I’m a Freak

Background: I am a wonderer. I am always wondering, questioning, and puzzling over something. I may be sitting in traffic trying to visualize the connections between a function in math class and a curve from my latest chem lab. Or watching my chem professor discuss ammonia/ammonium and thinking about those little amine groups on the end of an amino acid.

Or, in biology, and the linguistic correlation between acetabularia and acetabulum. I could be studying neural pathways and at the same time thinking about my autistic daughter, or where my dad stuck the needle in for anesthesia.

Of course, most often I am really curious about the word roots. And for good reason, because if a person understands the latin/greek word roots that appear in life sciences, then it is much much MUCHO easier to correlate meanings, definitions, and helps with general recall, whether you’re talking about a biological molecule, or a species.

Okay. So, with that intro, I’m going to tell you what I’m wondering about today.

1. -teuthis, seems to be the second half of all the squid Genus names that I’ve seen so-far. So, what is the root or original meaning?

2. deutero-, as part of my most recent bio exam, deuterostomes versus protostomes was a subject. The word deuterostomes sent me thinking about the prefix (if that’s the correct vocab), deutero-… my mind goes to, “wait, isn’t there a chapter in the bible called Deuteronomy?” Okay, yeah, easy one to find…. deutero- means “second” or “secondary”…

3. actin, chitin, pepsin, insulin, ummmm, could the “-in” always mean protein? I guess I’d better google protein nomenclature…. I mean, today, I was observing as the prof in bio lab was telling students not to be confused between the word Chiton, (a mollusc), and chitin (the exoskeleton of crustaceans), and I was thinking to myself “well, yeah, the answer is in the spelling”, but of course, I held my tongue….

quick answer look: on Britannica, it says that chitin is made of glucosamine,     (forgive me! I haven’t taken organic chem yet, so my understanding of bio molecules is limited to what I picked up in cell biology and Bio I), which is obviously a sugar with an amine side?  Oh wait, even better… Chitin being the sugar, is held together by proteins… yes, no?

I wonder, if the structure or make-up of the compound changes the terms from -sin, to -tin, to -lin… yadda yadda…. I suppose only a few more years of this will have all these questions answered.

4. oh, and my last question, which I’ve been pestering my bio prof about, and since we had a sub today, I asked him; are there specific, genetically defined/controlled numbers to these primitive animals we’ve been studying. Meaning, we humans have two arms and two legs, do all hydras have a specific number of tentacles? or what about the structure of coral? While looking at the intricate “architecture” of brain coral last week in lab, I was wondering if species of coral each have a genetically determined number to their skeletons… the septa, or ridges, etc… I mean, if you look at them close up, their symmetry in the “grid” of their skeleton is so perfect that I wish I knew the answer… ha ha maybe I should go with a pencil and paper and just start counting….. to help answer my question today, while I was observing whelks, I tried to count the number of spikes on their shells, and of course, they get too small toward the inner spiral but the few I counted had at least 40+.

Ahhhhhh….. who knows? maybe my questions are silly and pointless…. or maybe with a little patience I’ll have it all figured out in time.

Ciao. I NEED to go study for a math exam.