Non-Energy Links --

A Note to the Granddaughters

The WSJ always impresses me: today, it's their graphic of cell receptors that researchers discovered, leading to their winning the Nobel price in chemistry.

It is absolutely incredible how far "we've" come since 1951. In 1951, the basic structure of DNA was finally elucidated but it took many more years to figure out how that structure allowed DNA to replicate and how to transfer the code to manufacturing proteins. Then, much later, we were learning about receptors on cell membranes. I remember in 1977 or thereabouts, in another life, I was studying how the beta receptor "worked." I found the whole concept absolutely fascinating.

According to the WSJ article, the two who won the prize began their work back in the 1960's. Dr Lefkowitz began the work at Duke in the late 1960s by using radioactive isotopes to identify and map the structure of the receptor for adrenaline [the beta receptor]. In the 1980s, Dr Kobilka, who worked in Dr Lefkowitz's laboratory before joining Stanford in 1990, isolated and analyzed the receptor's gene. Gradually, they realized they had found an entire family of a thousand or more receptors that serve as gateways into the cell. 

Their work continued through last year, when Dr Kobilka and his colleagues published the first X-ray image of the key receptor as it responded to the influence of a hormone by transmitting a signal through the well wall.

Looking back, it is interesting that the first receptor I remember learning about was the beta receptor, as it was called then, and I can still picture the professor who introduced it to me. That receptor, I suppose, is the ur-receptor in my mind. It's interesting that it is the receptor that brought fame to these two researchers.

But think of all the folks along the way who made this possible; it must have been very, very difficult for the committee to agree on only two researchers.

The article brings back bittersweet memories. This was all occurring during my own coming-of-age, and thinking back on all the forks in the road along the way, wow ... some of those "forks" in those roads are about the only things that can get my mind off the Bakken. 

On another note, I will be buying this book when it comes out. I seldom buy books as soon as they come out, but this will be an exception. I can hardly wait to read it: Camille Paglia's Glittering Images: A Journey Through Art From Egypt to Star Wars. See the review and the long, wonderful interview with Paglia at Salon.com.

I accidentally discovered Paglia when I bought a remaindered copy of her ground-breaking book (ground-breaking for her): Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence From Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson. I am probably missing a few, but if asked to quickly identify those writers/artists that have taught me the most about art and literature, this is the short list: Harold Bloom, Camille Paglia, .... maybe that's it. The artists and writers that laid the groundwork for my continuing in the arts: Virginia Woolf, Monet, hat's it. But they led me to quite a library.

Back to the interview: it turns out Ms Paglia will not be voting for Obama. She says she would prefer to vote for Romney, and would except for the fact that Cheney, Gingrich, and someone whom I can't remember, are members of the same party. That's pretty weak reasoning considering some of the nut cases in the Dems and the Green Party (to whom she has thrown her support) but I will give her that. I like Paglia for her writing, not her politics.