Capturing the motion of a single molecule in real time as it oscillates from one quantum state to another
September 18, 2014
Excerpt: “It also moves researchers a step closer to viewing the molecular world in action — being able to see the making and breaking of bonds, which control biological processes such as enzymatic reactions and cellular dynamics.”
My comment: The making and breaking of bonds controls all biological processes. Luca Turin tried to do move researchers a step closer to viewing the molecular world in action and was hung out to dry by members of the Association for Chemoreception Sciences (AChemS). Chandler Burr wrote a book about Luca’s experiences. I sided with AChemS in a review of the book The Emperor of Scent: A Story of Perfume, Obsession and the Last Mystery of the Senses. That was before they ignored details of RNA-mediated events and hung me out to dry as well.
Then I learned that Luca Turin was probably right about the “Molecular Vibration-Sensing Component in Human Olfaction” I think that’s what Sinope Diogenes is trying to tell the Evolutionary Psychology News group and wonder why he is doing that.
Most evolutionary psychologists know nothing about molecular biology and they appear to believe that mutations and natural selection led to the evolution of biodiversity. Most have rejected all facts that show ecological variation leads to ecological adaptations via biophysically-constrained molecular mechanisms that ensure perturbed protein folding manifested in mutations does not lead to increasing organismal complexity. Simply put, the evolutionary psychologists I have encountered are less likely than serious scientists from AChemS to accept anything other than what they’ve been taught to believe in.
Most members of AChemS probably believe in the pseudoscientific nonsense of evolutionary theory, too. Few of their members could accept the fact that RNA-mediated events link insect to mammals via the epigenetic effects of olfactory/pheromonal input on hormone-organized and hormone-activated behaviors. In fact, no one publicly complained when Richard L. Doty, a sensory psychologist, proclaimed that mammalian pheromones don’t exist because of differences in the stereotypical behaviors of insects and mammals, which obviously are epigenetically-effected via conserved molecular mechanisms.
See: The Great Pheromone Myth ” In this provocative book, renowned olfaction expert Richard L. Doty rejects this idea and states bluntly that, in contrast to insects, mammals do not have pheromones.” But wait, see also: Humans Can Discriminate More than 1 Trillion Olfactory Stimuli. The disparity between the number of olfactory receptors and our detection abilities suggests two things.
1) Doty does not know that what humans and insects have in common, which links quantum physics via chemistry to the molecular biology of de novo Creation of odor receptors that detect food odor and pheromones in insects and in mammals.
2) Luca Turin’s ideas about links from biophysically-constrained ecological adaptations to nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled hormone-organized and hormone-activated behaviors should be revisited whenever a generation of intelligent researchers learns enough about physics, chemistry, and conserved molecular mechanisms in species from microbes to man to look beyond the nose on their face, past the presentations at AChemS meetings, or up the nose of the sculpture in front of the Monell Chemical Senses Institute.
