Odds and Ends 2

Looks like I'll get some items from _Nature_ in this one, too.

_Nature_ v. 431, 14 Oct. 2004, p. 730, a news in brief article "Salty diet provides square meal for shapely bacteria" reports that scientists have finally been successful in raising "square bacteria in the lab." Some sort of advanced genetic engineering? forcing the little critters to grow in teensy-weensy squares? No, these bacteria are naturally square! "The microbe, called 'Walsby's square archaeon' " was discovered in "a pool near the Red Sea in 1980" and not surprisingly "is unusual both for its love of salt and its shape." Is there a connection between its shape and the way salt forms cubic crystals? I don't know and the item doesn't say.

On p. 731, "Cow sheds secrets as genome is unveiled" tells us that "An international consortium of researchers deposited a draft of the bovine genome from a Hereford cow in genetic databases on 6 October." Maybe I'm not recalling correctly or I'm missing something, but it seems to me that there's been a lot more fanfare over just about every new genome that's been sequenced. I know there was quite a lot of fuss over the rat and mouse genomes, and the 21 Oct. _Nature_ has the puffer fish genome sequencing as the cover story. I seem to recall that the chicken genome also was a pretty big story. I can't recall seeing a small story about a large (not microscopic) and familiar animal having its genome published ... oh, maybe the dog genome story wasn't much bigger news, but it seems to me there were just a couple scientists involved in that. Maybe it's because both that and this cow case were just "drafts" so far. Still, if I were a geneticist, I think I'd look into it a bit more.

There's a book review of _The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe_ by Roger Penrose. Nothing particularly relevant, and the reviewer makes it pretty clear that "it will probably leave even the most enthusiastic of his non-expert readership exhausted. Even those with a PhD in mathematics or physics are likely to find it very hard going." But for those who do have such degrees, it may be a worthwhile read.

On the other hand, "Field guides and phylogenies," a review of _Flowers of Ethiopia and Eritrea: Aloes and Other lilies" by Demissew, Nordal, and Stabbetorp (_Nature_ v. 431, 14 Oct. 2004, p. 742, Sandra Knapp, reviewer) has a couple very interesting and relevant things to say. The book (as the title states) is focused on the "charismatic flowers that characterize dry habitats such as Ethiopia -- 'lilies' in the broadest sense." Even in this broad sense, this is a rather small portion of the total diversity of plants (and supposedly relatively recent in origin), and yet the review speaks of "exploring the amazing diversity of these plants." How much more "amazing" is the diversity of all plants, and more still that of all living things? And yet, if evolution is true, it all just happened as a matter of ordinary interactions of matter and energy, so what's so amazing about it?

Ah, and this is relevant, too: "The phylogeny of the monocots (such as lilies, grasses and orchids) has undergone radical change and restructuring with the use of DNA sequence data. The number of families recognized and their relationships to one another have changed considerably over the past decade." It seems to me that evolutionists can't be too sure about the theory that all plants evolved from one simple type of organism, when they are still shuffling around the little branches at the top of their evolutionary tree. In this case, at least the authors "are also brave enough to admit what all taxonomists know: that the classification of such groups, where new data are emerging, is still in flux.

Until Next Time,

David Bump
Philippians 3: 13 Brethren, I
count not myself to have
apprehended: but [this] one thing
[I do], forgetting those things
which are behind, and reaching
forth unto those things which are
before, 14 I press toward the
mark for the prize of the high
calling of God in Christ Jesus.

http://home.att.net/~david.bump

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