
strains of algae growing in plastic plates /courtesy the researchers
From ScienceDaily:
It isn’t easy being green. It takes thousands of genes to build the photosynthetic machinery that plants need to harness sunlight for growth. And yet, researchers don’t know exactly how these genes work.
Now a team led by Princeton University researchers has constructed a public “library” to help researchers to find out what each gene does. Using the library, the team identified 303 genes associated with photosynthesis including 21 newly discovered genes with high potential to provide new insights into this life-sustaining biological process. The study was published online this week in Nature Genetics.
“The part of the plant responsible for photosynthesis is like a complex machine made up of many parts, and we want to understand what each part does,” said Martin Jonikas, assistant professor of molecular biology at Princeton. “This library, we hope, will be one of the foundations that people will build on to make the next generation of discoveries.” Paper. paywall – Xiaobo Li, Weronika Patena, Friedrich Fauser, Robert E. Jinkerson, Shai Saroussi, Moritz T. Meyer, Nina Ivanova, Jacob M. Robertson, Rebecca Yue, Ru Zhang, Josep Vilarrasa-Blasi, Tyler M. Wittkopp, Silvia Ramundo, Sean R. Blum, Audrey Goh, Matthew Laudon, Tharan Srikumar, Paul A. Lefebvre, Arthur R. Grossman and Martin C. Jonikas,. A genome-wide algal mutant library and functional screen identifies genes required for eukaryotic photosynthesis. Nature Genetics, 2019 DOI: 10.1038/s41588-019-0370-6 More.
Wait. “”The part of the plant responsible for photosynthesis is like a complex machine made up of many parts, … ” And machines just happen all by themselves, right? There is no information load to account for; it just evolved by natural selection acting on random mutation the way your Android did!
Before you go: In Nature: Cells have “secret conversations” We say this a lot: That’s a lot of information to have simply come into being by natural selection acting on random mutation (Darwinism). It’s getting not only ridiculous but obviously ridiculous.
Researchers: Helpful gut microbes send messages to their hosts If the strategy is clearly identified, they should look for non-helpful microbes that have found a way to copy it (horizontal gene transfer?)
Cells and proteins use sugars to talk to one another Cells are like Neanderthal man. They get smarter every time we run into them. And just think, it all just tumbled into existence by natural selection acting on random mutations (Darwinism) too…
Researchers: First animal cell was not simple; it could “transdifferentiate” From the paper: “… these analyses offer no support for the homology of sponge choanocytes and choanoflagellates, nor for the view that the first multicellular animals were simple balls of cells with limited capacity to differentiate.”
“Interspecies communication” strategy between gut bacteria and mammalian hosts’ genes described
Researchers: Cells Have A Repair Crew That Fixes Local Leaks
Researchers: How The Immune System “Thinks”
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