MAYBE everyone else knows about this, but your Curmudgeon just stumbled upon this news and we find it absolutely amazing.
At the website of University of California, Davis we read: Human DNA Repair Process Recorded in Action. There’s even a flash video available for viewing online.
Here are some excerpts, with bold added by us:
A key phase in the repair process of damaged human DNA has been observed and visually recorded by a team of researchers at the University of California, Davis. The recordings provide new information about the role played by a protein known as Rad51, which is linked to breast cancer, in this complex and critical process.
Observed? Recorded? Let’s read on:
The breakthrough comes a decade after Stephen Kowalczykowski, a distinguished professor of microbiology and the study’s principal investigator, and Ron Baskin, professor emeritus of molecular and cellular biology, first began developing methods of labeling molecules with fluorescent markers and observing them at work using optical trapping of individual DNA molecules and advanced microscopy techniques.
Labeling molecules? Observing them at work? Here’s more:
Rad51 takes a leading role in the action. Always on call in the cell, molecules of the protein assemble into a long filament along a damaged or broken segment of DNA, where they help stretch out the coiled strands and align them with corresponding segments on the cell’s second copy of the chromosome, which serves as a template for reconstruction.
This stuff is fantastic! One last excerpt:
“From a practical point of view, being able to record these single molecules gives us insightful information regarding the assembly process,” the researcher [Kowalczykowski] said. “Now we’re able to measure this in a quantifiably meaningful way.”
Click over there and read the whole story. Check out the flash video. The article says that this research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Jan. 13, so we dug around to find you the abstract: Direct imaging of human Rad51 nucleoprotein dynamics on individual DNA molecules.
Our final service to you regarding this matter is to disclose one of our secret intercepts. Thanks to the tireless efforts of our far-flung network of fearless operatives, we have obtained the talking points of that world-famous creationist, Clyde Woodenkopf, a top “evolution analyst and evaluator” at an unnamed think tank on the West Coast of the US. His prepared statement is as follows:
This Darwinist research, which predictably failed to record the Designer in action, confirms an essential aspect of our theory. We have always described the Designer’s elusive and secretive nature, and now this has been conclusively demonstrated. We are gratified that the Darwinists, although belatedly, are finally forced to agree with us.
So there you are.
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The Sensuous Curmudgeon 