Introducing the third vid in the Long Story Short series (on cell membranes) Rob Stadler comments: First, scientists have been working for decades to simplify existing life, trying to arrive at a minimal viable life form by jettisoning anything that is not essential from the simplest extant cells. The success of Craig Venter’s group is Read More…
Cell biology
Film premieres today: Cell membranes as a challenge in the origin of life
This is the third of several episodes about the origin of life presented as part of the Long Story Short series — an education you actually have time for.
Confounding scientists for decades, RNA switches “on” and “off”
Unlike anything we know in the real world, all this complex machinery that confounds us just somehow, rather quickly, fell into place.
Our cells even have tentacles
So the little blobs aren’t nearly as helpless, let alone simple, as they have sometimes been made out to be. It’s quite the little world in there. Unfortunately, some of the cells that probably get a lot of use out of their filapodia are cancer cells. But maybe, the researchers suggest, that fact points to new treatment methods.
The more we study kinesin, the more remarkable it appears
David Coppedge: Cells are inhabited by molecular motors and engines with precision parts operating under tight regulations.
Origin of life: But how do cells come to have “borders” at all?
Inanimate objects don’t have “borders” because they need not defend themselves against anything. Boulders don’t care if they end up as sand. Having a membrane at all suggests that something is different about life that can’t be explained by the various “It all just happened” scenarios we often hear about how life got started. How did life forms decide they wanted to protect themselves?
Charming bacteria set off virus bombs in their neighbors
Researchers aren’t yet sure if it happens outside the lab. If it is the case, then it is another example of a life form having strategy that raises the question, “Could it really have randomly evolved with no underlying intelligence in nature?” Lot of those questions piling up.
Casey Luskin comments on the New Yorker article, Journey to the Center of Our Cells
It’s a sort of shift in perspective. The very fact that no one is rushing in with a reductionist explanation points to the significance of the shift. Researchers are pausing to observe and reflect for once.
Common sensor in bacteria and humans highlights reason for doubt re Darwinian tales
At this point, claims that Darwinism can “accommodate” HGT should be seen for what they are special pleading in the face of challenging new findings in evolution.
How can an intestinal system have an “innate memory”?
Increasingly, researchers must confront intelligence in nature, whatever they may choose to call it.
Remember when cells were random blobs?
Now they are a tightly orchestrated dance. And if the researchers do create living cells, that’s intelligent design, not natural selection acting on random mutations (Darwinism).
Largest bacterium ever discovered is as big as a peanut
Tim Standish: If prokaryotes have the capacity to develop very complex cells, why didn’t they do what eukaryotes did and turn into multicellular organisms, assuming there is some sort of fitness advantage to doing so? Why would being multicellular increase fitness in eukaryotes and not bacteria or archaea?
Researcher: Viruses are “smart” but the human immune system is smarter
“Viruses are very smart, that’s what I love to say,” Muller says. “They have lots of strategies to stick around, and they don’t do a lot of damage for a very long time, because that’s one way to hide from the immune system. It’s becoming harder for researchers to claim that there is no intelligence in nature. That’s probably why so many of them are embracing panpsychism. They want a way to include intelligence in nature without an intelligence outside nature. It won’t work but at least it makes more sense in relation to the evidence.
Here’s the webinar on topoisomerase, the complex ,specified “untangling” enzyme in our cells
Introduction: The carefully orchestrated untangling activity of topoisomerase II doesn’t happen by accident. This enzyme is a molecular machine that only works because its amino acid sequence is highly specified to provide a special shape and structure necessary for its function. In other words, topoisomerase enzymes contain high levels of complex and specified information—a hallmark of intelligent design.
At the University of Geneva: “Cellular tornadoes sculpt our organs”
So when was the last time we heard about a tornado that wrought anything but destruction? They can call it “self-organisation” if they want but then self-organization is just another term for “design in nature.”