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Related: About this forumWhoa! Molecular & atomic relationships and cosmic connections
What makes us similar to every living thing on Earth and throughout the Universe. Okay, I'm just discovering some of this.
DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is the molecular language that all life understands. And all life that we know of is made up of DNA. Why is that significant? Your DNA's instructions recognize other living things, like an apple and tells your digestive system how to break it down. Wonder what bacteria and we have in common? Almost the same DNA instructions on how to break the apple's DNA down. Whether it's rotting or digesting or metabolizing, we (the apple, us, bacteria or other animals) all share almost the same DNA instructions within us.
Cosmos 2014: episode 2
If you have Netflix, see Cosmos episode 2: Some of the Things That Molecules Do. FFWD to 11:15m, but every minute of every episode shouldn't be missed. Brilliant!
http://www.netflix.com/
BumRushDaShow
(129,126 posts)of chlorophyll and compare to hemoglobin.
ffr
(22,670 posts)Education has no meaning unless it helps us to understand the vast expanse of life with all its subtitlities. Krishnamurti.
What is tru for the [the bacterium] E. Coli is true for the elephant. François Jacob, 1965 Nobel Prize in Medicine
Good article about it though!
longship
(40,416 posts)The We are all Connected clip is awesome. Amazingly, the drumming pedal point of the music is all Nobel laureate physicist Richard Feynman performing.
My favorite line in it is by Neil deGrasse Tyson:
I know that the molecules in my body are traceable
To phenomena in the cosmos.
That makes me want to grab people in the street
And say, have you heard this??
I can see Neil doing that in New York City, where he lives and works.
However, I don't recommend it.
R&K
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)That was absolutely beautiful.
If I had learned chemistry that way, learned to understand it in that way, it would have made sense to me. Who knows? Maybe I would have become a chemist.
All I learned was that the math was fun, but the lab smelled awful. I hated it. But understanding it in this way -- that there is some reason for the organization in the table of elements beyond just memorizing the abbreviations of the elements would have been so much easier.
ffr
(22,670 posts)I don't think there is a long-term agreement either.
All the episodes start with a premise and return at the end. Very well done.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)It would mean we would have to pack a lunch from home.
ffr
(22,670 posts)From what I've come to understand about how clean our spacecraft are, they're impossible to make sterile. If alien spacecraft are the same way, we're bound to share molecules...the results of which will be impossible to forecast.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)The part where the sea creature eats the guy and dies from poisoning due to incompatibility is what made me think of that.
It would certainly be an incentive to seed other planets.
Lionel Mandrake
(4,076 posts)All life on Earth shares roughly the same genetic code. But if life evolved independently on some other planet, and if it translates DNA or RNA into polypeptides, it probably uses a different code.
That's because our genetic code is quite arbitrary. Some of the 64 different triplets of nucleic acids code for alanine, some for glycine, and so on for the other 18 common amino acids. Some triplets do not code for any amino acid, but instead tell the molecular machinery to stop translating, i.e., they signal the end of a polypeptide.
Exactly which of the approximately 2^64 possible genetic codes evolved here is an accident of history.
ffr
(22,670 posts)My sentence structure was awkward.
ffr
(22,670 posts)Also explained in Cosmos 2014 episode 13: Unafraid of the Dark 27:15m in.