Tuesday, May 16, 2017

Making Science Understandable for Neoliberals with Carnivorous Plants

We can only hope someday for "The Day of the Triffids" to return and those giant, man-eating plants will come to eat neoliberals ... someday.

Meanwhile, we have the evolution of predation in carnivorous plants and that aspect, unlike neoliberalism, is extraordinary.

Ed:  it's deadly!

Well, in that regard it's like neoliberals since they so love whacking Muslims.



This is a scanning electron micrograph of the bladder of Utricularia gibba, the humped bladderwort plant (color added). The plant is a voracious carnivore, with its tiny, 1-millimeter-long bladders leveraging vacuum pressure to suck in tiny prey at great speed.

Credit: Enrique Ibarra-Laclette, Claudia Anahí Pérez-Torres and Paulina Lozano-Sotomayor


There you go, incipient killers, since this one is a voracious carnivore.  Learn it; love it; live it.

Watson:  how did it get that way without going to Washington?

Well, funny you should ask, dear Watson ...


A new genomic analysis shows just how valuable this carnivorous lifestyle has been to the plant throughout its evolutionary history. Over millions of years, the species, Utricularia gibba, repeatedly retained and enhanced genetic material associated with its carnivorous nature -- despite tremendous evolutionary pressure to delete DNA, the research finds.

Science Daily:  Carnivorous plant's prized genetic treasures, unveiled

Predation didn't just happen with this creature; it scrimped and saved for it.


The biological treasures that were nurtured include genes that facilitate the trapping of prey, the digestion of proteins, and the transport of small bits of protein (derived from the bladderwort's victims) from one cell to another.

"What's exciting is that we didn't go in and cherry pick these genes," says Victor Albert, PhD, professor of biological sciences in the University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences. "We used bioinformatics to identify genes that were preserved and enriched in the species, and when we did that, these genes related to a carnivorous lifestyle were the ones that stood out. They were screaming out at us, telling us to look at them."

- SD

You may choke a little on so much anthropomorphizing since the Rockhouse doesn't think genes scream all that much but the point about collecting genes is novel.

These creatures approached predation as if they were playing "Wheel of Fortune" and they will become full-blooded carnivores after they collect enough letters.

Ed:  just going with the flow of anthropomorphizing everything?

Roger that


"The trap of Utricularia is only two cells thick, and the way it does its trapping is it creates a whole lot of negative pressure inside the trap to suck in the prey once triggered," Hererra-Estrella says. "The cell walls are under a lot of tension. So it's no shock at all that there seem to be some interesting clusters of tandem duplicates that deal with the cell wall dynamism."

- SD

Ed:  was that just to bounce neoliberals?

Nah, like I tell you, Groovy Gopher, they freak at long division; they're already gone.


That last was the closer in the article and the interested student is invited to read the rest but you're advised it provides additional in deep biology of the nature of cell wall dynamism.

Ed:  why do you care about cell wall dynamism?

That shows further the collection of genes for the purpose of predation and it was so 'determined' it collected duplicates.

Ed:  are you seriously going into any kind of determinism with this?

Nope and we can lose the anthropomorphization now since the Rockhouse won't defend any idea of determinism in the plant and yet this collection of genetics for predation happened.

In other words, if God did indeed make these creatures, he did not make them this way.  That won't bother you unless you're a Christian terrorist such as those in FLDS since you know God had a Mysterious Plan.

That's all I'm giving you on it since, wtf, I don't have a better explanation either just now.  However, we see this happened and we also see they did not start out that way.

Note:  FLDS routinely molested children.  I submit they were, in fact, Christian terrorists.


Watson:  so the implication is the carnivorous plant is more intelligent than neoliberals because it evolves?

Watson, you may make Chief of Police yet.

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