On The Origin Of A Genetic Constant - 8

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What it the big deal about a "genetic constant" you might wonder.

Well, the answer is the same as for any "fundamental physical constant or universal constant":

There are many physical constants in science, some of the most widely recognized being the speed of light in vacuum c, the gravitational constant G, the Planck constant h, the electric constant ε₀, and the elementary charge e. Physical constants can take many dimensional forms: the speed of light signifies a maximum speed for any object and its dimension is length divided by time; while the proton-to-electron mass ratio, is dimensionless.

The term "fundamental physical constant" is sometimes used to refer to universal-but-dimensioned physical constants such as those mentioned above.^[1] Increasingly, however, physicists reserve the expression for the narrower case of dimensionless universal physical constants, such as the fine-structure constant α, which characterizes the strength of the electromagnetic interaction.

(Wikipedia, Physical Constant). The concept is simple enough, however there is another part of the story to consider.

One thing about all constants is that they are measurements.

The quality of everything used to make measurements as well as the one doing the measuring, involves activities that can vary in degree of accuracy.

In the case of DNA gathering, analyzing, storing, and use:

"Despite how it is often portrayed, in the media and in courts, the forensic science of DNA is far from infallible." (Nature)

"It is extremely important to remember that DNA can easily be damaged even when it has been properly collected and packaged. Damage to DNA can occur from improper storage, exposure to direct sunlight, or simply by becoming too warm." (How To)

(cf. Guidelines for DNA Collection, The Atlantic, Puritan, DNA Evidence).

Measuring the length of a pencil is not the same in terms of difficulty as counting the atoms in a genome.

But even more difficult than that is accurately gathering those atoms.

It is well known that even gathering the nucleotide count ('A','C','G,','T','U') is difficult because they are so tiny.

Those are some of the reasons that the genetic constant ~(32/35/25/6) discovered and discussed in this series is compelling.

The genomes where it is found come from around the globe, from the air, water, and land, and from many different scientists.

In today's appendices over a million such genomes documented in the GenBank are analyzed for three variation dimensions (Appendix Low, Appendix High, and Appendix Average).

The technique used is to gather the counts of the carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen atoms in each 'A','C','G,','T' nucleotide in each genome.

The variations from the ~(32/35/25/6) genetic constant are then detailed by the percentages of lowest percents of variation, highest percents of variation, and average percents of variation.

That is carbon variation from 32.2034%, hydrogen variation from 35.5932%, nitrogen variation from 25.4237%, and oxygen variation from 6.7797% (NOTE: The locus of the genetic constant values for DNA are calculated here and for RNA here.)

These genome values are considered in sections of 100,000 (one hundred thousand) genomes and a final smaller quantity, the sum of all of the sections being 1,052,789 (one million fifty two thousand and seven hundred eighty nine) genomes.

Sample HTML tables are displayed in each section with a link to the GenBank record for user perusal.

What is so convincing about this ~(32/35/25/6) genetic constant is that it is found in so many different plants, animals, fish, humans, and microbes from so many different scientists, and from so many different countries.

In practical terms, one can detect collection and/or processing and/or storage complications to the degree that the ACGT atom percentages vary from the ~(32.2034/35.5932/25.4237/6.7797) constant a significant amount.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

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