Biomedical subjects

Craig J Marshall

Publications and source records attributed to Craig J Marshall.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2003

Freezing survival and cryoprotective dehydration as cold tolerance mechanisms in the Antarctic nematode Panagrolaimus davidi.

The relative importance of freezing tolerance and cryoprotective dehydration in the Antarctic nematode Panagrolaimus davidi has been investigated. If nucleation of the medium is initiated at a high subzero temperature (-1 degree C), the nematodes do not freeze but dehydrate. This effect occurs in deionised water, indicating that the loss of water is driven by the difference in vapour pressure of ice and supercooled water at the same temperature. If the nematodes are held above their nucleation temperature for a sufficient time, or are cooled slowly, enough water is lost to prevent freezing (cryoprotective dehydration). However, if the medium is nucleated at lower temperatures or if the sample is cooled at a faster cooling rate, the nematodes freeze and can survive intracellular ice formation. P. davidi thus has a variety of mechanisms that ensure its survival in its harsh terrestrial Antarctic habitat.

Acclimatization↗

PubMed2002

The protein folds as platonic forms: new support for the pre-Darwinian conception of evolution by natural law.

Before the Darwinian revolution many biologists considered organic forms to be determined by natural law like atoms or crystals and therefore necessary, intrinsic and immutable features of the world order, which will occur throughout the cosmos wherever there is life. The search for the natural determinants of organic form-the celebrated "Laws of Form"-was seen as one of the major tasks of biology. After Darwin, this Platonic conception of form was abandoned and natural selection, not natural law, was increasingly seen to be the main, if not the exclusive, determinant of organic form. However, in the case of one class of very important organic forms-the basic protein folds-advances in protein chemistry since the early 1970s have revealed that they represent a finite set of natural forms, determined by a number of generative constructional rules, like those which govern the formation of atoms or crystals, in which functional adaptations are clearly secondary modifications of primary "givens of physics." The folds are evidently determined by natural law, not natural selection, and are "lawful forms" in the Platonic and pre-Darwinian sense of the word, which are bound to occur everywhere in the universe where the same 20 amino acids are used for their construction. We argue that this is a major discovery which has many important implications regarding the origin of proteins, the origin of life and the fundamental nature of organic form. We speculate that it is unlikely that the folds will prove to be the only case in nature where a set of complex organic forms is determined by natural law, and suggest that natural law may have played a far greater role in the origin and evolution of life than is currently assumed.

Evolution, Molecular↗

PubMedDate not supplied

A simple ice nucleation spectrometer.

The construction of a simple ice nucleation spectrometer is described. It uses 10 microliter droplets loaded into glass capillary tubes which are then inserted into an aluminium holder. Each holder takes six capillary tubes surrounding a central thermocouple. Four holders are placed into a cooling block, cooled by fluid from a programmable refrigerated circulator, and the thermocouples interfaced to a computer to record temperatures. Freezing of each sample is detected by an exotherm on the temperature recording, with 24 samples recorded per run. The spectrometer was tested using deionized water, an extract from a New Zealand alpine cockroach and an extract of lawn grass. The cockroach extract is estimated to contain about 10(3) more nucleators, active at -5 degrees C, than the grass extract.

Animals↗