[Colin Glassey] RNA and other Science News
Good science articles in the New York Times today. The big one is about RNA, or micro-strands of RNA which can act as very effective blockers of gene expression. This was only recently discovered, previously research showed that RNA was only used as a messenger. Now we see more behavior out of RNA. One researcher suggests that our whole model of the cell is wrong and that RNA is the doing the important work in the cell while DNA and proteins are just building blocks. I'm leaning towards the RNA is much more important camp myself. The sequencing of the DNA for humans, mice, flat worms, etc. has shown up lots of so-called junk DNA. Actually, current reseach suggests that 95% of human DNA is "junk" or, more accurately, non-coding DNA. While I don't think everything in DNA has a purpose, evolution is more efficent than 95% junk to 5% usefull. I suspect we will learn that a good deal more than 5% of the DNA is used in large organism creation.
More bad news about the fish in the ocean. Yes, this is a tragedy of the commons, and yes, the same thing is playing out. No one has an incentive to reduce fishing, so everyone over fishes and we are well on our way to destroying EVERY good tasting ocean fish. The article by the brilliant Carol Kaesuk Yoon profiles the Daniel Pauly the creator of Fishweb.org a database of all the world's fish (37,000 and counting).
This story has more details on how the amazing radiation resistant bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans. This bacterium is able to withstand a radiation blast of 1.5 million rads. Nothing else we have found can survive even 200,000 rads. This bacterium is a prime cantidate for the pan-spermia theory since no nothing living on this planet needs to survive anything close to this sort of radiation. But in space, or on other planets, radiation levels are much higher than here on Earth.
4:09:30 PM 
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