Category: Cell biology
Organisms found that hover indefinitely between life and death
| October 12, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology |
Researchers have found some of the oldest and slowest life forms on Earth: In a bid to hone in on the lower energy limits for life, Hans Røy at Aarhus University in Denmark probed the clays below the North Pacific gyre. Under the microscope, he found a community made up of bacteria and single-celled organisms called […]
Light-loving cyanobacteria found, improbably, nearly 2,000 feet underground
| October 10, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design |
Careful study showed that this was not the result of contamination: In a surprise to scientists, cyanobacteria have been found thriving nearly 2,000 feet below the strange landscape, where sunlight, water, and nutrients are scarce. Researchers previously thought these microbes could survive only while basking in the sun’s rays, although they are otherwise a versatile […]
Matti Leisola on evolution and the recent Nobel Chemistry prize
| October 5, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Evolution, Intelligent Design |
Matti Leisola, author of Heretic: One Scientist’s Journey from Darwin to Design, offers some thoughts on the recent announcement: I am an enzyme bioengineer, so I greeted with enthusiasm Wednesday’s announcement… that part of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to a fellow enzyme bioengineer. She is Frances H. Arnold, a professor of chemical […]
Do cells use passwords?
| October 4, 2018 | Posted by News under Artificial Intelligence, Cell biology, Intelligent Design |
Sloan Kettering molecular biologist argues that this may not be semantics. What if that’s what they are actually doing, in effect? One wonders, how would it affect cancer treatment? Abstract: Living organisms must maintain proper regulation including defense and healing. Life-threatening problems may be caused by pathogens or an organism’s own cells’ deficiency or hyperactivity, in […]
Neutron scattering to help with study of cell membranes
| September 25, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Intelligent Design |
At one time, the cell membrane was thought of as something like a building block made of lipids. Suzan Mazur interviews Swedish physical chemist Tommy Nylander about the study of living cells through neutron scattering (to avoid contamination, the Swedes do the studies without nuclear power or mercury) at Oscillations: Tommy Nylander:I’m very interested in […]
Jerry Coyne continues to be unhappy over David Quammen’s book on Carl Woese
| September 25, 2018 | Posted by News under Books of interest, Cell biology, Culture, Darwinism, Evolution, horizontal gene transfer, Intelligent Design |
Readers will remember science writer David Quammen’s new book, The Tangled Tree:A Radical New History of Life, a biography of Carl Woese, who first identified the Archaea (and doubted Darwinism). They will also doubtless remember Darwinian evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, who does not life Tangled Tree, and… Well, he still doesn’t like it and has […]
Neutron scattering: A window into the development of living cells
| September 15, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Intelligent Design |
Neutrons can be used to probe living tissues without damaging them (neutron scattering). Suzan Mazur interviews biophysicist John Katsaras, whose specialty is cell membranes, at Oscillations on their implications for studying the origin and development of life forms. Among the fascinating details, Suzan Mazur: Your membranes research revealed that lipids gathered with others of their […]
Researchers propose computer model of protein that may have existed when life began
| September 7, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life |
At Rutgers: How did life arise on Earth? Rutgers researchers have found among the first and perhaps only hard evidence that simple protein catalysts – essential for cells, the building blocks of life, to function – may have existed when life began. Their study of a primordial peptide, or short protein, is published in the […]
Decidedly unDarwinian admissions re proteins
| August 15, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Design inference, Intelligent Design, Physics |
Philip Cunningham writes to note for us such moments in the literature: Abstract: (open access) Why life persists at the edge of chaos is a question at the very heart of evolution. Here we show that molecules taking part in biochemical processes from small molecules to proteins are critical quantum mechanically. Electronic Hamiltonians of biomolecules […]
“1st International Symposium on Building a Synthetic Cell,” Netherlands, August 28–29
| August 14, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Origin Of Life |
The world-class symposium features several controversies long the lines of 1) Should we build a synthetic cell and 2) Aren’t we really doing that under another name anyway? Suzan Mazur reports at her blog, Oscillations: The late Carl Woese, who was awarded the Leeuwenhoek Medal by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (1992), […]
Facing death, slime molds pack a survival kit for their offspring
| August 1, 2018 | Posted by News under Animal minds, Cell biology, Darwinism, Intelligent Design |
From Susan Milius at ScienceNews: In the final frenzy of reproduction and death, social amoebas secrete proteins that help preserve a starter kit of food for its offspring. Dictyostelium discoideum, a type of slime mold in soil, eats bacteria. Some wild forms of this species essentially farm the microbes, passing them along in spore cases […]
“Fairly sophisticated” bacterial communications pose stark question re evolution
| August 1, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Complex Specified Information, Evolution, Intelligent Design |
From ScienceDaily: A concept known as ‘percolation’ is helping microbiologists explain how communities of bacteria can effectively relay signals across long distances. Once regarded as a simple cluster of microorganisms, communities of bacteria have been found to employ a strategy we use to brew coffee and extract oil from the sea. Percolation helps the microscopic […]
Researchers: Jumping genes time their activity, await opportunity
| July 30, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Design inference, Genetics |
From ScienceDaily: Researchers have developed new techniques to track the mobilization of jumping genes. They found that during a particular period of egg development, a group of jumping-genes called retrotransposons hijacks special cells called nurse cells that nurture the developing eggs. These jumping genes use nurse cells to produce invasive material (copies of themselves called […]
Virus expert highlights the conflict over whether viruses are alive
| July 25, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life, Viruses |
From science writer Suzan Mazur, at Oscillations, interviewing Bogdan Dragnea, who studies the physical structure of viruses via spectrosopy: Suzan Mazur: Do you consider viruses live organisms since viruses can recognize their targets, attach, and infect their hosts—most viruses using a tail spike and needle [see following Parent lab image]—and as you’ve noted, they can […]
Bacteria make complex antibiotics that give chemists “cold sweats”
| July 25, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Chemistry |
From Josh Bloom at American Council for Science and Health: I recently wrote about three of the deadly neurotoxins being produced by cyanobacteria (aka blue-green algae) during an ongoing algae bloom in South Florida (See Florida’s Deadly Algae Bloom – Why Is It So Dangerous?). The toxins range from structurally simple and easy for organic […]
At Science: Maybe the transition from single cells to multicellular life wasn’t that hard?
| July 19, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Darwinism, Intelligent Design |
From Elizabeth Pennisi at Science: The evolutionary histories of some groups of organisms record repeated transitions from single-celled to multicellular forms, suggesting the hurdles could not have been so high. Genetic comparisons between simple multicellular organisms and their single-celled relatives have revealed that much of the molecular equipment needed for cells to band together and […]
The minimal cell: How is research coming on a simple, self-replicating “artificial” cell?
| July 17, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life |
Such acell might shed some light on the origin of life, researchers hope. From Suzan Mazur at Oscillations: Not to be outdone by Dutch, German and other Europeans now officially dabbling in synthetic cell research, America’s National Science Foundation has thrown its hat into the ring on funding synthetic cell development, per its April 18, […]
When a bioengineer cannot avoid evidence for design in nature…
| July 14, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Culture, Darwinism, Intelligent Design |
From Denyse O’Leary at Salvo: Minority Reporter: A Finnish Bioengineer Touches the Third Rail Randomness and chaos are much easier to market today than order, meaning, and purpose. The songs write themselves. Serious scientists, therefore, can find themselves in conflict with a view that is not so much an argument as an attitude to life, […]
Molecular biologist: Speculation re the last universal common ancestor is not helping science
| June 22, 2018 | Posted by Denyse OLeary under Cell biology, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life, Tree of life |
From molecular biologist Mike Klymkowsky at The Scientist There is a pernicious temptation in science to speak authoritatively about topics that are beyond scientific exploration and certainty. This has led some theoretical physicists to advocate for a “post-empirical” form of science. That is the idea that theories need not be judged on their ability to […]
