D*A*M Forum

Here's one (two really): Bananas are herbs.
Also, those Cavendish bananas you eat (the atheist's nightmare apparently ) are triploid, so it's sterile and you don't get honking great seeds like little pebbles in your Curious George sarnie. They're parthenocarpic and produce fruit without successful fertilization. They were also domesticated (again, in contrast to what Ray Comfort would have you believe) by people in Papua New Guinea 10,000 years ago by artificial selection from something that looked like this:


(Yes, I'm a biologist )

the oldest living thing on earth is a Bristlecone Pine

Gorilla's can't swim. Super handy for if you ever piss one off near a pool/lake/bog/body of water.

THIS THREAD SEEMS TOTALLY POINTLESS TO ME..!!

All I really wanna suggest here though, concerns photosynthetic antenna complexes, composed of α-helical hydrophobic polypeptides and pigments (e.g., bacteriochlorophyll a). Cause I've lately come to notice self-assembling properties of an engineered hydrophobic polypeptide with zinc-substituted bacteriochlorophyll a ([Zn]-BChl a) in various lipid bilayer - and then have had the opportunity to investigate the effect of lipid species on the self-assembling properties. Could you imagine, that when the polypeptide and [Zn]-BChl a were mixed in surfactant solution (n-octyl β-D-glucopyranoside: OG) at 25°C, the absorption band [Zn]-BChl a was red-shifted from 770 to 812 nm, that is assignable to quasi-dimeric “subunit-type” complex. And then, by subsequent dilution and cooling of the solution, the absorption band further red-shifted to 836 nm indicative for progressed assembly, ‘LH1-type’ complex. And furthermore, when the subunit-type complex was assembled in lipid bilayer, e.g., phosphatidylcholines (PC’s) and phosphatidylglycerol (PG’s), the assembling property to form LH1-type complex prominently and obiously depended totally on the character of their fatty acid chains in the phospholipids. Not to speak of the subunit complex, that not only remained in the fluidic bilayers, but also assembled to form LH1-type complex in solid-like phospholipid bilayers, suggesting that the whole fucking intermolecular force of phospholipid relations governs the interspacial assembling region of the polypeptide/[Zn]-BChl a complex, as a whole.

Bert Ohlsson wrote:...suggesting that the whole fucking intermolecular force of phospholipid relations governs the interspacial assembling region of the polypeptide/[Zn]-BChl a complex, as a whole.[/color]

Well, what else did you expect?

OK, useless fact? Cat's (incld lions, tigers) can't taste sweet -- the receptor is fucked up because of a mongo deletion in the Tas1r2 gene. They only have a functional Tas1r3.

They're also missing glucokinase in the liver, so don't feed your cat food stuffed with with loads of carbohydrate filler -- they'll get diabetes.

But they can taste ATP

devnulljp wrote:
But they can taste ATP

Far out! I wonder if they can taste other nucleotides? Or even DNA. I think I just had an idea for a horror movie....

Dev, are you actually Stephen Fry and we're reading an episode of QI?

Oh and a strawberry is not actually a berry!

Stephen Fry told me so.

But a banana is.

stella_blues wrote:Dev, are you actually Stephen Fry and we're reading an episode of QI?

Flatterer!

stella_blues wrote:Oh and a strawberry is not actually a berry!
Stephen Fry told me so.
But a banana is.

Pineapple's a berry. True. and. Pointless.

Tomato is a fruit, but not to be used in fruit salad.

Idaho is the shape it is because a group of locals from what would end up being Missoula, MT didn't want to be part of Idaho. The eastern edge of Idaho was supposed to follow the continental divide, which is on the east side of Missoula. These locals went up and met the survey crew at a place now called Lost Trail Pass and convinced the crew the continental divide went towards the west, rather than to the east as it actually does. The crew then followed and surveyed this faux divide for some time before they realized their mistake, at which time they made a straight line shot to the Canadian border.