2 Responses to “Surprise: Many Multifunctional Proteins”

1. Thought Provoker Says:
   December 12th, 2009 at 5:55 pm

   Hi Bradford,

   Interesting post.

   Let's get the exact quote from the researchers, shall we…

   "At all three levels, we found M. pneumoniae was more complex than we expected", says Luis Serrano, co-initiator of the project at EMBL and now head of the Systems Biology Department at CRG.

   To my engineering mind, this means the M. pneumoniae is probably not an example of simple, fundamental life.

   What is?

   Shall we look at nanobacterium (aka nanobes)?

   From this link…

   Nanobacteria (NB), bacterial entities with unusually small sizes and widespread distribution in animals and humans [1], [2], have been implicated in numerous diseases and as infectious agents associated with body fluids, blood infusion products, and vaccines [3]–[7]. … NB are controversial due to both their small size (50–500 nm) and marked pleomorphism, features that are currently not supported by conventional microbiology

   I will admit to having to look up "pleomorphism". If I understand correctly, the controversy is based on a lack of uniformity in size and shape.

   I suggest the short version of the concern is that they "are currently not supported by conventional microbiology".

   If by the current definition of "life" and "living" the simpliest cell is too complex to understand the "Origin of Life" (post's category) then maybe the problem is in those definitions.

Comment by Thought Provoker — December 12, 2009 @ 5:55 pm

2. Bradford Says:
   December 12th, 2009 at 7:15 pm

   Thanks for that link TP. I'll have to read the paper and give it some thought. Looks like a good candidate for a blog entry.

   You missed some blogs on consciousness while away. Penrose, Hammeroff and more. aiguy put up a guest post with over 300 comments. Interesting stuff although Olegt thinks of it as naval gazing.

Comment by Bradford — December 12, 2009 @ 7:15 pm

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.