Sunday 29 January 2012

A scientific interlude


Away from the usual self-advertising and PR plugs for a change. Two items I read recently – one on a website, the other in The Observer – set up some scientific musings. Science to me usually means fascinating things which I don’t understand, but it often leads to trains of thought I wouldn’t otherwise have.

The first item was about chromosomes. I know, of course, that they’re made of DNA and proteins and carry our genes. When I checked Wikipedia, there was stuff about regulatory elements, nucleotide sequences, eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells as well, but (as they keep saying in the film Airplane), that’s not important right now. What is important is that we (humans) have 46 of them. But – and this is the interesting bit – it’s also possible that we have 48. And why is that interesting? Well, we all know that chimpanzees also have 48, but – and this time it really is the interesting bit – so do potatoes.

In the evolutionary ladder, therefore, we are on a par with potatoes. (The temptation at this point is to digress into the class structure implicit in varieties such as King Edward, Belle de Fontenay, Duke of York and Saxon. Instead, I’ll just point you to the admirable website http://www.lovepotatoes.co.uk/.)

The second piece of science, however, offers hope that such parity will soon change because stem cell researchers in Edinburgh have succeeded in cultivating new brain cells. Not by sucking out real brain cells and prodding them, or from the practice of using bits of embryos, which upsets so many people who think only God should do that. No, instead they've done stuff with skin cells. (‘Prodding’ and ‘done stuff with’ are scientific terms.) Thus, we can look forward to a future in which our descendants are clothed not in skin but in brains, which will give us a clear edge over our potato cousins who, even if they did manage to follow our evolutionary lead, would still get peeled and thereby lose their powers of ratiocination.

To some of you, this may seem a frivolous misuse and indeed misappropriation of important scientific advances, but I take my lead from one of the greats of British comedy, Tommy Cooper, whose use of statistics was exemplary. He once revealed the following:

“Apparently, one in five people in the world are Chinese. There are five people in my family, so it must be one of them. It’s either my mum or my dad, my older brother Colin, or my younger brother Ho-Cha-Chu.
...
I think it’s Colin.”


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8 comments:

  1. I assume you've volunteered for the first potato brain cell implant. Does that mean we are going to be treated to several veggie murders eg Death by Potato Peeler. You may use the title with my blessing and I don't want royalties either, but you could put a plug at the end of the book for my more bloody concoctions!

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    1. It's a deal, Chris. Now let's see ... "It was a dark and stormy night ..."

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  2. Words fail me. My brains have been mashed.

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    1. Hmmm, clearly the cross-chromosomal degeneration has begun, Rosemary. I'll be interested to see whether your next novel is set in a chip shop.

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  3. Nice one, Bill! Coco and I think far more "arts-based" people should have the courage to explore scientific topics, as exemplified in this posting. He and I believe humane virtues, sensibilities and ethics can and should have greater profile within science, and on the other hand many people in the creative professions could profit immeasurably from a greater understanding of science. Down with "No Entry" signs!

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    1. Thanks, Donnie. I know that your own contributions to scientific advance have been, at best, mediocre but who can ever forget the seismic effect of reading Coco's 'Two Cultures: the excoriating interdependence of permeable nano-technologies when subordinated to effluvial discontinuation in microlinguistic affirmations of the predominance of splanchnic mesoderm in species-deficient concordats'?

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  4. No, no, Bill (or as we say, Na, No) , that's the name of a play what I wrote about Coco's recent painting, "Zowie Bapface and the Buleria"! Snappy title, innit?

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  5. Excellent title, but far too political for my liking.

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