Posted on 02/10/2003 12:41:03 PM PST by CalConservative
Scientists Flood the Flagellum Engine 02/10/2003
Japanese researchers have found that flagella, the whiplike propellers that make bacteria swim, can get flooded with too many protons if the pH is lowered inside, reports Nature Science Update. Like a flooded car engine, the motors come to a stop. But they can run fine again if the artificially-induced pH change is reversed. The article concludes by discussing the functional specifications of these molecular machines:
“This is a motor with quite remarkable properties,” says Robert Macnab of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, who studies the assembly of bacterial motors. “It runs like a battery, moves like a ship’s propeller, has a gear switch so it can rotate in either direction, and it’s under the control of information from environment. These are biological functions at their most simplified form, and yet there are 60 different types of components in this little engine.”Kendall Powell explains the interest in these motors: “Researchers are keen to understand such chemically driven biological motors, which are only millionths of a millimetre across, as electronics do not work on this scale.”
The bacterial flagellum has become the unofficial mascot of the Intelligent Design movement, since the publication of Darwin’s Black Box and the film Unlocking the Mystery of Life. And not without cause; this article does nothing to explain how evolution could produce such a molecular machine. It doesn’t even broach the subject. On the contrary, it underscores the point that this is an irreducibly complex system. Macnab claims there are “60 different types of components in this little engine.” See the picture in the article, and consider also that many bacteria have more than one propeller – this species appears to have eight – that work in coordinated movement. In addition to all the complexity of each individual flagellum, having a system of eight requires fast signalling across the interior.
This is just one of many molecular machines in the cell that argue for intelligent design. As Bruce Alberts has said, “Indeed, the entire cell can be viewed as a factory that contains an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each of which is composed of a set of large protein machines.” Many of these structures are just as amazing, and more so, as the flagellum. For a few examples, see the spliceosome, RNA polymerase, and ATP Synthase. Another article posted yesterday on EurekAlert uses the word “machine” seven times as it discusses “an intricately complex protein machine” that adjust the connections between neurons.
Good questions, as I have often wondered this myself. My son (7 years old) asked me the other day as well. I will tell you the same thing I told him: I have no idea.
However, if I were to bet on it, I would say that He continues to influence life on Earth in ways we don't fully understand yet.
Regards, MM
The new, hot field for those of us with CS and bio backgrounds is computational biology. There is also room for modeling new enzymes. You can design a protein and use the computer to predict the folding geometry. It is necessary to specify the temperature and pH. The MD in my group does special computational biology procedures for the pharmaceutical industry.
I'd introduce you to Him, but unfortunately we'd have to see to it that you died in order for you to actually see Him. I don't think you'd appreciate that (the timing would be bad), and He would not be happy with me if I helped you along.
Perhaps you could convince yourself to seek Him out; He promises to help out. I don't think that's very likely though; you seem pretty dead set against that. I guess you'll have to wait for the worms to find out for yourself . . .
LBB is a troll, plain and simple. He hasn't uttered anything new in two years. He has made a number of other errors besides the Nobel Prize snafu: he claimed circles were not ellipses; he claimed all the planets had "wildly eliptical orbits; that chimpanzees had tails; and so on. He won't ever admit he's screwed up (a sure sign of a troll) and when backed into a corner will attempt to have the thread locked or yanked (he's succeeded a number of times at this). And, with each new thread he resets his counter to zero and brings up the same old crap.
Blobel's in vitro experimental system inspired other cell biologists and, according to Graham Warren of Yale University, it "made people believe that any cellular function, no matter how complicated, can be mimicked in the test tube".
Sounds to me like chemistry, plain and simple.
On to the good stuff:
"Last month, Gunter Blobel, Ph.D., M.D., a cell biologist and a professor at Rockefeller University in New York, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology - Medicine. Dr. Blobel has been involved in investigating the process by which newly-made proteins are transported across the membranes of cell structures. The accurate distribution of these proteins is vital in order for the cells to function. An understanding of this process has an important bearing on many diseases (e.g., cystic fibrosis, Alzheimer’s disease, etc.).
The work of Dr. Blobel and his associates has revealed just how the proteins are transported from the ribosomes (where they are made), to be ultimately integrated into various areas of the cell. Blobel suggests that this directional operation is analogous to a “zip code” system. A zip code system! Each newly-made protein has a “specific address” that has been “barcoded” (if we may follow Blobel’s analogy) to find its way to its special destination.
Did the “zip code” procedure of the U.S. Postal service “just happen,” or was it purposely designed? The answer is all too obvious to require expression.
Blobel’s discovery only itensifies our reverence for the amazing planning that is evidenced in the human body. Who in the world, with an ounce of common sense, can believe that this complicated process is the result of the blind forces of matter - just a “happy accident” in that mystical union between “Father Time” and “Mother Nature”?
The disciples of Darwin do!
The fact is, however, the design within the human body literally shouts, “God!”
For his discovery, Dr. Blobel has been awarded a prize of $960,000. He has stated that he plans to donate the money for the rebuilding of a church, and also a synagogue, in Germany, both of which were destroyed by the Nazis during World War II.
I mention this to call attention to the fact that one reasonably may conclude that Dr. Gunter Blobel is not an atheist. This runs counter to the infidelic claim that the world’s most brilliant folks are among the skeptics."
From here: Zip Codes
Bad assumption.
"DR. GÜNTER BLOBEL: "It is a molecular zip code, if you wish. Very much like in the mail.""
As I predicted when I posted it, the evolutionists would hurl insults and excuses but they would not meet the challenge.
Your handle says it all - WHATTAJOKE!
Hey 'biologist' - stop evading the question about the Nobel Prizes with verbiage and Christian bashing. Take up the challenge if you are really a biologist and not another phony evolutionist.
Wonder where Ribosomes learned to read zip codes! Next, the evolutionists will say that they went to college to learn the zip codes for the new proteins needed for evolution!
Every biological advance proves more and more that evolution is a joke.
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