'...tRNA, WHOA!' (listen closely)

I wonder what the odds are for being an egg that falls out of it's nest and lands in a bird bath.  Higher than I'd guess perhaps.  Yes, a bird bath with tadpoles and a fern draping over it.  But hey, probably greater than the odds are for most things that happen biologically, like synthesizing a protein for example.

~~~~~

The mulch pile is significantly reduced - I'm guessing that I have six more wheelbarrow loads left to haul away, if that.  Plus there are twenty more boxes in my storage unit.  Progress.  Friends came over Saturday evening with a bottle of wine and some bread and cheese - and we had the first official Airstream gathering.  No, I haven't moved in yet - I'm easing myself through this transition - thankfully everything else takes forever (e.g., house plans, inspections, etc). 

~~~~~

I had to laugh a few weeks ago when I saw the post 'Make Love (and Proteins), Not War' over at Twisted Bacteria - here's what he says about the video below:

"Protein Synthesis: An Epic on the Cellular Level" is an educational film directed in 1971 by Robert Alan Weiss. It seems that the movie has been viewed by generations of science students in the United States. Now, thanks to the internet, we all can enjoy. The film starts with a three-minute introduction by Professor Paul Berg (who later shared half of the 1980 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with the team of Walter Gilbert and Frederick Sanger). The screen then fills with a bunch of people dancing, singing and having fun... and making proteins. Ribosomal subunits, initiation or elongation factors, messenger or transfer RNAs, are impersonated by dancers in colored costumes.

The start of Berg's Nobel Lecture (titled "Dissections and Reconstructions of Genes and Chromosomes") begins with this quote:

“Although we are sure not to know everything and rather likely not to know very much, we can know anything that is known to man, and may, with luck and sweat, even find out some things that have not before been known to man.”

J. Robert Oppenheimer

I suppose that's what we're after - to find out something that has not been known to man before.  It's simple really, but not so simply when one goes about it. (Yep, I'm guessing the father of the atomic bomb would say something like that).

Or to get a mulch pile moved. That would be nice to get done too.

~~~~~ 

Boy I love science.

It helps me to survive the tediousness of the meetings and the reports and the grant writing and the editing - all of those things that make up a scientific life but just seem to distract one from the pursuit of something unknown.  Why is it that the job seems to overtake the pursuit? Okay, deep breath and try to rise above it (when in reality I feel like I'm drowning in the details).

~~~~~

But then there's the video.  Now how fun is this?  Listen carefully.

(And thanks to Twisted Bacteria for reminding me of this film that I saw the first day of a nucleic acid structure and function course in graduate school - just as a reminder of how far we've come, and how few drugs we do now).

 

Comments

[M Sinclair Stevens (Texas)]

I watched that video awhile back and loved it. And then I forgot all about it. Thanks for reminding me.

[layanee]

And how did the egg not break? Interesting video but I would have to watch it five times to absorb the info. Still fun though!

[Annie in Austin]

Understand it, Pam? Not so much, but enjoy it , oh yes. I enlarged the YouTube to fullscreen mode, turned up the sound, and just sat and let it make me feel all smiley and peaceful. 1971. What a different world.

Annie

[Pam]

MSS: I'm glad you enjoyed it. I find it pretty hilarious - and oddly accurate with respect to what they knew back in '71.

Layanee: I wondered that too - and then thought that maybe (?) something brought the egg there. I couldn't find a nest in the tree above the bird bath.

Annie: I'm with you, regardless of your understanding of protein expression, it's hard not to get in the spirit with that one!