Delaware's Dinosaur
Posted on: July 10, 2008 - 7:10pm
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Delaware's Dinosaur
There's a good article in "NATURE CONSERVANCY"about the Horse Shoe Crab,and how we harvest them for the biomedical industry,they have a unique compound in their blood called "lysate" it's a life saver.
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You've got to be joking. Don't you ever do any basic fact checking? There is no such compound called lysate. The word lysate comes from the suffix -lysis meaning "to split". Thus, for example, in biology, there are a huge number of concepts pertaining to lysis. Hydrolysis is the splitting of water, electrolysis is splitting by electricity, glycolysis is splitting of glucose. "Lysate" refers to cytolysis, the splitting of cells. When osmotic equilibrium concentrations change, usually as the result of the collapse of some chemiosmotic gradient accross the cell, then water will start to move into the cell, which makes it swell, at which point it is called hypotonic. Eventually it bursts and releases its contents into solution. When a cell bursts and releases its contents (intracellular membranes, Golgi apparatus, nucleus, Endoplasmic recticulum, mitochondria, etc. etc.) into the solution, the solution of cell-contents is called a lysate. That's all a lysate is. It's not a compound (a compound is simply a molecule comprised of multiple different types of atoms), certainly not a magical life-saving one.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
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Then the article is wrong. I will repeat what I said before, because it will take you 5 seconds in a textbook to confirm I am correct. A lysate is a solution which contains the contents of a lysed cell.
Tell you what, if you can find this mystery compound, and give me its IUPAC nomenculature, I'll believe you.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
Limulus amebocyte lysate, here is somemore info, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limulus_Amebocyte_Lysate
See how much simpler things are when you use the right terminology, Ken? LC got the name right. LAL is not a compound, and if you just refer to it as "lysate" then you are being grossly inaccurate with your terminology since that could refer to any type of lysed cell, not merely horshoe crab erthrocytes, which is a particular type of lysate.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
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I live by a beach... there are few things that disturb me more than Horseshoe Crabs. Seriously.. I'm always afraid they are going to attach to my face and leave alien babies in me.
If I have gained anything by damning myself, it is that I no longer have anything to fear. - JP Sartre