Old Cellulose [and DNA] Found in NM Salt Crystals

www.physorg.com ^ | 04/15/2008 | By MATT MYGATT

[ModelBreaker]

"The joke has been that this is the first time students want to be sent to the salt mines," he said.

Nope. The joke is that this study will soon be announced as new proof of Anthropogenic Global Warming.

[blam]

See post # 66.

Oldest Living Thing

October, 1999; 250-million-year-old bacteria were found in ancient sea salt beneath Carlsbad, New Mexico. The microscopic organisms were revived in a laboratory after being in 'suspended animation', encased in a hard-shelled spore, for an estimated 250 million years. The species has not been identified, but is referred to as strain 2-9-3, or B. permians.

"These are specimens of the 250-million year old bacteria, B. permians. If it can be verified that these were re-animated from a long, long period of suspended animation then they hold the record for world's oldest living organism "

[CondorFlight]

“250-million-year-old bacteria”

How does anyone know it’s not only 249 million years old?

(A million years is a long time; they can’t guess any closer than that? What if it’s only 235 million years old? Fifteen million years is a long time. They can’t guess any closer than that?)

If they can be off by 15 or 20 million years, then how do we know this isn’t all just guesswork? (read: speculation)?

[El Gato]

We might well ask how it was that "life" figured out that it needed cellwalls that could last that long

It did not *need* it. What it came with, or what God provided it with, lasts long enough for its needs, and just happens to also last a lot longer than that.

[martin_fierro]

[El Gato]

(A million years is a long time; they can’t guess any closer than that? What if it’s only 235 million years old? Fifteen million years is a long time. They can’t guess any closer than that?)

A million years is a long time, but not compared to 250 million years, a difference of 0.4 of a percent. Even 15 million years would only be a 6% error. That's still a pretty decent measurement.

[Red Badger]

I put salt on a slug once and it exploded!..............

[Red Badger]

Heck maybe the prof. just like an excuse to stay in Vegas with his students while they do their “fieldwork”.

What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas..............and stays and stays and stays.........

[BlazingArizona]

That's his make work project for useless Scientists who get grants to study the obvious or best scam going: find stuff so small, so distant, so long ago, that you can pretty much make up what you want and get published.

This finding is an important breakthrough for two reasons. Because salt beds are so plentiful on Earth, finding ancient DNA in it will tell us a lot more about the history of life than we can discover from fossils.

AND...salt also appears to be common on Mars. Examining that salt will tell us whether life ever existed there.

[muawiyah]

Like “lignan after death”~@!

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Red Badger and blam.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2000588/posts?page=66#66

[SunkenCiv]

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[allmendream]

Cellulose is the most common biopolymer on the planet. It is a string of sugar molecules, but unlike starch (readily digestible by humans) where the sugar molecules are stacked up in a row, cellulose has them put together up, down, up, down, up, down, etc.

It isn't that cellulose needs to last a quarter of a billion years, and near any oxygen it wouldn't. It is just that it CAN last many millions of years if kept away from reactive elements.

The cellulose is hardly surprising, it is the DNA that is ‘too cool for school’.

[blam]

"The cellulose is hardly surprising, it is the DNA that is ‘too cool for school’."

Yes, cows and horses can digest it...we can't.

Cows are 75% more efficient at digesting it than are horses.

[allmendream]

Actually a cow or horse are incapable of digesting cellulose.

This metabolic task is done for them by bacteria that live inside their digestive system. You may notice a newborn calf or foal eating its mother’s feces, this is so that the colony of bacteria can start to grow.

[blam]

Thanks. I just learned something.

[allmendream]

Glad to be of help. Being both a Molecular Biologist and a former farm hand I kind of know the problem from both angles! ;)

When everyone in the world was looking into the secret of oxidative phosphorylation (the number one means by which we derive energy in our mitochondria) the secret was actually discovered by Peter D. Mitchell an English gentleman farmer in his private lab.

I received a lesson on oxidative phosphorylation from a friend of Peter D. Mitchell who told us that at the time of his discovery he had three farm hands and three lab techs working for him. He told my professor “You know, it takes more brains to be a farm hand than a lab tech.” Nobody but me laughed. I had been both and knew it was true, everyone else had only been lab techs (if that) and thought it was an insult.

[blam]

" I had been both and knew it was true, everyone else had only been lab techs (if that) and thought it was an insult."

Ah...sounds like the good ol days.

[allmendream]

Nah, NOW are the good ol days! Or at least I am trying to make them so.

Hard to top when I was madly in love with my gorgeous wife and we owned a 3 BR home with an ocean view and had a gardener once a week and a maid twice a month and I got my first good job out of grad school. Now looking for gorgeous wife #2(#1 split on me).

My farm hand days were quite poverty stricken, but I was helping my family so it was good.

My Undergrad school daze were too busy to be having too much fun, rowing Crew and taking Graduate level courses in Molecular Biology.

Grad school was pretty good though. Living in San Diego with the aforementioned gorgeous wife making good money while I only made a stipend for teaching undergrads the intricacies of being a lab tech.

Good times, good times; but better times ahead! I DEMAND IT!