February 14, 2006 (Valentine's Day)

"oh, Christi, How wonderful life is while you're in the world"

I was in the fourth grade today. and guess who chose to sit next to me today in computer lab. Christi!
And she hit me! she said, "I don't know but I feel like hitting you"
and I said, "oh, that's not good. "
ha!, it was very very good.
Jamie, the TA, called me a creep and made me leave, but she was half-joking.
I think Christie sees me as a funny friend. i made sure not to look for very long into her eyes at any one time. only two occassions, and they were very short. I couldn't leave the lab, even after I was done, because Christie was there. She must have known, some guys were leaving and waiting for me, but I wouldn't leave, I kept trying to help Christie, but screwing her up, and it was funny to both of us.
R:"So what are you doing for Valentines day."
C:"Oh, nothing, i mean , i don't really celebrate it. "
R:"Yeah, my dad is the same way, he thinks its a ploy to get peoples money"
C:"yeah I mean , isn't it. like Hallmark"
R:"I guess, but I mean you don't see anything to the novel celebration of it for you know.... good feeling of one person to another."
"well... yeah well maybe if I was a couple.
"Yeah I'm not doing anythign either, its kind of a bummer, i mean it was good back in the day like in 3rd grade,and we all got cards.
"Yeah i know, and i baked my class 86 cupcakes"
"so you like to bake huh?"
"yup"
"did you ever have one of those plastic things for kids where they--"
"an easybake ,of course"
"-) oh."
"yeah but I dont' think it was really practical to have kids wait thirty mintues for a light to go off and get one brownie."
"yeah its a good thing those things they werent' dangerous either. I wouldn't want kids commititng suicide with their easy bakes. "
"you're just a ray of sunshine aren't you?"

Note: even if the last line was sarcasm, what a great thing for her to say!
oh well... no biggie, she will go back to her beerguzzling punkmusic listening white friends. and all will be good.
It's true I didn't ask her to do anything with me. It would have been too much. It would have scared her off. I'll take the slow approach. If she liked me today, she should like me tommorow and a week from now and months from now, and I for her. I'm testing myself too, you know. She is beautiful still...
oh a stupid joke. I said our change on the phylogenetic tree was "revolutionary"
and she said it was "evolutionary." she's making herself a nerd. interesting.

HWK(SKIP)
biology. an art. yes?
okay here we go.
so I missed lecture this morning so i am going to investigate the whereabouts. First look at the syllabus.
Origins of life
-Life is a continuum? it extends from the earliest organisms through various "phylogenetic" branches" to the great variety of forms alive today.

-The "diversification" of life on Earth began over 3.8 billion yrs ago.
-Geologic events have altered bioevolution. (Pangea's breakeup)
-life has changed the planet also. (O2 releasing bacteria have formed the atmosphere, Homosapiens have changed land water air)
In a phylogenetic tree. one can see the major life shaping episodes.
God the extinction of dinosaurs was so not far ago. precambrian and paleozoic are huge. jeez.
Instead of timeline you can use a clock analogy:
1-cell eukaryotes at around 7:30PM, Spermy origin of fungi and animals at 9PM
Earth is about 4.5 to 4.6 billion years old. jee that's ancient
and it took a billion years b/f life showed up.
In the first 2 billion years. there were just microscopic unicellular aquatic things, so if you took a time machine, you probably wouldn't notice anything.
No fossils found in those old 3.8bil rocks.
oldest were australian 3.5 billers and those were already bacteria looking.. so life musta stoarted way b/f.
prokaryotes dominated 3.5 to 2. THere was a split along the way, where it split into bact and archaea
Stromatolites are a great place to see what happened ... these are mats of fossilized microbes. They are from vent habitats.

Life on young earth:
very hot from volcano
meteors all over the place.
sun is a bitch(no ozone)
hardly any O2,
Water, H2, Methane, Ammonia, CO2, CO, Nitrogen and H2S all in theair.
a REDUCING atmosphere..... gives electrons. so alkanes were being made if ever.
MOST scientists think that life here came from dead materials that joined together(probionts) that were capable of replicating and metagolism.
Greeks had a similar idea of spontaneous generation.

Louis Pasteur conducted broth experiments that said NO to the idea of spontaneous genereation of microbes. spoil only by INVASION from outside.

biogenesis says all life today came only by reproduction of preexisitng life. but No O2, intense energy sources but very conducive conditions for the start of living organisms.

so one credible hypoth is chem and phys props gave rise.
4stage scenario
1. small organic molecules
2. polymerization
3. selfreplication
4. packaging into protobionts

This has been tested. 1920's they synthesized organic compounds from organic precursors. reducing environment, helps simple molecs to become more complicated ones. Lightning and uV provided good energy.

Miller and Urey tested the hypothesis by creaing conditions of early earth.
Many amino acids were made. and fatty acids, sugars. all 5 nucleotides, ATP.

Abiotic synthesis of simple organic monomers:
Abiotic origins says no enzymes or cell equipment needed for POLYMERIZATION.
life is what i got, its within my reach.

polymers are formed in CONDENSATIOn reacitions that allowed formation of H20 through Hydrolysis. (really? I thought hydrolysis was the cleavage by H20

Polymers ahve been created by dripping water on rocks and sand. ... polypeptides were created by dripping amino acids on hot sand. Zinc and iron will make them even longer.

Short polymers of ribonucleotides can be synthsezied in the lab.
if it is added to a bunch of monomers. then it will pair up to its complement on its own. the first step to self replication. With Zinc it gets up to 40 base pairs.

1st genes were short strand of RNA. RNA molecules are important catalysts, (ribozymes)
RNA molecules could probably replicate with the help of ribozymes.

Lab experiments have shown RNA seq can happen in abiotic conditions.
RNA molec have a genotype. nucleotide seq and a phenotype, 3D shape.
Under particular conditions, some RNA sequences are more stable and replicate faster. selection screens for most stable for self replication. RNA was a scaffold holding some amino acids to gehter so that they could form a weak link. its here today with rRNA. could make its own enzyme replicator perhaps.

Before living cells.... protobionts. they could isolate one environemtn from another surrounding one. Like liposomes. a moleular bilayer is formed at the end of a droplet.
THey grow, engulf give birth. . welll, protobionts dont' reproduce precisely.If enzymes are around they are incorporated into the droplets. and the protobionts can take in substrates. and give off product.

I mean protobionts oculd have incorporated catalylsts but no real developed enzymes please. even with good life, it needs replication method to keep going.

Natural Selection could refine those with hereditary info.
"molecular cooperation between protobiont and RNA.
ie RNA needs nice environ to make enzyme. and not have it snatched away by other RNA. and the protobiont could use the energy for its own purposes
offspring would have a mutation and so variation. (beginning of biotic diversity)
First organisms were chemoheterotrophic prokaryotes
chemoheterotrophs are those who ate for energy and carbon, they ate ATP.
First Crisis: the loss of abiotically formed ATP.
solved by glycolysis.
ten steps and ten enzymes.
with O2 pyruvate enters respiration.
but with out it you get pyruvate.
the net result is 2net ATP and 2NADH.
Second Crisis: loss of abiotically formed organic compounds in glycolysis.
those that could make their own organic compounds were favored.
Hence the autotrophs.
probalby used light to drive lectrons from H2S to fix CO2 into sugar. "photoautotrophs. "
no o2 production yet.
this is still 2.5 to 3.5 billion years ago. Sulfur is from the vents and volcanoes
then there was a switch someone decided to use H2O to fix Co2 into sugar, the cyanobacteria.... 2.5 billion years ago. THESE release 02 into the environment, had prokaryotes that acted like chloroplasts. THis 02 was toxic to most anaerobic organisms and killed many ofhtem off.
Third Crisis: accumulation of O2 in atmosphere.
selection favored those who tolerated andused it to their advantage... hence aerobic respiration. so there were prokaryotes that acted like mitochondria. so thi has been the reign of the great prokaryotes from 2-2.5 billion years ago.


great. so now i must fend off the angst that comes with having no date on valentines. should I dive into my MCAT and finish off the physics sections... sound like a deal...
Chips ahoy!

I just wrote this cool rap. now i just have to mix it. silly dell has no microphone software.

Afterwords

Woulda wondered the dimensions of my past life.
How many times have I gone through the same strife
‘nother kid , and ‘nother car on the freeway.
accident Heartattack or bad disease.
No stopping the one thing that keeps running on anyway.
Marley right, not a nuke but the sickled black clown of the cabaret..
Don’t tell me aint worth thinkin bout every now and then.
When the sky shakes on an airplane.and a man dies insane.
Wheres the love in the bleak dark in the quick change of scenery
When rats nibble on my crippled eye , it aint what I had in mind in the gallery
Fifty thousand years of discovery and still not a sound bout continuing.
It’s a matter of fact opposites attract. The born and the give back.belly up chest in.
So yo act like the big man on the thronery. Beer flows and gold shines like embezzelry
And your punch hits tremendously, precision swing and gallantry.
Your face rots off nyaheart bursts while sittin on a toiletseat.
Then the clowns makes parade of yo peasantry.
Wise don’t get that much time on the radio,
Wise to figure to be fearless. Its time to know.