Meaning that he could theoretically live under water, if he had time enough to adapt to it...
Yeah, I guess. :-) (To be frank, I've never been that good at biochemistry either. *g*). I just heard that oxygen is in fact the electron acceptor, so I was wrong about that, but the principle stays the same, right?
With bacteria, the only problem with the alternative metabolism often is that they produce some (semi)toxic byproducts (like ethanol in Gärung) which kills stupid bacteria because they can't excape their surroundings fast enough (or because evil people put them in petri dishes), but the Doctor can actually move, so that wouldn't be a problem. And we don't know of anyone ever dying because of his toxic waste? Well, so this is probably all just bullshit. :-)
create a completely different phenotype, would it?
No, it probably wouldn't, not to that extent. I just thought about haircolor, eyecolor, you know, just the superficial stuff, because inside, he stays the same? He still remembers his past life and everything. It could also be the same mechanism that enables us to have a huge diversity in antibodies in our immune system. They are made of several components that are separately encoded in the genome. In total, you have about, say, 10 genes for heavy chains and 20 for light chains which enables you to have 200 possible combinations. All this genes are arranged after one another in the genome, with the heavy chains being read in 5'-3' direction and the light chains in 3'-5'. The dna then folds back unto itself, cuts everything out in between that is not needed, and so the enzymes are able to read and translate every combination of heavy and light chains possible (because thorugh folding back, everything goes into the same direction again, which is some kind of failsafe, I guess). So that activates genes that were silent before and silence others. This leads to this high adabtability of the immune system to respond to before unknown threats. And I can imagine, if the doctor only changes his appearance, that this mechanism could be responsible. (We just did that properly last week in uni, that's why I just thought about that now.)
How exactly does that spore thing work? It sounds intriguing.
Ok, so microbiology was a little while back, so I don't remember the exact thing. But when bacteria etc. notice a change in their environment that threatens their survival, some of them are able to produce spores that have a very thick, unpenetrable membrane around them that can withstand extreme conditions (cold, heat, radiation and stuff) practically only contains dna and they have only the most minimal metabolism. Like that, they can survive and wait for the outside condition the get better, before the spore than starts regrowing bacteria. (It was somehow like that. *g*). But now that I think about it, it doesn't sound that possible anymore... ;-)
(I hope you get my babbling about all that stuff. It's gotten so late again today...*yawn*)
no subject
Yeah, I guess. :-) (To be frank, I've never been that good at biochemistry either. *g*). I just heard that oxygen is in fact the electron acceptor, so I was wrong about that, but the principle stays the same, right?
With bacteria, the only problem with the alternative metabolism often is that they produce some (semi)toxic byproducts (like ethanol in Gärung) which kills stupid bacteria because they can't excape their surroundings fast enough (or because evil people put them in petri dishes), but the Doctor can actually move, so that wouldn't be a problem. And we don't know of anyone ever dying because of his toxic waste? Well, so this is probably all just bullshit. :-)
No, it probably wouldn't, not to that extent. I just thought about haircolor, eyecolor, you know, just the superficial stuff, because inside, he stays the same? He still remembers his past life and everything.
It could also be the same mechanism that enables us to have a huge diversity in antibodies in our immune system. They are made of several components that are separately encoded in the genome. In total, you have about, say, 10 genes for heavy chains and 20 for light chains which enables you to have 200 possible combinations. All this genes are arranged after one another in the genome, with the heavy chains being read in 5'-3' direction and the light chains in 3'-5'. The dna then folds back unto itself, cuts everything out in between that is not needed, and so the enzymes are able to read and translate every combination of heavy and light chains possible (because thorugh folding back, everything goes into the same direction again, which is some kind of failsafe, I guess). So that activates genes that were silent before and silence others. This leads to this high adabtability of the immune system to respond to before unknown threats. And I can imagine, if the doctor only changes his appearance, that this mechanism could be responsible. (We just did that properly last week in uni, that's why I just thought about that now.)
Ok, so microbiology was a little while back, so I don't remember the exact thing. But when bacteria etc. notice a change in their environment that threatens their survival, some of them are able to produce spores that have a very thick, unpenetrable membrane around them that can withstand extreme conditions (cold, heat, radiation and stuff) practically only contains dna and they have only the most minimal metabolism. Like that, they can survive and wait for the outside condition the get better, before the spore than starts regrowing bacteria. (It was somehow like that. *g*). But now that I think about it, it doesn't sound that possible anymore... ;-)
(I hope you get my babbling about all that stuff. It's gotten so late again today...*yawn*)