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Category

Cell biology

Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
March 30, 2021
Categorized
Cell biology, Genetics, Intelligent Design
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At New Scientist: “single-celled organism that lacks most of the molecular equipment needed to kick-start DNA replication”

Denyse O'Leary
March 30, 2021
Cell biology, Genetics, Intelligent Design
It's a protist? “Protists are a group of loosely connected, mostly unicellular eukaryotic organisms that are not plants, animals or fungi. There is no single feature such as evolutionary history or morphology common to all these organisms and they are unofficially placed under a separate kingdom called Protista.” In short, just the sort of life form that might be doing something really different. Because nature is full of intelligence, there are probably many alternative programs out there. It all didn’t just somehow happen randomly once. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
March 25, 2021
Categorized
Cell biology, Darwinism, Genetics, Intelligent Design
Tagged
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Some cells increase gene expression after death

Denyse O'Leary
March 25, 2021
Cell biology, Darwinism, Genetics, Intelligent Design
This cell activity, involving study of brain tissue removed during operations, is an exercise in futility. Maybe those genes are kind of like a school bureaucracy happily presiding over a school with no students or teachers. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
March 17, 2021
Categorized
Cell biology, Intelligent Design
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Researchers: Human immune system does not “recognize” deep sea microbes

Denyse O'Leary
March 17, 2021
Cell biology, Intelligent Design
They might be useful, as the researchers say. But now that they are starting to work with them, we’d better hope that none of them turn on us, for lack of something more familiar to them that they can infect. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
March 15, 2021
Categorized
Cell biology, Intelligent Design, Mind, Neuroscience
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At Nautilus: A bioelectric theory of consciousness

Denyse O'Leary
March 15, 2021
Cell biology, Intelligent Design, Mind, Neuroscience
The hypothesis that consciousness is a function of bioelectric fields includes the notion that our individual cells are conscious. Levin and Dennett are willing to think of parts of the body as agents too. But from what we can tell, whole persons are not agents in Dennett's view. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
March 14, 2021
Categorized
Cell biology, Genomics, Intelligent Design
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Archaea microbes have genes like flexible slinkies

Denyse O'Leary
March 14, 2021
Cell biology, Genomics, Intelligent Design

They were only discovered in 1977 and they get more unusual all the time: Microbes called archaea package their genetic material into flexible shapes that flop open in unusual ways, Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator Karolin Luger reports March 2, 2021, in the journal eLife. “Very much to our surprise, we found that these structures can undergo all sorts of gymnastics,” says Luger, a biochemist at the University of Colorado Boulder. Like DNA in the nucleus of human cells, archaeal DNA coils around proteins like string wrapped around a yo-yo. But there’s another twist, the team found. Those coils of DNA can also spread 90 degrees apart—a phenomenon scientists hadn’t seen before. Such bends in the springlike structures could Read More ›

Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
March 13, 2021
Categorized
Cell biology, Intelligent Design
Tagged
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Science discovery: The non-existence of harmful proteins

Denyse O'Leary
March 13, 2021
Cell biology, Intelligent Design
Researchers: “More than one-fourth of human proteins are one substitution away from containing a significant MAW, with the majority of replacements being predicted harmful.” Just above that, they say “This suggests that their absence is due to negative selection.” That’s a lot of negative selection going on. It feels somewhat like saying “The plagiarism checker provided considerable negative selection for the inappropriate use of others’ work.” Sure it did but that’s what it was designed to do. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
March 5, 2021
Categorized
Cell biology, Intelligent Design
Tagged
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At Scientific American: How some bacteria have achieved “immortality”

Denyse O'Leary
March 5, 2021
Cell biology, Intelligent Design
At Scientific American: In this experiment, cells awoke and multiplied that settled to the bottom when pterosaurs and plesiosaurs drifted overhead. Four geologic periods had ground by, but these microbes, protected from radiation and cosmic rays by a thick coat of ocean and sediment, quietly persisted. And now, when offered a bite, they awoke and carried on as if nothing unusual had happened. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
February 26, 2021
Categorized
Cell biology, Intelligent Design
Tagged
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Of 70,000 hitherto unknown viruses in the human gut, over 40% of proteins had no clear function

Denyse O'Leary
February 26, 2021
Cell biology, Intelligent Design
The reader comments that viruses cannot afford to carry around much non-functioning nucleic acid. More likely, the 43% that are mystery proteins do have a function. If even viruses are much more complex than we expect, what chance that all these complex systems arose by natural selection acting on random mutations (Darwinism)? Read More ›