[extropy-chat] NANO/ID: Spooky nanowire crappying bacteria...

[The Avantguardian]

--- Mike Lorrey <mlorrey at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Okay. Either these little guys were engineered by a
> crypto dirt
> civilization, or there may be something to ID. What
> is the evolutionary
> point of a bacteria that craps conductive
> nano-wires?

There may very well be something to broadly
interpreted ID, but not the narrow kind that xian
creationism is masquerading as these days. The
evolutionary point of growing these nanowires,
however, is to transfer electrons accumulated by
respiration out of the cell. My guess is that it is
coupled with the intake of H+ and other cations. In
that regard it might be thought of as geobacter's
version of the electron transport chain that is
graciously supplied to us by our beloved mitochondria.

Convergence in evolution can explain why the wings of
birds are shaped a little like man-made airfoils and
geobacter can crap structures that look like wires.
The difference in these things is strictly that of
genetic evolution in the case of the natural items
versus memetic evolution in the man-made items. The
"purpose" of these constructs is the same as is the
mechanism of their "invention". All are empirical
constructs that exist because they have fine tuned
themselves to function in a given environment. Memetic
evolution can often proceed many times faster than
genetic evolution however for obvious reasons.

The Avantguardian 
is 
Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"The surest sign of intelligent life in the universe is that they haven't attempted to contact us." 
-Bill Watterson


		
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