Nature's Cookbook

what can you do with 'a mean old acid'

Today's post is about how nature, in all its wonders keeps us healthy, growing, and explains how all of us come to be. Just like us, it all starts with a recipe book and our DNA story is elegant and amazing.

The title of this cookbook was hard to resist when it came to today’s topic.

Taking the time to think about what to post has taken me in unexpected directions. I have hardly settled into patterns yet but I have discovered some interesting things to me that I hope I can pass along my enthusiasm. Today’s post is the answer to that question “If you were stuck on a desert island, what would be the one thing you would take along?”. When my sons would ask that question, I would always answer “I would take along a book of how to make and do many things". KNOWLEDGE, not objects are the blueprint for success.

I enjoy baking and cooking. While I can “wing it”, I much prefer a solid recipe. Nature provides the ultimate inspiration yet again. When it comes to our bodies there is only one recipe book and there are only twenty ingredients and a bunch of water. Believe it or not, EVERYTHING our body can EVER need can be made from those twenty ingredients (they are called amino acids). It turns out the only thing our bodies need to survive are proteins. So what the heck is a protein? There are lots of proteins our bodies need for different functions. It is our job to make sure we have all of the twenty key ingredients in the pantry at all times. Eat them and you can save your body some time and keep feeling great.

A simple example of a protein is keratin. That is what our body sends the signal it needs when we grow hair, replace skin or extend fingernails. Some other common ones are lactase (if you don’t have any you can’t break down lactose and will be lactose-intolerant), collagen (your joints and connective tissue). All proteins are NOTHING more than a string of amino acids. The order of the amino acids is important. That is where DNA comes in (it’s a cookbook!).

As an aside, keratin is everywhere! All sorts of animals use it in different ways. Among mammals, the hair (including wool), horns, nails, claws, and hooves, are made primarily of α-keratins. Among reptiles, scales, claws, and, in the chelonians, such as tortoise, turtle, terrapin, the shells, which are made primarily of β-keratins. Humans and other mammals only make α-keratins while reptiles and birds make β-keratins.

Imagine that I numbered the twenty amino acids and named them aa1 to aa20. Imagine I just wanted to connect aa1 to aa6 to make something useful. The DNA recipe records aa1 in position 1 and aa6 in position 2. Everything our body needs to sustain itself is recorded as recipes on our DNA as a code for amino acid and order. It is quite remarkable. Real protein recipes are longer than two elements just like two ingredient cookies are not interesting. The amazing thing is THE RECIPE IS REALLY RECORDED IN YOUR DNA IN THE RIGHT ORDER AND EVEN INCLUDES A SIGNAL FOR THE BEGINNING AND END OF THE RECIPE. After reading about this, the next time someone says “there are so many mysteries we don’t know” I will rather think I am more amazed by what we do! If the body connects them, one last bit of magic occurs.

Think of EVERY amino acid as either a positive magnet or a negative magnet. If I connect two negative (or positive) amino acids side by side, after connecting, they will FOLD AWAY from each other BECAUSE they repel each other. If they are opposite charges, they will FOLD TOWARD each other because they attract each other. It is this SIMPLE yet elegant set of instructions that makes everything we could ever need. Every plant and animal on this earth does the very same thing. This is the magic and common ingredient of every living thing on this planet. When we are very young we learn that opposites attract. Who knew? By the way, the sequences in our DNA (where the recipes reside) even have a sort of page break to signify the beginning and end of a recipe. My aim is always to simplify and make these posts understandable. If you are interested in more details, here are some more complex videos as provided. My favorite part is the explanation of how eggs cook called the denaturation of a protein. I prefer saying sunnyside up.

Step back for a moment and realize that every living thing can do this largely in the same way that we do! This is a common pattern on Earth for the lowliest organism all the way to us! Everyone has a cookbook and the recipes might differ from one to the next.

The only subtle difference is which of the twenty key amino acids a given creature can make on its own. For the dog versus cat crowd, this is why cats MUST eat some meat to remain healthy. While all dogs are happy to share a cheeseburger, their physiology can formulate all that is necessary even in the absence of meat. My dog, like his master likes his dogfood based on lamb.

Wasted Effort

I would imagine that some of you on a dare have eaten dog or cat food. I’ve managed to avoid this so far but no judgment. Nowadays, as a dog owner, when I go to Costco and buy a massive bag of dog food for Denny, I am not immune to the advertising. All decent pet foods assure you that you are getting “all the essential amino acids”. That should sound rather familiar to the story I just told. Alas, while we have a lot In common with our dogs and cats, at some point, their systems evolved a need for DIFFERENT AMINO ACIDS than a homo-sapien needs. So consider this my PSA on why you cannot survive, long-term, eating pet food.

Your Part

This is where it gets interesting and YOU become responsible. As I mentioned, there are twenty different amino acids humans require. Your body can make eleven of them without any assistance. The other nine are up to you and are hence referred to as essential. You need to eat food that delivers the other nine or you are OUT OF LUCK and will have some deficiencies. So since the WHOLE WIDE WORLD of living things follows DNA instruction recipes to keep us healthy and the method is to make proteins, a pretty good plan is to eat the correct proteins that contain the amino acids we need to make stuff inside our bodies. What an amazing yet simple story living healthy becomes when you simplify it to its basic steps.

If you ever hear or read something like “eat this, it is a complete protein”, here is the story. Some things we eat have all of the nine amino acids we cannot make on our own! Red meat, eggs, poultry, and fish are examples. It is no wonder these have become staples of so many people’s diets. What could be more convenient than getting all nine in a single food? Unfortunately, there are some downsides to the foods I just listed but I am not going there today.

For a guy like me who is out in the wilderness of food (a plant-based diet), the all-in-one foods are a little harder to find. Quinoa has become a go-to for me. Simple noodles and rice are tough on my blood sugar. I need to be careful about my source of carbs and quinoa is a good compromise. Quinoa is not a grain but a seed instead. It is one of the few foods in the plant kingdom that happens to be a complete protein, just like red meat, eggs, poultry, and fish. These days I pay a little more attention to eating a combination of the essentials. It is sort of like being dealt a hand of cards and making sure you pair up the ones you need. Life is good, just a little trickier than before. A simple example and a staple in many parts of the world is rice and beans. Rice and virtually any bean eaten together is a complete protein.

Today’s subtitle for the post is a VERY bad pun. If it doesn’t make sense check out the part in quotes and say it quickly. I will do better next time. Here’s a great song about keeping the world full of the things we all need to survive.