Greippi

Adrenaline (ephinephrine) can also be synthesised from phenylalanine, so I assume if there was a problem with converting tyrosine to adrenaline, phenylalanine would just be used instead. HOWEVER: In the adrenaline synthesis pathway, tyrosine is oxidised using tyrosine hydroxylase, not tyrosinase.

What are the limitations/disadvantages that he's seeing at the moment? People interested in this, might find PetroSun's website useful - in 2008 they opened the first algae biodiesel plant.

Indeed - it's just not going to work efficiently. I think the future is designing a cell that takes in carbon dioxide and light and releases water and oxygen, producing energy. But until we fully understand photosynthesis that's unlikely to happen!

Yeah. From what I was talking about it, the perspective I'm coming from is that of drug discovery. The direction it seems to be going is that pharmaceutical industry (in the UK) is simply using the mass assay sort of trials as opposed to rational drug design (nothing wrong with that as long as the end result/cost is the same/better), and outsourcing their 'research'. It's really that side of my department (molecular biology) who are getting their knickers in a twist about this. Maybe it is a false dichotomy, but most post doctorate academics I've spoken to about this issue hold the view that I'm presenting.

The field of biophysics is positively booming. In fact, these days there's not that much distinction between the disciplines. I do molecular biology, and it's all basically physics and chemistry but applied to life. There's still much to discover. Fully understanding the energetics and weak forces - particularly involved in proteins - is a big challenge for science in the future.

As far as I am aware, the total alkalinity is the ability of a substance to neutralise an acid pH is the potential for hydrogen ion concentration - approximately the negative logarithm of the concentration of hydrogen ions.

Could be the case. But don't forget that capillaries run through tissue, so changes in the tissue will have an effect on the volume of a capillary.

I am sorry, I phrased that completely wrong! I'm not talking about academic outsourcing, I'm looking at the possible long-term effects of two trends: Scientists educated to e.g. degree level have two MAIN routes if they want to continue in their field: working in industry or continuing with academic research. What I meant to say was that if industry continues to be outsourced at an increasing rate, over time it decreases jobs for scientists trained "at home" in their own country. A decrease in funding for academic institutions here is making it more and more difficult for scientists to be academically trained to a high level.

Although it is in equilibrium between H2O and H+ and OH-

Breathes? Most likely it has some sort of transport protein in its membrane. Maybe it re-oxidises the Fe(II), maybe it transports it out, I don't know. Hopefully there's someone else here who knows better!

Fe(III) or Fe3+ (don't know how to do superscript on here). Ruebush et al. Applied and Environmental Microbiology, April 2006, p. 2925-2935, Vol. 72, No. 4

Shewanella oneidensis is relatively unique in that it can reduce Fe3+ using formate as an electron donor. How it uptakes Fe3+ from the environment I'm not sure, I have a feeling it uptakes both soluble and insoluble (from goethite) forums. There is a lot of literature on the genomics and biochemistry of this, but little I could find after a brief search on actual uptake!

In that example, yes. (I assume by 'pure metal' you mean non-ionic iron. Not elementally pure ion - because in this case the iron is elementally pure - until it is purposefully complexed.) I would guess that the reason why bacteria rarely take up a non-ionic form is because it's just not useful. It can't accept electrons, and therefore can't form complexes with anything else in the 'stable' form. It would require energy to break that apart, which just isn't practical if iron ions could be taken up instead.

On the topic of metal "eating" bacteria, many bacteria need metals for things other than creation of a proton gradient (they're often used as enzyme cofactors). For example, molybdenate is essential for many nitrogen fixing bacteria - Azotobacter vinelandii which takes up Mo as well as iron. These bacteria produce catechol siderophores which complex the Mo or Fe which can then be taken up by the bacteria. In this case, Fe3+ is complexed in to a water-soluble form which can be taken up. That may or may not be useful to you - but it's an example of how iron can be taken up in many different ways,

I didn't say it was on a global scale, I said it was increasing on a global scale. This is certainly a worry. The "Western world" has always had academic research as a major export. We're seeing a rise in Asian academics and a cut in funding for academic institutions in the UK. If this trend continues, it's only a matter of time before all scientific research is outsourced to places like China, with UK citizens going to work overseas! Unfortunately the government doesn't fully realise this and we're really lucky in the UK that we have science funding institutions who are on the side of the scientists and get us the funding in the first place.

There are various methods in which capillaries can be constricted or dilated - you have to think about what is surrounding the capillary (i.e. the tissue it runs through) For example, capillaries in muscle do have muscle which can control the blood flow through them. There is research being done that indicates that pericytes (cells found around small blood vessels) may play a role in regulation of capillary blood flow by responding to hormones.

Of course, but if this takes off I'm sure we'll see 'pretty' things like that in the future. After all, as you pointed out, there are already renewable energy sculptures.

In my department (in the UK), there are many foreign students, particularly Asians. Drugs companies are outsourcing a lot of their work to Asia, this could be a factor in motivating people from this part of the world to go in to the scientific field. If you look at statistics of published papers, there is a dramatic rise in the number of papers coming from Asia. I have heard complaints from scientists that the research contained in many of these papers has been carried out very fast and therefore the quality of data is low. However, I suspect that a lot of the basis of these comments is down to the fact that these scientists were pipped to the post when it came to discovering something they had been working on! A specific example of this was a scientist working in Belgium who had been working on a protein structure for decades, he had determined the low resolution structure some years back, but was biding his time before he published so he could get some higher resolution, concrete data. A publication containing low resolution data came from China before he could publish his high-quality results. The Chinese research group were credited with the discovery and understandably he was more than a little cross! Just goes to show that the field is so competitive and that biding your time isn't always the best way forward! Scientific research in Asia is booming and I'm not surprised we're seeing a dramatic increase in the data you report above. I think it's great that scientific research is increasing on a global scale.

It seems likely to me that the discovery that metals can be melted and molded was accidental. It's hard to imagine a scenario in which this could happen without fire. Other methods of producing sufficient heat discovered by accident seem unlikely to me. From an evolutionary perspective, why are there not highly intelligent creatures with technology living in the sea? We evolved from the sea to land, and it seems likely to me that one factor in our technological advancement was that we could now create fire.

Similar, my professor works on photosynthesis and the architecture of photosynthetic membranes. He was pretty convincing though. He predicts that in the future we'll have massive sculptures containing algae working away, combining science and art: (This is an artists impression of an algae bioreactor)

Phosphorus because without it we wouldn't have ATP, the energy currency of our cells. And coins have the king/queen on them okeydoke.

Quoted for awesomeness. I have the entire Rebus series under my bed.

I'm afraid if you're looking to find a molar concentration, I can't think of any way simpler than a simple spectroscopic test with a spectrophotometer of your solution against solutions of known concentration. Sorry that's not much help, but otherwise I can't see how it could be done. Unless you laboriously separated all the malachite oxalate from a known volume of the solution as pure as you could get it, then weigh it to calculate the concentration (if you know the molecular weight). But even if you did extract it, the best you would get would be a rough estimate.

Fortunately (as of a couple of days ago) Katla itself showed no signs that it was about to erupt.

I suppose things COULD pass through the cells. For example water could just diffuse over a concentration gradient through the cell via osmosis. but the easier route would still be between the cells.