DrDNA

Please, you must tell me where I can learn more of these reactions so, I, like God and Mr Craig Venter, can creat life. It's alive.............. Ah, but how many delicous ice cream flavors can you form in this manner ? Or in other, less gastronomical-like terms, how many would have an iota of biological activity? Or assuming random structures would form, what is the probability than one would be active? How many trillion years would it take to get there? In other words, where is the randomly generated identical copy of my dirty, stinky left tennis shoe? And where did the amino acids come from (not 2 or 3, but all 20 or so)?.

Remember the good ol days, when all you had to do to propagate your own unique genetic traits was to find a potential mate, bust 'er in the side of the head then fend off all other potential suitors, drag her behind a rock or a bush and impregnate her only to find another potential mate and do it all over again? Life is so much more complicated now.

Hint: Look up the function of disulfide bonds in antibodies (for example) and what happens after you reduce the disulfides into thiols to make Fab fragements and such. Why would you want to stop things from going in to hydrophobic areas? You could look up where active sites reside, what they look like, what residues are generally found in there, in the binding pocket, and the cleft........

Of course we should kill the damn dirty apes before they kill us.

Mais oui, of course....that's the part where the "it is believed" comes in.

More specifically, it is believed that hydrogen atoms were formed about one microsecond after the original Big Bang. Let there be hydrogen.....boom! Most helium atoms....about tree minutes later with the heavier elements being formed later by nuclear reactions in the cores of stars.

Except of course, at an extreme end of the spectrum and your parents just so happen to be a horse and a donkey (and if fitness is defined as strength) = dead end......sorry couldn't help myself..... The bottom line still directly relates to an increase in the numbers of viable individuals in future generations. Fitness is a difficult term to get your arms around comparatively speaking. What if a mutation allows successive gens to move into another niche?

It's your protein and it doesn't seem like you have too many limits, but one way to answer that question is to ask yourself, what useful purpose might a disulfide bond serve on the outside?

1) Is partisanship helping or hurting? I think that political partisanship can bring out our worst tribal instincts. My tribe's good, your tribe is bad (I bang my drum all day and stick you with a spear tomorrow)......my team's number one, your team stinks....my party is the party of strong family values, your party is evil, it's the anti-God paty, the party of baby molesters....etc. In theory, partisanship might provide some sort of check and balance. But, unfortunately in practice there seems to be too much politcal incentive to go on the attack, regardless of reality, whether a particular positision is "good" or "bad" for the country or the people. Of course the reverse is also true. I am convinced that the addition of a 3rd (and then a 4th, and so one and so forth) viable political party would help to dilute the negative effects of partisanship. 2) Is it getting worse or no? I guess a logical response might be: as compared to when? I belive that it has gotten worse in my adult, polically aware lifetime, but it could also be that I am more aware now than I was previously. Or perhaps I am just more jadded now than I was previously. 3) Can common ground be found in most issues? Of course it can be found on most issues. But perhaps not at the extremes. For example, abortion may be an example of an item where it is often difficult to find common ground because there may always be people firmly for or against it; no matter what. The bigger problem may not be finding the common ground on most issues. I think that the bigger problem is finding people with enough spine and fibre to actually move toward the common ground after it is found. For example, we only need one explorer to discover common ground, but then we need a few and later a whole bunch more brave people to move onto the common ground, defend it, and populate it, etc. Logic is not the strongest quality of the human species, so unfortunately, even when common ground is on the horizon, .....little things like power, greed and our tribal nature too often get in the way.

Genes instruct the cell to make proteins which are needed in the correct amounts. For example, some genes make important proteins that instruct other genes to turn on and off at the right moment. These instructions need to be precise, accurate and sensitive. Having an extra chromosome is like driving a car with two drivers giving confusing instructions or you might look at it like adding too much of an ingredient to your stew, it may be edible, but it is not optimal. Chromosome 21 is the smallest or one of the smallest. Most other chromosome duplications are lethal. Some x ory chromosome duplications are exceptions.

Para is 100% correct. They only way that this could possibly effect the gene pool is if there were a selective advantage or disadvantage to the act. It MUST lead to more or fewer offspring for some chnge in the gene pool to occur. For example, if women knew of this behaviour and it exicted them so these guys, therefore, had more successful mating interactions and had more offspring. Or if playing with oneself strenghthens sperm or something in the sperm to make it more potent, therfore, these guys make more women pregnant and have more offspring than their buddies who do not participate in the behaviour. Conversely, if the behaviour repulses potential mates so they would not mate with this kind of person or if they avoid interactions with women because they are stuck in their bathrooms all day. Or for example, if a male had just a limited number of ejacs in him and those males used them all up, they wasted the good seed fooling around with themselves.... Then, they could have a selective disadvantage (IF the physiology was correct...which it is not). Of course the above hypothetical scenarios are completely deemphasized by the use of modern birth control technologies, abortion, one man one wife, societal or religous practices which frown on non-marital sex, etc.....

Maybe he touched the big, red DO NOT TOUCH button.

Buffer H is just Tris-HCl, MgCl2 buffer with sodium chloride. Many commonly used DNA enzymes use buffer H as their optimal buffer. It is MOST likely that the letter H was simply the next letter available when they were assigning a name, eg, I am familiar with buffers A, B, C, D, E, H, L, M..... Another, less likely, possibility is that it could have something to do with, for example, the enz Bam H1..... perhaps it was a good buffer for this enz.... But I think that the most likely possability is that it was just a letter to be used at the time.

Fred banned? No way! What happened?

E12 was not meant to be taken literally, but my point still stands. LD50 is not a good way to judge what how much of a toxic chemical to put in a person's system. Of course you are free to drink all the fluoride water and use fluoride containing dental products you want. On the other hand, I do not appreciate the water company putting it in my drinking water and I will continue to avoid it.

Basically, it means that the product inhibits an enzyme involved in the sequence of steps so that production is limited. In other words, in your specific case, D inhibits E1 so that the production of B (and all products down stream) is decreased. PS: In the future, you might get quicker help if you post it in the homework help forum. Have a great evening.

Lol

Aren't quibbles cute little furry critters that reproduce like crazy and almost took over the Enterprize?

For the most part, yes. I think it is great! Pop Science and Scientific American contributed in large part to my becoming a "real" scientist. But as someone mentioned I think, it sometimes sensationalizes topics (but not nearly as much as the TV/newspapers and it is not so dumbed down) and it can be overly speculative at times. That said, they certainly don't print lies. I still enjoy it sometimes, but don't read it (or Sci American) nearly as often as I once did.

It seems like it died.

Where can I go to complain about the improper use of myself? OK, I'll do it here. Thanks Fred. As in: 'so and so and myself attended the meeting' It drives me nuts.

Wow. OK then, drink away. But you still might want to read this article: Quote: "SUMMARY: The acute toxic dose of fluoride has been believed to be 2 to 5 mg or 8 mg/kg of body weight. However, acute fluoride poisonings have occurred at doses of 0.1 to 0.8 mgF/kg of body weight in the USA." ....................... DISCUSSION "Fluoride poisoning has occurred in the USA because of pump trouble, and from fluoride mistaken ingestion by mistaken use of fluoride. However, fluoride poisoning has also occurred from recommended use of fluoride. This fact suggests that the toxic dose is lower than widely believed. The 1991 Ad Hoc Committee,36 another 1991 USA workshop,1 a 1992 workshop in Canada,2 WHO in 1994,3 and the American Society of Pediatrics,37 all promoters of fluoride use, have begun to re-examine the daily dose of fluoride because of the increased incidence of dental fluorosis.38-40 This increase may be attributable to increased daily fluoride intake from fluoride-containing toothpaste, fluoride mouth rinsing, fluoride tablets and drops, from beverages, especially juices and juice-flavored drinks,41 and from fluoridation of water supply systems. WHO, in its report,3 recommended that fluoride mouth rinsing should be restricted to persons at moderate to high risk of dental caries. Therefore, subjects for fluoride mouth rinsing should be pre-selected. Medical treatment such as fluoride mouth rinsing should not be performed extensively and indiscriminately for public health at schools. Children under 6 years of age are prohibited from fluoride mouth rinsing. A recent increase in daily fluoride intake and an associated elevation of serum fluoride may predispose to acute fluoride poisoning. Moreover, there is a common situation in the assessment of toxic fluoride doses and in the evaluation of dental fluorosis, a chronic fluoride intoxication. Mild cases of dental fluorosis are usually neglected, and only moderate and severe dental fluorosis are taken into consideration. In acute fluoride poisoning, diarrhea and abdominal pain are regarded as minor transient side effects, and only severe symptoms and critical conditions in which patients need hospitalization are counted among toxic symptoms of fluoride. Kasahara et al estimated the minimum toxic dose of fluoride at about 0.2 mgF/kg.42 They reported that 60 persons took 10 mg amounts of fluoride and more than 90% of them had symptoms. Asou selected 0.1 mgF/kg as the minimum toxic dose.43 Fluoride mouth rinsing is considered a drug treatment that should be strictly controlled. Evaluation of chronic fluoride intoxication should be reviewed, and a new assessment of the toxic dose of fluoride based on scientific data is urgently needed." End Quote. http://www.fluoride-journal.com/97-30-2/302-89.htm

You mean The Quibble Stops Here?

Regarding it being a necessary trace element. I did not know that. Elemental fluorine is F-F (as in F2). Fluoride is a salt, F- (such as in NaF or KF). NaF is the stuff generally added the city water supply and toothpaste. The fluoride anion is what strengthens teeth. Is the fluoride anion the one considered a "necessary trace element" (although it is not elemental fluorine)? I've wondered what those "whitening" factors are but haven't taken the time to look them up. What are they, Mr Skep?

To answer your original question, "What does life do, then?", Fred..... After much thought, I think I have it...... .....it shits in your face and then you die.