I have a related question as well (on cloning). we have cloned other animals, and it seems we’re getting close to cloning humans. Besides the common atoms and molecules that make up our body (carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, water, CO2, etc.), our bodies also include small amounts of others (like iron, for example).
If someone attempted to clone me in a chamber in which no iron existed, what would happen? Would my clone simply look like me (sans iron)? Or would the iron be replaced with something else? Or would it just be impossible to clone me without having every element available?
The cloned embryo would die very early in its development. But a “cloning chamber without iron” is a fantasy anyway, since the only cloning chamber anyone’s ever managed to use, or is likely to use any time in the foreseeable future, is a living uterus that’s part of a living female’s body.
I have heard that carbon 14 in DNA is an important contributing factor in the process of evolution, because when it breaks down radioactively, the DNA molecule suddenly has a nitrogen atom in place of the carbon atom, and that changes the shape of the molecule. This can lead to a mutation into a different gene sequence.
The kinetic isotope effect for reactions where the rate limiting step involves the direct making and breaking of hydrogen/deuterium bonds is a factor of almost 7. Substituting D for H in an organic molecule will definitely have an effect on how it behaves biochemically. I’ve heard drinking nothing but D2O will kill you after some time.
For C12/C13 the kinetic isotope effect is exonentially smaller. This has to do with the weight ratio. I can’t figure the calculations out right now, but they are basically calculated by treating the chemical bond as a harmonic oscillator. The energy of the bond is calculated like a spring using reduced mass. The spring constant is, I think determined by using the known vibrational energy of the C-H bond at 2900 wavenumbers.
It’s of course, only a rough calculation, but the kinetic measurements are pretty close.
Years ago some scientist on Letterman’s show said that because of the incomprehensibly immense number of molecules involved, the odds that you may have actually breathed some of the air molecules that Julius Caesar exhaled while uttering, “Et tu, Brute?” ~2000 years ago, are actually about 50/50!
Well, it was a bit technical, but its Chronos. I think the whole harmonic oscillator treatment is pretty cool, so I figured a physicist would too. It would have been a lot cooler if I remembered the derivation, but I would have to dig through 10 year old notes.
More a long the lines of the OP. I’m so cool, some of my molecules were in Jesus.
You are not allowed to tell people they’re full of shit outside of the Pit.
(ISTR we did the Julius Caesar calculations here years ago. Not the last breath, but his breath in general or something. I still don’t quite grasp it, but can’t find it. Anyone remember enough of it to link?)