many secrets from the sea
Saturday, November 20, 2004
Importance of Water, the mystery of life and drinking
many secrets from the sea
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I saw my first amoeba at the age of 5 and I drew it -- a penciled shape with rings to show its movement....
ReplyDeleteIt was a miniature moving sea, its edges lapping at the beach it was exploring. It was a challenge to my concept of "life" and "living". Many things move that are not alive. Many things appear to be something they are not...hibernating stones, the mud cocoon, the living tide.
People pretend there is an obvious answer. That we know what is alive and what is non-living. I once dreamt I was a jelly-fish with my "life" spectacularly-parsed into discrete members of an empire which pumped the ocean. I dreamt I was a rock facing the sky on one side, the dark mountain on the other, for millions of years holding on to a single performance.
I have never dreamt of being a virus, but I have read about that little "shudder" that has been detected as they inject their proteins into the hope of their host....
The world's largest known virus, Mimivirus discovered in 1992, infects amoebae. The discovery of its complex genetics challenges our view of "life". We are seeing the sea. The virus is not just a metabolically active sack of minerals, it has genes, and it gives and transports those genes to its host. A virus is much like a seed, or a pre-emergent life form.
Viruses fill the planet, but particularly, they inhabit the sea and the active sacks of sea which are organized as complex organisms. The sea is filled with innocuous, non-pathogenic, viruses, persisting for billions of years, and some in relatively permanent colonies in their sequences of "living" hosts.
VIRUS qv. 12/12/05, referencing SA 12/04 at 100.
VIRUSES - The Facts and Speculations:
ReplyDelete1. Excluded from controversy about "evolution" because most people do not think viral forms of existence are "living" or alive.
2. Viruses matter to life, however. We now know, since that little discovery of Mimivirus in an amoeba in 1992, that viruses not only organize protein, but they contain an enormous complexity of genetic complements.
3. Viruses dominate the planet. Their huge population, coupled with their billion-year persistence, and rapid rates of replication and mutation, make them the world's leading source of genetic innovation. Viruses literally "invent" new genes, as they transfer and disperse them. As such, they contribute to genetic change.
4. VIRUSES RISE FROM THE DEAD; AND THEY ENABLE VARIOUS HOST CELLS TO REVIVE. Bacteria are often killed by UV -- sunlight destroys their nuclear DNA. Some viruses, however, include enxymes that can repair various host molecules, restoring life to a dead host. We call these viruses cyanophages because they encode their own version of the bacterial photosynthesis enzyme which is more resistant to UV radiation. They provide life-restoring gene therapy for cells.
5. It gets even better. Not only can cyanophages restore life, they also self-resurrect. The viral genome can reassemble from its parts, and acting in concert -- we call it complementation -- with its host, can reestablish full function.
Viruses are the only known biological entity with this kind of capacity to rise from the dead -- a phoenix phenotype.
Reference: ARE VIRUSES ALIVE, Luis P. Villarreal, Scientific American 12/04 at 100. I love it.
THE SEA. This domain is vast, and utterly pillaged. It is not a wild and free place, it is a harbor of pirates, a launching pad for terrorists, a money-tree for pillagers. Langewiesche describes its "anarchy" in Atlantic [sic] Sept 2003, 50. Ship-owners, terrorists, and pirates ply this defining feature of our globe with uncountable craft, over 40,000 huge ships which have no allegiance or accountability. The "regulation" of the IMO is pointless--a fantasy of the 162 member United Nations.
ReplyDeleteTRASH. The refuse that is building up in the sea is both disbursed, and gathered, by currents and wind. Huge floating islands of garbage....out of sight, now, and coming to bite us, in the near future.
ReplyDeleteTHE NORTH PACIFIC GYRE.
ReplyDeleteTrash is dumped, pumped, and flows off ships and land into the sea. Currents curl it around; it is now ubiquitous and inescapable.
In a patch of ocean called the North Pacific Gyre, currents have trapped floating debris for years.
"I have no doubt that some of these things that we're discovering out there have been there since the dawn of the plastic era in the 1950's," says Captain Charles Moore, of the research vessel Algalita, studying the Gyre.
"Day after day after day, when I came on deck I saw objects floating by: toothbrushes, bottlecaps and soap bottles,...."
"As plastic ages it crumbles, leaving so many tiny fragments that Moore found seawater in the Gyre contained more plastic than plankton"....
We could construct a floating colony in the region of the North Pacific Gyre. We should recycle the semi-permanent materials assembled there by the sea. If we fail to take this opportunity to "balance" the Gyre, it will rapidly increase, overwhelming an expanding area with plastic. Already there is more plastic in the seawater there than plankton. QV.
ReplyDeleteSTROMATOLITES were the first organisms to produce oxygen. Today, we breathe their waste.
ReplyDeleteLICHENS rise as a cooperative endeavor, followed by the forms of ferns, and branching into trees, but always you can see that "lichen" shadow-flower on every leaf, all barks and blooms.
ReplyDeleteLILIES turned into trees in Australia and in the deserts of Western US, but stayed in the water in swamps, making pads.
ReplyDeleteMEGA-FAUNA roamed the previous ages; we live in a worn-down collapsed world. The world's most enormous plants, and even fungi, flourished millions of years ago. The Ox, Wolf, Cat, Whale, Bear, Sloth, Mammoth ... even Hominids and Rats used to be huge.
ReplyDelete"Thousands have lived without love; not one without water." -- W.H.Auden
ReplyDeleteA billion people do not have access to clean water today. Half of the hospital beds in the developing world are filled by people suffering from waterborne diseases.
ReplyDelete"SLINGSHOT". Dean Kamen, owner of DEKA, and inventor of the Segway, invented an energy-efficient device for making clean water out of waste or salt water, using vapor compression distillation.
ReplyDeleteSeaKeepers - compare, Kennedy's "RiverKeepers".
ReplyDeleteThe International SeaKeepers Society enlists the owners of mega-yachts to collect measurements and samples. According to the Megayacht News (!), Seakeeper gear has been installed on more than 30 yachts, and they provide meteorological, and oceanographical data.
Jim Gilbert is board President of SeaKeepers, which is using the yachts as research vessels. The participating yachts include: Paul Allen's OCTOBPUS, and Alfred Balm's SILVER LIVING.