Spring Break
Numbers reveal human propensities, values
By: Yuanxin Sun
Issue date: 5/20/05 Section: Sci-Tech
Originally published: 5/20/05 at 12:30 AM EST
Last update: 5/20/05 at 12:34 AM EST
Originally published: 5/20/05 at 12:30 AM EST
Last update: 5/20/05 at 12:34 AM EST
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If a number is needed to start the universe, what is your choice?
Historians say 5,000 (5,000 years of human culture); anthropologists insist it to be 100,000 (about 100,000 years ago, anthropoids stood up to liberate their two "arms").
Artists regard their god-figure to be 0.618 (the golden section number, which is the source of beauty); physicians think if human skin temperature deviates from around 37 degrees, something serious will happen.
Engineers are hesitating between zero or one, and physicists should be busy voting among hundreds of constants, such as G (gravitational constant), c (speed of light), e (elementary charge), etc.
While biologists, I guess, would choose 20.
"20" here seems to be no mystery, but it's the number of all amino acids that we can find on this planet.
Amino acids are famous for their powerful orderly combinations which form proteins.
Even if you are a complete layman of biology, common sense can tell you that life is based on proteins.
For example, all living things must have an never ending supply of energy and matter. The transformation of this energy and matter within the body is called metabolism.
And all the chemical transformations that take place during metabolism are catalyzed by certain types of proteins called enzymes.
Another fact concerns gene expression. DNA contains our genetic code in its double helix.
With the help of certain enzymes, those codes are translated into different chains of amino acids (proteins) to achieve the specific gene direction.
In other words, it is protein that helps bring about diversity in the awesome world of life, though the root cause lies in gene.
Naturally, then, you would throw out this question: The earth features an abundant number of creatures.
Even two simple leaves are somewhat different.
So how can such an enormous number of different lives (and thus proteins) come from a small chain of 20 amino acids?
Well, the answer is, the number of chains is not small.
The smallest protein chain in existence is found to contain 100 amino acids. If you ask the computer how many different chains can be obtained using 100 balls, you will get an astonishing figure as much as 20,100 (10,130)!
10,130!
Imagine that we've got 10,130 proteins:
Even if each of them consists of only one atom, we can still have a total weight of 10,100 tons.
This is 1,078 times the earth's weight and 1,072 times the solar system's weight.
Comparatively speaking, even the accumulated proteins that have ever evolved during the whole four billion years of life's existence could be as light as a feather!
And that number is large enough to clear up worries that one day we'll run out of new proteins to achieve evolution.
That will never happen, not even in a million years.
Yuanxin Sun is a first year graduate student physics.
Historians say 5,000 (5,000 years of human culture); anthropologists insist it to be 100,000 (about 100,000 years ago, anthropoids stood up to liberate their two "arms").
Artists regard their god-figure to be 0.618 (the golden section number, which is the source of beauty); physicians think if human skin temperature deviates from around 37 degrees, something serious will happen.
Engineers are hesitating between zero or one, and physicists should be busy voting among hundreds of constants, such as G (gravitational constant), c (speed of light), e (elementary charge), etc.
While biologists, I guess, would choose 20.
"20" here seems to be no mystery, but it's the number of all amino acids that we can find on this planet.
Amino acids are famous for their powerful orderly combinations which form proteins.
Even if you are a complete layman of biology, common sense can tell you that life is based on proteins.
For example, all living things must have an never ending supply of energy and matter. The transformation of this energy and matter within the body is called metabolism.
And all the chemical transformations that take place during metabolism are catalyzed by certain types of proteins called enzymes.
Another fact concerns gene expression. DNA contains our genetic code in its double helix.
With the help of certain enzymes, those codes are translated into different chains of amino acids (proteins) to achieve the specific gene direction.
In other words, it is protein that helps bring about diversity in the awesome world of life, though the root cause lies in gene.
Naturally, then, you would throw out this question: The earth features an abundant number of creatures.
Even two simple leaves are somewhat different.
So how can such an enormous number of different lives (and thus proteins) come from a small chain of 20 amino acids?
Well, the answer is, the number of chains is not small.
The smallest protein chain in existence is found to contain 100 amino acids. If you ask the computer how many different chains can be obtained using 100 balls, you will get an astonishing figure as much as 20,100 (10,130)!
10,130!
Imagine that we've got 10,130 proteins:
Even if each of them consists of only one atom, we can still have a total weight of 10,100 tons.
This is 1,078 times the earth's weight and 1,072 times the solar system's weight.
Comparatively speaking, even the accumulated proteins that have ever evolved during the whole four billion years of life's existence could be as light as a feather!
And that number is large enough to clear up worries that one day we'll run out of new proteins to achieve evolution.
That will never happen, not even in a million years.
Yuanxin Sun is a first year graduate student physics.
