Interesting that humans and bacteria both use an electrochemical gradient to produce energy but in different ways. In humans, this happens in our mitochondria, but in bacteria this occurs across their cytoplasmic membrane. Would you agree this is a result of evolution?
What physical ‘life force’ turns biology’s wheels?
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Re: What physical ‘life force’ turns biology’s wheels?
#42at the scale that it operates, the flagella is more a drill than a propeller there's a good richard feynam video about how things feel when they're that small https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eRCygdW--c
Another classic on how scale matters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Being_the_Right_Size
Re: What physical ‘life force’ turns biology’s wheels?
#43This reminds me of a gem of a comment from about a month back, about a dead simple Russian guidance system from a Cold War-era missile: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47389285 Actually, someone even commented in that thread about how it was similar to biological mechanisms: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47390619
For explorations of simple mechanisms like this leading to complex behaviour, Valentino Braitenberg’s book Vehicles is a classic.
Seconded. This book enlarged my brain.
Re: What physical ‘life force’ turns biology’s wheels?
#44Protons are also called "hydrogen ions." Stuff that donates protons is called an "acid." So this is an acid chemical process but I'm not enough of a chemist to know more than that. Would welcome comments from someone who is.
Re: What physical ‘life force’ turns biology’s wheels?
#45For those who remember, the flagellum was a major site of the Intelligent Design debate that gave us Christopher Rufo (via the Discovery Institute) The general idea was that there were specific examples of "irreducible complexity" that proved that there was an intelligent designer. The project on the part of certain Christian political factions was to add a veneer of hypothesis testing to creationism. The god of the…
The article states that the rotor very much evolved. But if you follow the linked evidence, various flagellar motors appear to have evolved from an original ancestor. This is exactly consistent with intelligent design and creationism. It does not demonstrate the origin of the flagellar motor in the first place. Everyone, whether creationists, theistic evolutionists, or materialistic evolutionists all agree that mutation, natural selection, genetic drift, gene flow etcetera occur. This paper advances the debate about origins no further distance. The debate is not about the survival of the "fittest", the debate is about the arrival of the fittest.
Re: What physical ‘life force’ turns biology’s wheels?
#46Interesting that humans and bacteria both use an electrochemical gradient to produce energy but in different ways. In humans, this happens in our mitochondria, but in bacteria this occurs across their cytoplasmic membrane. Would you agree this is a result of evolution?
Our mitochondria was bacteria.
Re: What physical ‘life force’ turns biology’s wheels?
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doesn't "irreducible complexity" here mean "it wouldn't function in any reduced form", e. g. "it would not be possible to build this up in tiny parts useful for other things and then have those things transformed into these things by tiny accretions and removals over the course of the lifespans of these creatures."? The article doesn't cite anything that would suggest that this argument is any less relevant now that…
It does raise the question of the steps that happened to reach that functionality (not suggesting intelligent design here). I'd assume there'd be quanta of evolutionary evolvement but it isn't clear what that would look like (especially to someone like myself who is not an evolutionary biologist).
Scientists collect many examples of different type of flagellum. So we can understand how it change during the evolution process. This article introduces the finding of organism structure.
Re: What physical ‘life force’ turns biology’s wheels?
#48For some context, a billion years at a 20 minute breeding cycle is 26.3 trillion generations.
> For some context, a billion years at a 20 minute breeding cycle is 26.3 trillion generations. Which if you want an actual feel for the true scale of things, must be multiplied by (order of magnitude) the number of bacteriums on the planet.
Is that true for evolution? If that math works, it seems that any one bacterium's mutation must become universal across the globe? Evolution works but not for every instance of a beneficial mutation. I wonder what the odds are for bacteria.
Re: What physical ‘life force’ turns biology’s wheels?
#49Visualisation of DNA polymerase enzyme copying mechanism.
Re: What physical ‘life force’ turns biology’s wheels?
#50Relevant Smarter Every Day video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPSm9gJkPxU
Stated Clearly also has a great deep dive that I've really enjoyed https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLInNVsmlBUlSjLSj9yGEKphF0... He actually makes it as a reply to Smarter Every Day.
Holy crap this is a rabbit hole and a half. I know what I’m watching while the robot writes my code tomorrow.