private life of teaspoons

Teaspoons Research:

“At this rate, an estimated 250 teaspoons would need to be purchased annually to maintain a workable population of 70 teaspoons,” they wrote in Friday’s festive edition of the British Medical Journal.

Disturbingly, the Australian scientists have done nominal studies on how differing environments for small, inanimate objects might be inhospitable to the survival of teaspoons.

“The report clearly raised more questions than it answered,” said a government official who requested not to be named. “We hope to get to the bottom of this as soon as more preliminary studies are committed to figuring out how to best restore the population of the teaspoons.”

However, some concerned scientists believe that it may not be enough. A blogger on Teapot noted, “The survival of teaspoons, whether people realize that or not, is significant to the economy. Its value is difficult to measure because it does not fit the economic model of investment and return or supply and demand.

“As people go into 2006, they ought to give the disappearance of teaspoons their highest priority. We need to limit poaching of teaspoons in order to maintain their viability. The declining survival rates should serve as a warning that we have to do something to fix it.”

Another blogger at Crockpot offers a different view, “Inanimate objects disappearing has been around since long before human civilization has ever started. What liberal fearmongers have failed to realize is that the earth has always been changing. They have been so nearsighted that they howl at the indifference of the world when the world temperature rises by a mere 1 degree. They have forgotten that the glaciers that have covered the entire North America retreated 600,000 years ago without any human intervention. Indeed it paved the way for the seeds of human civilization. The extinction of the teaspoon is not something to start a hubbub over.”

For the scientists in Australia, the long-term effect of the vanishing teaspoon was the least of their concerns. They said, “We’re just focused on researching. Our goal is to extrapolate the possible effect of the teaspoon disappearance on the ecosystem.”

the answer

“We often imply that multicellular organisms are more advanced (and therefore more successful) than unicellular or colonial organisms. Explain why this is not true.” — Ruthie

The mistake that people often make is defining success as if multicellular organisms were the end goals of evolution, and as if the development of the brain and achievement of cognition as proof of the best that evolution can offer. Success can be defined in other ways, however, that center on the basic foundation that allow such organisms to exist.

The cyanobacteria, for example, can photosynthesize energy from light. Molecular evidence, such as DNA analysis of the chloroplast in plants and the cyanobacterium, has indicated that the chloroplast and the cyanobacteria share a common ancestry. A theory that has been widely accepted is endosymbiosis, when the cyanobacteria was engulfed into the pre-plant cell, but not digested. After millions of years, the cyanobacterium lost much of its DNA that makes it incapable of surviving on its own, while the plant cells depend on its photosynthesis for their survival. That explains the symbiosis part of endosymbiosis: After being engulfed, the plant and the bacterium mutually depend on each other for their mutual survival. The larger impact of Domains Bacteria and Archaea beyond plants are greater than simply starting the way to formation of plants, and consequently, the animals that eat them.

Before the existence of Eukaryotes, it was those unicellular organisms that converted and changed the atmosphere of earth to make it more habitable for the Eukaryotes. When the Earth was newly formed, many scientists believe that RNA was the original basis of life: It had the ability to self-replicate, it could store information using nucleotides similar to DNA, and it could perform metabolic processes like proteins. However, the information that RNA stored was unstable, unlike DNA. In the competition of life, it was vital that you don’t lose information, the blueprint for perhaps proteins or RNA that performs vital metabolism. Later on, the first unicellular life arose by forming a boundary between itself and the outside world, the formation of a primitive plasma membrane.

Early Earth had no oxygen, and it was these bacteria that generate oxygen from chemical reaction with iron. Oxygen, contrary to what you may believe, is poisonous to many cellular processes. Although we now need oxygen to metabolize glucose and fat, the cells still need to keep oxygen under control because it is extremely reactive. They changed the atmosphere, and are believed to help stabilize it. The vast majority of oxygen we get come from these bacteria and phytoplanktons living in the ocean. The plants living on land produce less than their oceanic counterparts.

When you consider the length of time that your species or your domain has been in existence, it is humbling to realize that Prokaryotes and Archaea have been the longest living and most successful organisms (by that measure of time) on the planet. Indeed, they have been able to survive every single catastrophic event that has happened since the Precambrian explosion, whereas many multi-cellular species have died.

how muscle cell contracts

Demonstration of regulation of skeletal muscle contraction: http://www.sci.sdsu.edu/movies/actin_myosin.htmlHow does muscle cell contract?

The basic level of contraction is that myosin is needed to bind with pure actin and hydrolize ATP. However, thin actin filament has two proteins called tropomyosin and troponin that prevent myosin binding in the absence of Ca++.  Multiple tropomyosin molecules bind head to tail to form a continuous chain wrapping around the thin filament. It blocks the movement of myosin along the thin filament. When Ca++ is released from the sarcoplasmic reticulum after a signaling from motor nerve tells the muscle to contract, it binds to troponin, which moves tropomyosin out of the way, allowing myosin to move along the thin filament employing the cross-bridge cycle. Such a freedom of movement causes a contraction.

It seems like too many steps to take, but I understand the necessity to prevent unnecessary contraction.

If there’s anyone who wants to contribute their own quirks or thoughts on arts of studying and learning, feel free to contact me and you can co-blog your thoughts about human cognitions and the likes.

Molecular and Cell Biology

I don’t think I have the stamina to keep studying molecular and cell biology. It is so boring. No, not really boring. It is just so many things to memorize.

I wish that I had focused on math, or just studied history or political science. Math doesn’t require memorization beyond formulas, but I didn’t like the pressure and difficulty of figuring out answers. Surprisingly, I haven’t explored History or Political Science in my years of higher-education studies: Yes, I did take a US History class for fulfilling the requirements, but I haven’t taken one for an elective, for my own pleasure.

I shall soon see what comes of this major. I think that I will be a science writer. Researching hasn’t been appealing to me since I received a low grade on my midterms. Medical school is even less considered, and has become rather an embarrassing entertaining artifact of a dreamer.

jargon

Cdk activating kinase (CAK) and Cdc25 phosphatase antagonize the activity of Wee1.

16-9 to 16-11 (working on it)

16-9. (b) is true. If a protein that binds to DNA in the region upstream of the promoter sequence of the sys gene is a positive regulator, then loss-of-function mutations in the gene encoding the DNA-binding protein would result in no expression because positive regulation enhances binding of protein, not suppressing of it. Without this positive regulator, transcription cannot be encouraged.
16-10.

a) 1 (given)
b) 6, lac O^c
c) 2, lacZ missense mutation
d) 4, lac operon inversion (excluding lacI), still work because lacI protein work in trans.
e) 5? might be a superrepressor.
f) 3, it doesn’t grow, but it can repress

 

16-11.

a) Genotypes 1 & 2 show that arabinose is necessary to start expression because expression is off without the presence of arabinose.
b) Without araC, as shown in genotypes 3 & 4, the araBAD gene is not expressed, indicating that araC helps to promote expression.

16-12. For each of the growth conditions listed, what proteins would be bound to lac operon DNA? (Do not include RNA polymerase.

a) glucose: lacI repressor
b) glucose + lactose: no proteins
c) lactose: CRP (cAMP receptor protein)

16-13. Assume that each of the seven mutations is one and only one of the genetic lesions in the following list. Identify the type of alteration each mutation represents.

a) superrepressor—cannot induce: 4
b) operator deletion—cannot start: 3 6
c) nonsense (amber) supressor tRNA gene: 7
d) defective CRP-cAMP binding site: 2
e) nonsense (amber) mutation in beta-galactosidase gene: 6 3
f) nonsense (amber) mutation in repressor gene: 5
g) defective CRP gene (encoding CRP protein): 1