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Posts Tagged ‘Biology’

Saturday Lecture Series: Arsenic as a Building Block for Life?

by coldwarrior ( 176 Comments › )
Filed under Academia, Open thread, saturday lecture series, Science at December 4th, 2010 - 8:30 am

NASA astrobiologist went out to the hyper saline Lake Mono California (eastern edge of Yosemite National Park) looking for extremeophiles, microorganisms that thrive in places that would be lethal to most other organisms. This enables the astrobiologists to better understand how life can arise elsewhere in our solar system and beyond. Well, they found one, GFAJ-1 strain of Gammaproteobacteria uses toxic arsenic as a key building block of its DNA, causing astrobiologists to re-think the possibilities for life on and off our planet:

From the NASA website:

NASA-supported researchers have discovered the first known microorganism on Earth able to thrive and reproduce using the toxic chemical arsenic. The microorganism, which lives in California’s Mono Lake, substitutes arsenic for phosphorus in the backbone of its DNA and other cellular components.

New Life Form Discovered in Mono Lake

A microscopic image of GFAJ-1 grown on arsenic. [larger image]

“The definition of life has just expanded,” said Ed Weiler, NASA’s associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at the agency’s Headquarters in Washington. “As we pursue our efforts to seek signs of life in the solar system, we have to think more broadly, more diversely and consider life as we do not know it.”

This finding of an alternative biochemistry makeup will alter biology textbooks and expand the scope of the search for life beyond Earth.

Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur are the six basic building blocks of all known forms of life on Earth. Phosphorus is part of the chemical backbone of DNA and RNA, the structures that carry genetic instructions for life, and is considered an essential element for all living cells.

Phosphorus is a central component of the energy-carrying molecule in all cells (adenosine triphosphate) and also the phospholipids that form all cell membranes. Arsenic, which is chemically similar to phosphorus, is poisonous for most life on Earth. Arsenic disrupts metabolic pathways because chemically it behaves similarly to phosphate.

Please read the rest here

Here are some photo’s of Mono Lake

Arsenic as a replacement for phosphorous in ATP, DNA,  and phospholipids…amazing how life will adapt…what fits, survives.

Half Breed

by Bunk Five Hawks X ( 296 Comments › )
Filed under Evolution, Humor, Open thread, Science, Technology at August 6th, 2010 - 11:24 pm

[Found here.]

Seems like one of two things happened at this zoo. Either a panda escaped into the reptile pen, or a cold-blooded croc decided to have it’s way with a warm-blooded mammal.

Oh yeah. It could happen. It’s common fodder for inane collegiate/stoner all-night bull sessions about the possibility of producing a human/chimpanzee hybrid, whether it could or should be done, and someone always points out that we share 99% of the same DNA as apes. BFD.

Considering that we also share a majority of genes with celery, and  70% of the same DNA with sea sponges, the discussion deteriorates from merely absurd to the level of  “What if a single atom in my fingernail were really a small universe, and pass me another cold one, dude” type intellectual depravity.

Yet come to think of it, I’ve met people who think and act more like celery and sponges, and you probably have as well, but you won’t find them here on an Overnight Open Thread.

9 Year Old Undergoes Gender Transition

by WrathofG-d ( 93 Comments › )
Filed under UK, World at September 23rd, 2009 - 10:24 am

Welcome to our upside-down world where long before a child actually has any sense of true identity they already believe they are having an gender identity crisis.

A boy of nine has returned to school as a girl in what is believed to be Britain’s youngest gender swap.

Children at the school in southern England were told the child had left and been replaced by a female pupil.

The child came dressed in girls’ uniform with long hair tied in a pink ribbon.

The case comes after it was revealed yesterday that a 12-year-old boy had started his first term at secondary school in southern England as a girl.

Some parents at the school have criticised staff for not informing them before telling children about the gender change at a special assembly.

{The Article} {Another}

Parents of childen at this U.K. school were understandably upset, but maybe not for what you would think.  They weren’t really going to bother with the fact that a 9 year old felt he/she needed to get a gender change…no, I guess that is just normal these days.  (Reminder! The child was under 10 years old)

The class parents weren’t upset with the gender swap itself, but with the way the school handled the issue.

Many parents felt they should have been informed in advance so they could better prepare their children. However, The Beaumont Society, a British transgender organization, felt it was inappropriate to advertise the gender change at all, feeling it would only lead to bullying and teasing of the 9-year-old in question.

Many parents felt they should have been informed in advance so they could better prepare their children.

I highly suggest you click the link above to the group the school reached out to for advice.  Wow!

From reading the comments here regarding this issue, it seems that this 9 year old’s gender transition is simply the tip of the iceberg of a much larger growing trend, and social movement.  It seems that 9 year old children having gender changes is the norm, and if you think otherwise it is YOU who have the problem!

TisKismet 10:43:50 AM Sep 22 2009

Report This!

I am confused about why so many are so prone to believe that a person’s biological state is the surest sign of gender. We KNOW for a fact, scientifically, that people are born with physiological gender anomalies all the time; why couldn’t or shouldn’t the psychological identity be deemed the most accurate? (emphasis added)

Yea how closed minded of me to think that gender might have something to do with biology!?