Life Began over 4.5 billion years ago on Earth when it was still a spinning mass of molten, bubbling, boiling volcanic chemicals.
A Genealogist traces lineage, but our ancestry doesn't stop with tribe or group. Every living organism or system of organisms has the same commmon ancestor.
We all have a last common ancestor which scientists call LUCA. Our common descent most likely begins with RNA and the first systems were prokaryotes, which we call bacteria.
Combining energy from the sun and energy from asteroids, comets, meteorites produced the building blocks of organic matter: adenine, thiamine, guanine and cytosine. The 4 bases of DNA, the spiral helix of deoxyribonucleic acid requires RNA to reproduce. However RNA can replicate itself and can produce proteins biologists suggest they preceded DNA. DNA requires RNA to replicate.
There never has been a man-built machine as capable as these self-maintaining organisms "created" in nature - BY NATURE. Some humans call that nature Gaia. Some call it God.
Life in nature can replicate and is self-maintaining. It regenerates until it returns back to nature from whence it came. We concentrate order and like clock-work, about every 21 days we get a new epithelial lining in our stomachs. The sub-mucosa replaces itself about every 7 days. In a couple of months we also replace our liver and skin self-replicates about every six weeks.
We keep our brain and heart cells which developed before we were born - so don't waste them; you will never get them back until we perfect some way to successfully transplant them - not an uncommon idea given the history of scientific innovation.
Lynn Margulis and Dorian Sagan write in What is Life? "Every year, ninety-eight percent of the atoms of your body are replaced..."
This is life as we know it and continues as long as we provide fuel to our cells. Margulis and Sagan says, "An autopietic entity metabolizes continuously; it perpetuates itself through chemical activity, the movement of molecules...Autopoiesis, indeed, is detectable by that incessant life chemistry and energy flow which is metabolism. Only cells, organisms made of cells, and biospheres made of organisms are autopoietic and can metabolize."
DNA is not alive. It replicates but it does not metabolize. Cells are autopoietic. Only cells metabolize; that is, burn fuel and maintain itself. Viruses are not autopoietic. They don't metabolize either, but they do hijack cells which do.
90% of our cells are microbial and serve another master. They also serve us. They were our original ancestors and they are still us. We dare not eradicate them from our environment. If we did we would not be capable of surviving in our current form. The intestines need them where they are involved with digestion and disposal of waste, which is one of the functions of bacteria in our intestines and they help us absorb nutrients from the food we eat. The digestion system contains the enteric intestinal nervous system which is considered the First brain before the Second brain was formed, the cerebral central nervous system.
This SECOND brain works independent of the FIRST (CNS) central nervous system. [Excellent source: Michael D. Gerson. The Second Brain 1998].
Food digestion was developed before a CNS brain (also see the flatworm) for observation and to alert the organism of danger.
Most bacteria is good. 95% of it as a matter of fact, but some of the 5%
which is pathogenic; that is,
bad bacteria can kill you.
Some of these bad bacteria are everywhere. Hospitals are dangerous places because of those bad germs. MIRSA, antibiotic resistant germs are pervasive. They are in the schools, at public places, public pools, at beaches, your neighbor's pool.
There are increasing numbers of water-borne bacteria and illnesses as well as medications which end up flushed in body waste and pills tossed down a toilet which end up in you when you drink the water in spite of efforts at neutralizing and filtering them out of your drinking water. Chlorination will NOT protect from microscopic parasites and bacteria. Not only do germs become chlorine resistant and thrive in extreme conditions those chemicals smell bad and irritate skin and eyes. Fecal accidents also lead to disease.
Cryptosporidium parvum, also known as "crypto" is only one among many germs which are resistant of efforts to eradicate them and results in illness which can be fatal among those with already weakened immunity. This germ is often found in swimming pools. Sometimes swallowing contaminated water will cause illness. Sometimes simple skin contact is enough. An open wound is especially bad for spreading disease.
"There is a huge issue getting the public to understand that swimming is a communal bathing act," Beach said. "There's a lot of mythology out there about swimming pools -- you see those blue waters and you think it's essentially sterile." (Alex Breitler, Record (Stockton, CA) - August 21, 2006)
"Nationwide, 8.3 percent of public swimming pools and 11 percent of spas were closed for health reasons immediately upon inspection in 2002, the latest year for which statistics were available." (Breitler)
BUT without bacteria we would not survive. They need us for their energy as much as we need them. We are endosymbiotic with bacteria. Most of it is good for you.
For all the differences we all may have on so many things, I think we really need to get our minds around this one.
We are not the only intelligence on this planet. Contrary to the prevailing view, we are not in charge. Destiny is not predetermined and there is no omnipotent super power, but there is manipulation by prokaryotes, of 22,000 strains of bacteria.
There are many strains of bacteria but only one species.
Bacterium are guiding our evolution and is responsible for it and nucleated
cellular life is about to LEAP again.
Our evolution will be a devolution to a low oxygen earth. The current oxygen
level is at 21% from its original 1%.
All this talk about what we can do by not burning fossil fuels and stopping global warming is a false hope. Opposing growth which requires a degree of greed and self-interest an evolved propensity of our nature and essential to our evolution. We're not going to stop it; we are not capable of stopping our internal nature.
We can rage on about it or we can wake up to the reality of it and can even celebrate it. We can accept the inevitable and enjoy the moment.
Perhaps we are rerunning the clock out and this has happened before, over and over again? Who really wins? What always wins? Prokaryotes win. Oxidative stress and aging is inevitable. Eukaryotes lose. So let the good times roll!
Some of you think bigger brains and anti-oxidants will help. Im here to tell you, there are some advantages to having a bigger brain, but this is not one of them and be forewarned, anti-oxidants are not the answer either. The answer is to let the good times roll.
It is a truism that struggle and stress is what makes us stronger and those most fit to reproduce will endure better. Perhaps oxidative stress tests that fitness? But death, which is as natural as birth, is a necessary constituent of the reproductive cycle, post-reproductive aging, and ultimately our dying, where thereupon our constituent parts decompose and are consumed by bacteria; returning us all once again to the very earth from which we arose in the first place.
Hank Roth
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Today is Friday March 12, 2010
