Ham radios & future magic
Firstly, it is possible. You just agreed. We aren't creating telepathy here, we aren't discovering chemical x, we're designing a complex biochemical process. And a modification to your metaphor- we'd actually have a catalogue of ham radios, some of them significantly different from eachother, and designing a car that can be made from recycled ham radio parts. It would take a long time yes. It is quite complex yes. But we can do it.
The problem is, which fits well into your metaphor, no HAM radios include gas tanks or wheels or anything like that.
While it's
probably possible in
theory to have an organism make carbon fibers, it would probably require "hacking" the bits of the cell that create nucleic or amino acids rather than modifying the actual genes.
My point was not only that 'it's the future, anything can happen', but that 'it's the future, and a forum game, anything can happen'. Oh, and that anything feasible can happen, not anything. Complicated bioengineering? Feasible.
This isn't a minimalistic forum game. I and some others are operating under the assumption that the laws of the real world are in effect. So we're assuming different things.
You're also assuming that carbon-fiber organisms are feasible.
Ectotherms
You're protesting it in a manner that isn't realistic. You're contesting the possibility, demanding specific examples that you already know don't exist, therefore we'd have to either pull them out of our ass or literally create them ourselves,
THAT'S MY POINT.
There
are no examples. Therefore, there's
nothing that we can base our work on. We're not just building a car out of HAM radio parts--we're doing so with little understanding of how an internal combustion engine works.
and then dismiss the fact that they are possible by claiming it's not practical. Would you want to play the game if you had to specify, down to the molecular level, how your ectotherm modification would be put into practice?
Of course not. The nice thing about ectothermy is, there is an actual template for it in nature already. In fact, there's dozens, besides the fact that it's likely more a process of removing endothermy than adding anything.
I haven't ever seen a mammal become an ectotherm- I don't think it's possible. Prove it is.
Primitive synapsids were highly mammalian and ectotherms. Besides that, there's actually not that much difference between chordate and especially tetrapod taxa, biochemically.
starting from scratch
I just said: we look for enzymes that are close to what we want & are already coded for. We modify those. That's not starting from scratch.
There's no such enzymes that I'm aware of. Point to an enzyme that manipulates carbon atoms directly.
BECAUSE THERE'S NO BASIS FOR THAT AT ALL IN NATURE.
This is a fallacy. It not existing in nature does not preclude it's existence ever. You've conceded this.
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However, it does mean that (assuming we could make it), it would take years if not generations of experimentation to do.
That's like saying you could turn a HAM radio into an automobile by tinkering with it a bit--technically true, but not remotely practical.
Diction argument
Well, technically you're mixing minerals/aggregations with elements & thermic properties, but I originally was just being an ass about "Organic" and "found in nature". I disagree that the body wouldn't be able to maintain the carbon fibers, if it's already built them. I'm not claiming it would be able to produce magma or uranium.
More in line with the spirit of this particular argument: actually, the body does produce plasma.
Yeah, most of that stuff you're talking about was responding to you "just being an ass about 'Organic' and 'found in nature'". But you know darn well that that's not the kind of plasma I meant.
the future anything can happen
More on this: there's a difference between 'anything can happen' and reasonable expectations of what might be possible. I contend my argument is firmly in the latter.
And I contend it's not.
Seems like it easily could be. Care to explain?
Would you care to explain why it would be?
Because, not only are there natural templates for ectothermy, it's more the lack of endothermy than anything?
Care to explain what's going on there? It looks like you're trying to have some some atoms (nitrogen and hydrogen?) push the carbon atoms together, but aside from my doubt that you'd try to push that as an explanation, the non-carbon atoms seem to be crumbling. So, please explain.
On amino acids and carbon atoms. Again, we REALLY should not have to get into the nuts and bolts of precisely how these things would be done, but another poster gave me an idea: lets say the body works with amino acids. It builds the carbon fibers within a larger scaffolding, something it can work with, and then just floods the area around it with enzymes intended to snip away the scaffold?
AGAIN though, you are being unrealistic in your demands.
...I'm still not sure how that's working. Are you basically having carbon atoms from somewhere pouring into the scaffold and hoping they bind together into carbon fibers?
The other atoms are immaterial, as I'm not a goddamn chemist. I was attempting to show what my off-the-top-of-my-head idea was- the body, which you claim can only work with things about the size of amino acids, uses larger (amino acid-size or greater) molecules to fabricate the carbon fiber. All the rest of the molecule is superfluous 'scaffolding' for the creation of the fiber, and is shed once construction's completed.
An interesting theory, except that (to start with) there's nothing getting the carbon atoms to "want" to go into the scaffolding or bind into carbon fibers once there.
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Topic: You are a Bioengineer (Read 10766 times)