The Wonders of Creation Archives : Page 12 of 17 : Proslogion

One Way To Think About the Complexity of the “Simplest” Life Form

A cluster of 14 computers. The simulation discussed in this article used a cluster of 128 computers. (Click for credit)

I have always been fascinated by the question, “How simple can life get?” After all, anything that is alive has to perform certain functions such as reacting to external stimuli, taking in energy and converting that energy to its own use, reproducing, etc. Exactly how simple can a living system be if it has to perform such tasks? Many biologists have investigated this question, but there isn’t a firm answer. Typically, biologists talk about how simple a genome can be. The simplest genome belongs to a bacterium known as Carsonella ruddii. It has 159,662 base pairs in its genome, which is thought to contain 182 genes.¹ However, it is not considered a real living organism, as it cannot perform all the functions of life without the help of cells found in jumping plant lice.

The bacterium Pelagibacter ubique has the smallest genome of any truly free-living organism. It weighs in at 1,308,759 base pairs and 1,354 genes.² However, there is something in between these two bacteria that might qualify as a real living organism. It is the bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium. It’s genome has 582,970 base pairs and 525 genes.³ While it is a parasite, it performs all the functions of life on its own. It just uses other organisms (people as well as primate animals) for food and housing. Thus, while it cannot exist without other organisms, it might be the best indicator of how “simple” life can get.

If you follow science news at all, you might recognize the name. Two years ago, Dr Craig Venter and his team constructed their own version of that bacterium with the help of living versions of the bacterium, yeast cells, and bacteria of another species from the same genus. Well, now a scientist from Venter’s lab teamed up with several scientists from Stanford University to produce a computer simulation of the bacterium!

Their work, which seems truly marvelous, gives us deep insight into how complex the “simplest” living organism really is.

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Cells Might Actually Communicate with Each Other Using LIGHT!

This is a magnified image of a paramecium like those used in the experiment. (Click for credit)

I was reading an article on Dr. Cornelius Hunter’s blog the other day, and he mentioned a 2009 study of which I was not aware. I was surprised by what Dr. Hunter wrote, so I read the study myself and became even more surprised. Quite frankly, I nearly fell off my chair. I try to stay relatively informed on major advances in the sciences, but somehow, I missed this one entirely.

What am I talking about? It involves cellular communication. Biologists have been studying how cells communicate with one another for quite some time. In order for any multicellular organism to survive, the cells must cooperate with one another. As a result, they must communicate. Generally, this is done through chemical means: one cell releases a chemical into the environment, and other cells interact with that chemical, producing an effect. In the human body, for example, your insulin-producing cells (technically called the islets of Langerhans) release insulin into your bloodstream. When cells in your liver, muscle, and fat tissues detect the insulin, they respond by absorbing sugar from the blood. This regulates your blood sugar levels.¹

Even when not part of a multicellular creature, cells in groups often communicate with one another. When bacteria group together in a colony, for example, they communicate with one another so that they can do things like forage for food as a group and form coherent structures such as biofilms.² Once again, however, most of the research that has been done on how this communication takes place focuses on chemicals that the cells release into their environment.

The study to which Dr. Hunter referred looked at an entirely different means of cell-to-cell communication, and if its conclusions are correct, the method is nothing short of amazing.

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Interaction Interruption?

I am currently on my way to Costa Rica. I will be there for a week, and within about 36 hours of when I get back, I will be off to Greenville, South Carolina for the first Great Homeschool Convention of the season. Because of this, I am not sure how much time I will have for blog-related activities over the next couple of weeks. This means my blog might be significantly less interactive than usual for a while. On the bright side, since my travel season is starting, there will be more Notes From The Road entries.

In the meantime, please enjoy this nighttime video from the International Space Station. It starts out dark, but eventually shows you lights from cities, clouds, lightning strikes, and auroras, all from above. The thin, curved line is the haze of earth’s atmosphere, and the brightness that approaches intermittently marks when the space station is moving into the sunlit side of earth. It is well worth watching!

Octopuses Can Change the Products of Their Genes When Necessary!

Pareledone — An Arctic octopus (photo by E. Jorgensen, NOAA)

I have always been amazed at animals that live in very cold water. I can’t stand it when my shower gets lukewarm, but animals like the Arctic octopus (genus Pareledone) flourish in waters that dip below 0 degrees Celsius! How can they do that? Well, they have specific characteristics that allow them to deal with the water’s cold temperature – characteristics that I obviously don’t have. But what is the basis of those characteristics? Until reading a recent paper by Sandra Garrett and Joshua J. C. Rosenthal, I would have said that the basis of those characteristics is the genome of the animal in question. As reasonable as that answer sounds, however, it is not correct, at least not in some cases.

One of the most important things a cold-water animal must deal with is how the temperature affects certain proteins that govern the response of the nervous system. Cold temperatures tend to reduce the efficiency of those proteins. As a result, the colder the water, the slower the nervous system conducts signals. In very cold water, the slowdown would be so great that in the end, signals would not travel quickly enough to allow the animal to do what it must do in order to survive.¹ Thus, it has always been assumed (reasonably so) that many nervous system proteins in cold-water animals are significantly different from the corresponding nervous system proteins of animals that do not frequent cold waters.

Garrett and Rosenthal decided to determine just how different such proteins are by comparing the genes of an Arctic octopus (genus Pareledone) to that of a tropical octopus (Octopus vulgaris). Since genes tell the octopuses’ cells how to make the proteins they need, the researchers assumed that whatever differences exist in the nervous system proteins would show up in the genes that produce those proteins. Once again, this is a completely reasonable assumption. However, their study shows that the genes involved in producing these nervous system proteins are nearly identical between the species.² To confirm this, they injected the genes from the different species into frog egg cells, and they found that the frog egg cells used those genes to produce nearly identical proteins. So in the end, the genes that produce those nervous system proteins are essentially the same in both species. But that doesn’t make sense. The proteins have to be different.

Well, it turns out they are different, but not because of the genes that produce them!

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Is This a Miracle Tree? Not Really – It’s Just the Result of Amazing Design!

Moringa oleifera (commonly called the “drumstick tree”) is probably one of the most useful plants on earth. It’s leaves and flowers are eaten in many parts of the world. When its fruit is still developing, it can be cooked in a variety of ways. Even its roots can be eaten. These parts of the tree are rich in iron, minerals, proteins, and vitamins B and C. Its seeds produce an oil that can be used for both cooking and lubrication, and to top it all off, the tree is very hardy. It withstands significant droughts, making it easy to grow and maintain. Finally, unlike many trees, it matures very quickly. It usually bears fruit during its first year of growth, which means it can be used as a very productive crop.¹ It’s no wonder that some sources call it “the miracle tree.”

It seems that the usefulness of the drumstick tree doesn’t end there, however. Back in 1987, Madsen and colleagues found that if you crushed the seeds of the drumstick tree into muddy water, the water would not only clear up, but it would also be free of most of the bacteria that were originally there.² As a result, they suggested that the seeds of the drumstick tree could be used to purify water in third-world countries where no other means of water purification existed. Since drinking bacteria-laden water is a leading cause of death in many third-world countries, this could be a major benefit in many parts of the world. Unfortunately, carrying around the seeds and crushing them into water is fairly inefficient if you want to clean water on a large scale.

Eventually, the “active ingredient” that produces the water-purifying properties of the drumstick tree was identified. It turned out to be a series of proteins that are fairly small (as proteins go, in any case) and have a strong, positive charge.³ These proteins were dubbed “MOCP,” which stands for “Moringa oleifera coagulant proteins.” In February of 2010, the journal Current Protocols in Microbiology published a step-by-step procedure by which MOCP could be extracted from the seeds of the drumstick tree to make it easier to use.⁴ All of this represented great progress, but the question still remained: How can we most effectively use MCOP so that it becomes a cheap, efficient means of water purification?

That question might have been answered.

Continue reading “Is This a Miracle Tree? Not Really – It’s Just the Result of Amazing Design!”

The Debate is Settled on Another “Vestigial Organ”

Most dolphins are born with hairs on their rostrum. However, those hairs quickly fall out, leaving empty pits behind. The photograph on the left gives a rather striking example of these pits, which are often called vibrissal crypts. For a long time, there has been controversy in the scientific literature regarding what these pits are. Some have contended that they are leftover vestiges from when the ancestors of dolphins had whiskers ¹, while others have suggested that they serve some sort of sensory purpose.²

Wolf Hanke and his colleagues set out to settle this controversy for at least one species – the Guiana dolphin (Sotalia guianensis). As they say in the introduction to their study ³

These vibrissal crypts are often described as vestigial structures lacking innervation and the characteristic blood sinuses [15,16], which are probably reduced in favour of the sonar system.

However, they indicate that there are some data that contradict this this idea, so they decided to do a detailed study of the Guiana dolphin’s vibrissal crypts. First, they examined the microscopic structure of the tissue. They noticed that each crypt had about 300 nerves plugged into it, which is more than the number of nerves plugged into a rat’s whisker. It seems obvious that there wouldn’t be such a large amount of nerve tissue wasted on a useless structure.

In addition, the tissue looked a lot like the electroreceptors found in the bill of a platypus which allow the platypus to detect electrical fields in the murky water where it lives. Why would the platypus want to sense electrical fields? Because whenever a muscle contracts, it sends out a weak electrical signal. As a result, a platypus can find prey without seeing or smelling it. All the platypus has to do is find the electrical signals being emitted by the prey’s contracting muscles.

So the microscopic structure of the tissue in the vibrissal crypts makes it look like the Guiana dolphin uses them to detect electrical signals, just as the platypus does. The scientists decided to put this idea to the test, and the results were astounding.

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Plant/Fungus Symbosis Is A Real Relationship

mycorrhizae — The white fuzz on this root is a mycorrhizal fungus that lives in partnership with the plant. Click for credit.

If you have been reading this blog for any length of time, you know that I am fascinated by symbiotic relationships that are common throughout creation. Some of these relationships are between two specific species, others are between three specific species, and others are between many, many different species. Of all the incredible symbiotic relationships out there, one of the most ubiquitous is the relationship between plants and fungi. It is estimated that 90% of all plant species form a relationship with one or more species of fungus.¹ Because these relationships are so common, we give them a special name: mycorrhizae.

In this relationship, the fungus invades a plant’s roots and takes carbon-based nutrients from the plant. At first glance, you might think the fungus is a parasite that infects the plant and takes nutrients from it. If you look at the picture above, for example, you might be inclined to think that the root is infected with a fungal parasite. That’s not the case, however, because while the fungus does, indeed, take nutrients from the plant, it also supplies the plant with critical nitrogen- and phosphorus-based chemicals that the plant has a hard time extracting from the soil. Thus, this is a mutually-beneficial relationship, which is often called a mutualistic relationship.

Because mycorrhizae are common throughout creation, there are many species of plants and fungi that participate in them. Nevertheless, the details of how mycorrhizae work are poorly understood. A new study has started to unravel those details, and the results are truly fascinating.

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So Far, It’s Hard To Find Negative Effects from the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

Lutjanus_griseus — This mangrove snapper (*Lutjanus griseus*) is a member of one of the species whose population has **increased** since the Deepwater Horizon disaster. (Click for credit)

I have posted three separate articles (here, here, and here) about how the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) has recovered remarkably well from the Deepwater Horizon disaster that dumped about 140,000 tons of oil into it. The bacteria that have been designed to remove oil from the ocean have done an amazing job at cleaning up the mess we made. Of course, just because the oil is mostly gone, that doesn’t mean there won’t be serious, long-term consequences to the gulf. Thus, there is still a lot of scientific evaluation to be done on the matter. As a result, some scientists are hard at work trying to discover what they can about the current ecological health of the GOM.

Marine scientists F. Joel Fodrie and Kenneth L. Heck Jr. decided to see if there were any consequences to the populations of important fish in the area where the oil was spilled. To do this, they tallied the numbers of juvenile fish retrieved from that area by marine research ships between mid July and late October for the years 2006-2010. Since the oil spill occurred in April of 2010, many of the juvenile fish retrieved in 2010 would have been hatched from eggs that were laid in the oil-polluted waters. In addition, once those eggs hatched, the fish larvae would be swimming around in oil-polluted waters. As a result, the scientists thought that there would be a noticeable drop in the number of juvenile fish retrieved in 2010. As they note:¹

We hypothesized that the strength of juvenile cohorts spawned on the northern GOM continental shelf during May–September 2010 in the northern GOM would be negatively affected by egg/larval-oil interactions. Oiled seawater contains toxic compounds such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) which, even after weathering, can result in genetic damage, physical deformities and altered developmental timing for fish eggs/larvae…Additionally, emulsified oil droplets could mechanically damage the feeding and breathing apparatus of relatively fragile larvae and further decrease individual fitness.

Was their hypothesis correct? Not even close.

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This Is One Smart Spider!

The Eurasian diving bell spider (Argyroneta aquatica) is a truly fascinating animal. It lives almost its entire life underwater, but it breathes air. Of course, that’s not very unusual. There are aquatic species of reptiles (like sea turtles and sea snakes) and mammals (like dolphins and manatees) that must breathe air as well. There are even some species of fish (like the Betta – a favorite among aquarium owners) that must breathe air in order to live.¹ These reptiles, mammals, and fish regularly rise to the surface to breathe the air that exists above the water. If they are unable to do so, they will drown. The Eurasian diving bell spider does something different, however. As you can see in the video, it brings the air underwater and stores it in a large bubble, which is usually called its “diving bell.”

How does it accomplish this feat? It spins a silken web underwater that holds the air. That way, the spider doesn’t have to return to the surface to breathe. It just has to return to its diving bell. As you can see in the video, once the spider has caught prey, it expands the bell and crawls inside so it can eat its prey in the comfort of an oxygen-rich environment.

While this is all quite amazing, it is not new. The habits of Eurasian diving bell spiders and other, similar species have been known for quite some time. However, up until now, many scientists have thought of a spider’s diving bell as the equivalent of a scuba tank: a one-time supply of air that must be continually replaced. Not surprisingly, new research has shown that it’s significantly more complex than that!

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God’s Cleanup Crew Is Tougher Than Expected!

On two previous occasions (here and here) I commented on the Deepwater Horizon disaster. In both cases, I noted how God’s natural cleanup crew (made up of bacteria) was busy getting rid of the oil that had been so carelessly dumped into the Gulf of Mexico. The speed and efficiency with which the bacteria were getting rid of the pollution have been breathtaking. Indeed, in the second post linked above, I discussed how scientists thought that methane from the disaster would persist for up to a decade in the Gulf, when in fact, it wasn’t even able to stick around for a year!

While these (and many other) studies showed that bacteria were cleaning up the oil better than anyone expected, there was one nagging worry: what about the oil that was floating on the surface of the Gulf? Most of the studies dealing with bacterial decomposition in the Gulf concentrated on the oil that was deep underwater. The surface of the Gulf of Mexico is a much different environment from the deep waters, and it was feared that bacteria would not be as good at decomposing the oil that was floating on the surface.

Indeed, a 1995 study specifically looked at bacterial activity on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico near where the Deepwater Horizon disaster occurred. The researchers noted that the mix of chemicals in that region is not ideal for good bacterial activity. They even did experiments where they added excess glucose to the water and watched how the bacteria responded. While bacteria typically love to eat glucose, the researchers saw very little increase in bacterial activity. This led them to conclude that the surface waters were not very suitable for bacterial-led cleanup.¹

The scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution are, of course, familiar with the results of this study. So they thought that the oil on the surface of the Gulf would not be cleaned up nearly as quickly as the oil that was deep in the Gulf. Fortunately, they were wrong.

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