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Animals as Chemical Factories

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Re: Animals as Chemical Factories

#51

Post by alphan0n »

benchmarkist wrote: post #41
alphan0n wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty rich coming from someone sending virtue signals from a device I presume isn’t constructed from twigs and berries. Must be difficult as a person who doesn’t exploit the biosphere.. you’ll have to let us know how you mastered photosynthesis.

I don't eat meat and don't drive cars. How about you?

As a level 99 druid, I have not moved from this spot in over 300 hundred years. My clothes consist of centuries accumulation of dust. I eat meat, but only beings that choose to end their existence in my perpetually open mouth. I breathe four times a year. I reproduce by sporulation, prodigiously, my offspring is responsible for the ozone layer. I convey this information to you by way of telepathy through an intermediary, Shawn of Ohio, an intern in IT who maintains his WFH infrastructure by peddling a stationary bicycle.

Re: Animals as Chemical Factories

#52

Post by PittleyDunkin »

MrMcCall wrote: post #11

Note that this is another difference between we human beings and the rest of the animals. Yes, non-human animals can take advantage of other animals' chemical factories (ants' use of aphids' sugar excretions come to my mind), but only we human beings can use our abstract conceptual thinking ability and scientific process to discover the nature of nature's chemistry and then put that knowledge to use. After my first-g…

> but only we human beings can use our abstract conceptual thinking ability and scientific process to discover the nature of nature's chemistry and then put that knowledge to use.

I heavily doubt we needed this to domesticate animals. What is the possible value of projecting 19th century concepts onto prehistory?

Re: Animals as Chemical Factories

#54

Post by dyauspitr »

082349872349872 wrote: post #10

> Today, companies such as Twist Bioscience can synthesize DNA for about $0.07 per base. Marburg (what about Ebola?) has only ~20k bp, so ... about USD 3k to synthesise?

Then you have to insert it into a viable donor cell which might not be easy or cheap.

Re: Animals as Chemical Factories

#56

Post by aziaziazi »

evoke4908 wrote: post #49
benchmarkist wrote: post #5

Yet another instance of how people view the biosphere as a resource to be exploited for their own monetary profit and short-term benefit. That type of logic and thinking is a dead end. I've never had a silk robe and I doubt I would be any better off if I did have one. I'd much prefer clean air, water, and unpoisoned land for growing nutritious food.

Counterpoint: being useful to a more successful species is a staggeringly effective evolutionary strategy. Nature is chock full of symbiotic relationships and it's a perfectly valid ecological niche. Symbionts exist whether or not the host is capable of feeling bad about it. By becoming attached to such a successful species as humans, any symbiont species has an extremely good chance of surviving for as long as the h…

Very interesting take. However there’s some important difference between the species that express this behavior in the wild, free world (think pilot fish) and those that are breed, used, breed again then killed -all while in forced captivity.

I doubt the livestock would define itself as a "successful” if it could use language.

Re: Animals as Chemical Factories

#57

Post by aziaziazi »

smt88 wrote: post #17
exe34 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we use people as machines to move stuff around and make new stuff. humans are the only creatures that have to pay to live on this planet, if they don't pay, they can't have food/shelter/etc.

With the context that "payment" is a way to make labor fungible and labor is expenditure of calories, every creature has to pay to live. Humans probably spend fewer calories on survival (with better results) and more calories on pleasure than any other species. This is partly thanks to society. So humans probably "pay" the least of any species just to exist.

> more calories on pleasure than any other species

That’s true we aren’t cheap on the pleasure calories, on the other hands most mammals seems to include pleasure in hunting or building their shelter or other activities. Think to dolphins, Wolfe, or rabbits. We humans have created many pleasant activities to forget our workday -which is not a pleasure for most-, while the lion enjoy its nap before an exiting hunt tonight with fellows.

Re: Animals as Chemical Factories

#60

Post by veunes »

lblume wrote: post #24
daemonk wrote: post #4

Cell-free synthesis is the next step. Theres slow progress, but very interesting operational models if it works.

I once visited a lab near Berlin where they told me that cell-free synthesis is basically like cell-based synthesis, just that they kill the cells first and use what's inside. The major benefit, I was told, was that you don't have to keep the cells alive. It sounds very odd at first glance but seems very fascinating to me (and I know way less about biology than I would like to), this idea of dissecting a system into…

Biology really is the ultimate modular system!
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