Michael Reese

@futurebird@sauropods.win ha! I should have waited before responding to your first post. Since I just ended up paraphrasing you contemporaneously

@futurebird @BenjaminHCCarr i heard about this in the early 00s. My understanding is that the metabolism theory, while it captures the imagination, isn't very well supported at this time. My understanding is also that the most interesting part of this is that melanin absorbs ionizing radiation with a far higher efficiency than any other compound known. But we don't understand it (melanin) very well; it's a somewhat odd molecule that has unpredictable physical properties. If we understood it better, we might be able to use it effectively. All that said, recent changes in how people view biological structures (so-called phase separation) has laid the framework for better understanding "membrane less" organelles. This melanin structure could certainly act like that and a (hypothetical) melanin-organized organelle could possibly evolve through simple emergent properties. But I don't think we know what enzymes/reactions might involved.

@ZachWeinersmith @mighty_orbot I'd assume it's all corporate publishing/profits. I'd say that in most academic fields, if you contact an author they're probably so happy somebody cares that they will send you a copy of whatever you want. But accessing books and stuff is always painful.

@xjasminelu@hci.social welcome! And congrats on the new job!

@doctormo@floss.social interesting idea. Tho I would think a bunch more PRs by a third party is only helpful if you also have funding for a bunch more (trustworthy) people to do the review.

@ZachWeinersmith if there are multiple rates, what causes it at a molecular level? How does the cell keep track of which chromosome should recombine at which rate? Perhaps it's just an emergent property of the DNA sequences themselves, in which case there's an additional evolutionary pressure on those sequences to maintain that function that you couldn't possibly imagine Sorry for the obsessive nerd dump

@ZachWeinersmith as a for instance, (just off the cuff, not an expert) if some chromosomes never recombine in dogroses but others do, that implies there are either mechanisms to block recombination in some chromosomes or to allow in others versus a constant system behaving across all chromosomes. Does that happen in animals too? Or is it a necessary result of managing polyploidy?

@MCDuncanLab @varx @futurebird @BenjaminHCCarr some mass spec and transcript level difference should us everything we need to know. The gold standard would obviously be to do add back to a lab strain (or parental whatever if it's not close enough to anything wet normally culture). That is potentially crazy complicated. I'd settle for some crosses/back-crossed to genetically map genes that correlate. Or a KO screen. With CRISPR that's probably not too hard

@Frischling @MCDuncanLab @varx @futurebird @BenjaminHCCarr I believe that's pretty well understood. I believe that's why eg human skin uses melanin to protect from UV. Maybe a surprise it's generalizable to other ionizing radiation. I believe different polymer forms have wildly different absorption properties. Don't have references off the top of my head, sorry

@futurebird@sauropods.win @mjr@masto.bike @MarkHoltom@mastodonapp.uk while it's not surprising, I'm still a wee surprised the NYC cops don't prioritize it at all. My understanding is that bike theft often helps fund a lot of other (much more headline grabbing) criminal activity. I can't find any of the articles that I recall having read on it, but I know in the Bay Area that's the case, and that there are major police ops on stolen bikes.

@futurebird@sauropods.win @mjr@masto.bike @MarkHoltom@mastodonapp.uk 🤷‍♀️ many policy decisions I just don't get. That def sounds frustrating

@futurebird@sauropods.win @lispi314@udongein.xyz @phryk@mastodon.social fwiw I'm pretty sure that salmonella is rarely on vegetables. Like E. coli it's a digestive tract bug. Outbreaks on eg spinach tend to come from "organic" which means manure from industrial cattle (so, not vegan, unfortunately). Also, apparently pathogenic bugs tend to colonize grain-fed cows much much more than grass fed. But industrial organic needs industrial levels of manure. (So you're likely double protected in your rooftop garden)