in the fossil record. This speaks to the somewhat shaky reliability of the fossil record when the scope is narrowed to one particular family or species.

"The fossil is extraordinary in several ways: it has been exceptionally well preserved; its tiny vertebrae, delicate feet, the bones of its wings, its skull and beak are all intact. Even its feathers have left a fine layer of black powder around it. Also astonishing is that apart from a few very small differences, this ancient hummingbird is very similar to its modern relatives."

The eye of the fly - just one of many inspiring biomodels for nanotechnology

The eye of the fly design pattern could inspire a new generation of optical coatings. Read about it in this article.

"The use of design concepts adapted from Nature is a promising new route to the development of advanced materials and increasingly nanotechnology researchers find nanostructures a useful inspiration for overcoming their design and fabrication challenges..."

"Complex functional systems are still out of reach but the replication of biological structures is making good progress. A recent example is the fabrication of antireflection nanostructures by replicating fly eyes."

Built-in exercise monitor predicts fitness

Why spend a franklin on a high tech heart monitor when we already have one built-in?

Professor Roger Eston, Head of the University of Exeter’s School of Sport and Health Sciences says: “We have worked with over 300 individuals in the last two years and now have a body of evidence to show that we each have a highly accurate built-in exercise monitor. We have found that people’s sense of how hard they are working matches what fitness testing equipment tells us, in some cases to the heartbeat.”

Can plants think? This slime solved a maze

When I read the phrase "shortest route" found in the 2nd paragraph of the linked article I immediately had flashbacks of Dijkstra's algorithm taught in a college computer science algorithms class. Ugh.. I swear that I'll never be the same. Anyhow.. this is amazing. Plants are far more sophisticated than we give them credit for. And where does all of this sophistication come from? That's the challenge for the person with a materialistic worldview. Does a materialistic worldview predict such remarkable complexity in all of the kingdoms of life?

Think about it.

"Seven years ago, however, a simple experiment demonstrated that a plant can identify the shortest route to food in a maze, prompting researchers to conclude that, "This remarkable process of cellular (analysis) implies that cellular materials can show a primitive intelligence."

The plant was one of the lower fungi, a slime mould, which is a thin organism that spreads across cool, shady, moist places. There are 550 different species of this type of mould in a variety of colours, some of them spectacularly beautiful. The experiment, led by Toshiyuki Nakagaki at the Bio-Mimetic Control Research Centre in Nagoya, Japan, is reported in Nature, 2000, 407:470."

How size matters: The beauty of nature explained!

Read this highlight concerning the tight control that plants exert when controlling growth.

“The remarkable uniformity of leaves and flowers helps us to tell different species apart, such as daisies and marguerites, which look very similar otherwise. We are now uncovering how the genetic blueprint of a species tightly controls the size of leaves and flowers”, says Dr. Michael Lenhard, who led the research.

DNA studies affirm rarity of Philippine Eagle

Here's another example of convergent evolution.

"According to Dr. David Mindell of the University of Michigan, the Philippine Eagle was once grouped with five bird giants (the other two being the Crowned Eagle and the Solitary Eagle in the Americas) because all these species share extremely large size, with female wing-spans between 1.5 to 2.0 m and female body weights from 6 to 9 kilograms.

He also said that all of the five traditional “harpy eagle group” members live in tropical forests, feeding mainly on medium-sized mammals.

“But based on the genetic analyses, the similarities between the Philippine Eagle and the other harpies resulted not from kinship but from convergent change, driven by natural selection for reproductive success in tropical forests and a shared taste for mammals,” Dr. Mindell added."

Saturn's Rings May Be As Old As Solar System

The age of Saturn's rings often is a subject of Young Earth argumentation. (Here's an example from Answers in Genesis.)

However, this news article contains data that rebuts many of the Young Earther's points.

"Professor Larry Esposito, principal investigator for Cassini's Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph at CU-Boulder, said data from NASA's Voyager spacecraft in the 1970s and later NASA's Hubble Space Telescope had led scientists to believe Saturn's rings were relatively youthful and likely created by a comet that shattered a large moon, perhaps 100 million years ago. But ring features seen by instruments on Cassini -- which arrived at Saturn in 2004 -- indicate the rings were not formed by a single cataclysmic event, he said. The ages of the different rings appear to vary significantly and the ring material is continually being recycled, Esposito said."

Body clock 'control switch' found

The specificity of the operation of the body reminds me of the precision found in digital circuity. There's no wonder that folks routinely make design inferences when studying biology.

"It is always amazing to see how molecular control is so precise in biology."

More “Functional” DNA in Genome than Previously Thought

Just the routine update that more purpose has been found for another classification of non-coding DNA.

"Surrounding the small islands of genes within the human genome is a vast sea of mysterious DNA. While most of this non-coding DNA is junk, some of it is used to help genes turn on and off. As reported online this week in Genome Research, Hopkins researchers have now found that this latter portion, which is known as regulatory DNA and contributes to inherited diseases like Parkinson’s or mental disorders, may be more abundant than we realize."

Plants see the light to help beat the big freeze

This article points out some of the cues that plants use to prepare for winter life. Is there anything "simple" in the world of biology?

Dr Franklin said: “To survive the freezing temperatures of winter, many plants undergo a process termed cold acclimation. In response to the cooler temperatures that presage the onset of winter, plants increase the expression of a large number of genes which lead to the accumulation of proteins and sugars that confer ‘antifreeze’ properties to cells”.

“This new research at the University of Leicester has revealed that plants also react to another environmental signal, a change in light quality, in order to develop freezing tolerance.”

The Appendix Rationale

If you missed this last year, a group of scientists have discovered a "purpose" for the appendix, once deemed useless in our day and age of living.

"For years, the appendix got no respect. Doctors regarded it as nothing but a source of trouble: It didn’t seem to do anything, and it sometimes got infected and required an emergency removal. Plus, nobody ever suffered from not having an appendix. So human biologists assumed that the tiny, worm-shaped organ is vestigial — a shrunken remainder of some organ our ancestors required. In a word: Useless.

Now that old theory has been upended. In a December issue of The Journal of Theoretical Biology, a group of scientists announce they have solved the riddle of the appendix. The organ, they claim, is in reality a “safe house” for healthful bacteria — the stuff that makes our digestive system function."

Getting to the root of plant life

This article highlights the important role of "junk" DNA in gene regulation, but also highlights the incredible sophistication of plant life.

"They knew that a huge number of genes in the human genome, making up more than 98 per cent of the genome, don't code protein. These they had previously dismissed as evolutionary leftovers, or junk DNA. In an enormous turnaround, they began looking at these non-coding genes more closely and discovered they were not junk after all. They had an extremely important function..."

"There are 15 to 20 things that plants monitor – including weather conditions, light, calcium and aluminum availability, locations of other plants, electrical fields, chemical signals, smells, and waves of all kinds. In addition, they have remarkable capacities for communication. For instance, when infected by pathogens, they can release airborne volatiles, warning neighbouring plants to beef up their immune systems.

As Professor Anthony Trewavas of the University of Edinburgh puts it, there are so many variables to which plants react, that a plant genome – all the protein-coding DNA and all of what used to be called junk DNA – can't supply all the answers. There has to be something else at work, and that's where memory, interpretation, and choice come into the picture."

Natural order: Researchers turn to nature for help in constructing nanoscale circuits

Here's an example of where researchers are trying to harness natural systems to assist in the construction of nanoscale circuitry.

“Nature is very good at making many copies of an object” through self-assembly, Phaneuf said. But nature knows how to make only a limited range of patterns for these complex structures, such as shells or crystals. Phaneuf’s work focuses on the use of templates to teach nature some new tricks."

Neanderthal bearing teeth

Add this to the mountain of evidence that suggests that humans were a distinct species from Neanderthals.

"Scientists found differences in the duration of tooth growth in the Neanderthal when compared to modern humans, with the former showing shorter times in most cases. This faster growth resulted in a more advanced pattern of dental development than in fossil and living members of our own species (Homo sapiens)."

Who were the Galileans?

Science is often positioned as antagonistic to biblical history. The fact of the matter is that much of the Bible is supported by scientific (archaeology in this case) research.

"Certainly Galilee was settled by the tribes of Zebulon, Naphtali, Issachar and Asher. Later it belonged to David's kingdom and then to the northern nation of Israel. But the Assyrian Emperor Tiglath-Pileser III conquered Israel in 733 B.C. and the surviving rump state was obliterated by his successor Shalmaneser V in 722. All the population was relocated to other areas of the empire. At this moment, Galilee drops out of history for the next 600 years. To be sure, 2 Kings 17 tells of the resettlement of Samaria, but Galilee is not mentioned.

Archaeological research now reveals this was not just an oversight of the Biblical writers. Surface surveys indicate no human occupation of Galilee during the sixth and seventh centuries B.C. A few scattered, small settlements began to appear in following centuries, mostly military outposts and a few small farming communities that sent their harvests to the coastal cities. The same conclusions can be drawn from the excavations of major sites as well. So Galilee remains essentially empty for more than half a millennium following the Assyrian invasions."

"Noah's Flood" May Have Triggered European Farming

Noah's Flood is a fairly controversial topic amongst Christians. Some believe that it was local, others argue that it was global. From a scientific perspective the evidence seems to lean towards the flood being a local one. In "local" I mean very widespread but regional in nature.

A few years back I read a book by Ryan and Pittman titled "Noah's Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries About the Event that Changed History". The book is interesting, although I'm not sure that I buy into everything that they propose. Anyhow, those two authors are mentioned in this news article, but this time they are suggesting that the flood triggered the onset of European farming.

"Scientists have speculated for some time that the biblical account of Noah's flood was rooted in a real event thousands of years ago. One theory is that it could have been a flooding of the Black Sea, an inland sea wedged between southeastern Europe and the Anatolian peninsula. Such a flood could have been caused by the melting about 8,000 years ago of a gigantic ice sheet that once covered most of North America. The deluge may have also contributed to an explosion in European agriculture—especially throughout inland regions near the Black Sea, where farms were previously scarce, the researchers found."

How our ancestors were like gorillas

Accordingly to standard human evolutionary models, Paranthropus robustus is not a direct ancestor to Homo sapiens and it is often described as a distant cousin.

In this article, you'll see that it is more apelike with respect to growth patterns than previously thought.

"Research published in this week’s Science journal shows that some of our closest extinct relatives had more in common with gorillas than previously thought. Dr Charles Lockwood, UCL Department of Anthropology and lead author of the study, said: “When we examined fossils from 1.5 to 2 million years ago we found that in one of our close relatives the males continued to grow well into adulthood, just as they do in gorillas. This resulted in a much bigger size difference between males and females than we see today."