November 06, 2017 Monday
Bedtime Story
The Twisted and Coiled Molecular Machines
The story behind the biochemical and
genetic motif is very interesting and most engaging.
So please pay attention.
Any chain-like biological molecule, such as
proteins that are made of amino acids or DNA/RNA that are made up of nucleic
acids possess a supersecondary three-dimensional structure that are produced by
coiling and folding upon themselves.
This much is known and accepted by most
modern apes, even the religious and superstitious types.
Such a supersecondary structure is given
the name of structural motif and a simple example of it would be a beta-hairpin
or alpha helix.
Of course as you will rightly understand,
at the root of all these turning and twisting are simple chemical bonds such as
hydrogen bonds, carbon bonds or hydrogen-carbon bonds and so on and so forth.
Very simple bonds can give rise to extreme
complexity that our ape brain was never evolved to comprehend.
This is why mon ami, you need to understand
that at the root of life lies pure chemistry and of course, eventually pure
information.
I will have you know that there are such
passionate men of science who devote their entire life merely in exploring and
understanding of such twisting and turning of protein structures and nucleic
acids.
Many of the critical functions of the
biological machinery arise from these complex twisting and turnings.
In case if this interests you, I would
strongly recommend a book that in turn was recommended to me by mon ami.
It is a 2009 book titled “The Machinery of
Life” written and more importantly drawn by David S. Goodsell who is an
associate professor at the Department of molecular biology at the Scripps
Research Institute, La Jolla in California.
As a medical student I have had a formal
training in both microbiology and biochemistry each of one year duration, and I
dare say that I have a fair understanding of our cellular machinery.
Yet reading the book was an awesome
revelation, and I mean that very literally for the way this man has drawn and
explained the functioning of molecules in our overcrowded cells is mind
dazzling.
If upon reading this book you are not spell
bounded by the functioning of our cells, it would mean that you have no sense
of perspective; I was overawed even in my second year of medical school when I
came across biochemistry.
What I do as a surgeon pales in comparison
to the functions that my biological molecules are carrying out every second in
my approxomately 37 trillion cells.
It astonishes me that 37 or so trillion
cells of mine decide to stay together in cooperation for decades instead of
going at an all-out war or exploiting each other.
We humans ourselves have a very dismal
record in co-operation and any chance that we get, we rush in to exploit not
only plants and animals but also our fellow cousin apes.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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