Astonishing bioluminescent animals seen during 2-hour underwater descent

OT: Sugar, it is not just for breakfast cereal anymore!: Why Sugars May Be the Body's Superstars - December 07, 2011 Excerpt: Sugars are well known as an energy source for our bodies. But did you know that sugar chains made within the body, called glycans, play important roles in just about every aspect of how our cells work? Glycans (help) make sure proteins in the body are folded into the proper shape so they function correctly. They also act as ZIP codes that direct newly made proteins to the right cellular locations. Some glycans on cell surfaces act as anchors that viruses latch onto, while others divert white blood cells to infection sites. Many glycans help relay essential signals needed for the immune system and brain to function. http://www.livescience.com/17349-sugars-glycans-nigms.html Glycans: Where Are They and What Do They Do? - short video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgZ61TxnxKo Glycans rival DNA and proteins in terms of complexity; Glycans: What Makes Them So Special? - The Complexity Of Glycans - short video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXez_OyNBQA New tools developed to unveil mystery of the 'glycome' - June 10, 2012 Excerpt: One of the Least Understood Domains of Biology: The "glycome"—the full set of sugar molecules in living things and even viruses—has been one of the least understood domains of biology. While the glycome encodes key information that regulates things such as cell trafficking events and cell signaling, this information has been relatively difficult to "decode." Unlike proteins, which are relatively straightforward translations of genetic information, functional sugars have no clear counterparts or "templates" in the genome. Their building blocks are simple, diet-derived sugar molecules, and their builders are a set of about 250 enzymes known broadly as glycosyltransferases.,,, http://phys.org/news/2012-06-tools-unveil-mystery-glycome.html Yet Glycans, despite their complexity and importance to cell function, are, like DNA and Proteins, now being found to be 'rather uncooperative' with neo-Darwinian evolution; This Non Scientific Claim Regularly Appears in Evolutionary Peer Reviewed Papers - Cornelius Hunter - April 2012 Excerpt: Indeed these polysaccharides, or glycans, would become rather uncooperative with evolution. As one recent paper explained, glycans show “remarkably discontinuous distribution across evolutionary lineages,” for they “occur in a discontinuous and puzzling distribution across evolutionary lineages.” This dizzying array of glycans can be (i) specific to a particular lineage, (i) similar in very distant lineages, (iii) and conspicuously absent from very restricted taxa only. In other words, the evidence is not what evolution expected. Here is how another paper described early glycan findings: There is also no clear explanation for the extreme complexity and diversity of glycans that can be found on a given glycoconjugate or cell type. Based on the limited information available about the scope and distribution of this diversity among taxonomic groups, it is difficult to see clear trends or patterns consistent with different evolutionary lineages. It appears that closely related species may not necessarily share close similarities in their glycan diversity, and that more derived species may have simpler as well as more complex structures. Intraspecies diversity can also be quite extensive, often without obvious functional relevance. http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2012/04/this-non-scientific-claim-regularly.html Of related note on the ‘optimality of sugars’; Sugars as the optimal biosynthetic carbon substrate of aqueous life throughout the universe. – Weber AL. – 2000 Excerpt: In this report, we compare the redox and kinetic properties of carbon groups in order to evaluate the relative biosynthetic capability of organic substrates, and to identify the optimal biosubstrate. This analysis revealed that sugars (monocarbonyl alditols) are the optimal biosynthetic substrate because they contain the maximum number of biosynthetically useful high energy electrons/carbon atom while still containing a single carbonyl group needed to kinetically facilitate their conversion to useful biosynthetic intermediates. This conclusion applies to aqueous life throughout the Universe because it is based on invariant aqueous carbon chemistry–primarily, the universal reduction potentials of carbon groups. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10836263bornagain77

September 15, 2013

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OT: Bacteria and Evolution - Ian Juby - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DubjzG5r358bornagain77

September 14, 2013

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