Damn, I toot about advances in biochemistry for weeks and all I get is a few lousy favorites but I toot about giving cats LSD *once* and my notifications utterly explode
Seriously. Gene regulation or adaptive immunity or eukaryotic transcription/translation or even good old oxidative phosphorylation is far more interesting than being high on LSD. Why
Did you know that the arsenate ion is toxic because it is a decoupler of glycolysis, mimicking the phosphate ion. This blew my mind recently
@whitequark Indeed. The extent to which arsenic can substitute for phosphorus in biochemistry was a matter of some dispute many years ago, when a questionable paper appeared claiming the discovery of organisms that could actually _use_ arsenic in the same manner as phosphorus.
@whitequark I do not think it was. The authors continue to defend the work, anyway--at least as I recall.
@mona Oh I remember that paper. Did it get retracted in the end?