I spy, with my little eye…
The inside of Richard Winchell’s right eye, taken in December 2005.
I love thinking about the intricacies of our own bodies. For example, did you know that the skin covering our bodies is actually composed of three layers (the epidermis, the dermis and the subcutaneous layer) - and in each minute of each day, we lose between 30,000 to 40,000 flakes of dead skin cells, equating to about 4 kilograms every year? KidsHealth has the skinny. (And I’ll get my coat for that last joke.)
While we’re talking about skin, let’s dive down to the molecular level… What holds our skin’s molecules together? Skin, like most of the human body, is composed of oxygen & carbon molecules plus nitrogen-based compounds. But what holds all of this together? Amongst other things, a protein called Laminin, which bonds everything together, adheres cells to each other and is generally ‘the glue of the human body.’ But what dictates Laminin’s subunit composition (or literally, what holds it together), and how did the particular polypeptide chains come to find themselves in harmony with each other producing this wonderful protein?
And all this, just from studying one of the fingers on one of my hands for five minutes earlier today. The human being is one truly amazing machine, and there’s so much going on - even at a sub-atomic level - that we just don’t appreciate because we can’t see it happening, although if it didn’t we would quite literally cease to be.
Something to ponder over on your lunchbreak. :)
