Functional mechanical gear discovered in nature (2013) | Hacker News Reader

Functional mechanical gear discovered in nature (2013)

smithsonianmag.com

18 pointscwal3710 comments

And here's the paper describing their findings:

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/341/6151/1254

Of course as soon as I submit I think of a better title, mechanical-style gear is probably more appropriate.

It's odd -- I'd swear I've read about a gear-like mechanism found in an insect years ago, but I can't find any references now... of course Google is flooded with a million articles rehashing this single news story claiming to be the first.

It may just be that late 2013 feels farther than it is, and I'm remembering this news from then.

ATPase is gear-like and present in all living things (to the best of my knowledge): http://www.psc.edu/science/schulten2004.html

This is only a story for those who ascribe some special property to a mechanical gear.

Finding things that we have never observed before tends to be its own kind of special property.

I guess some people won't be impressed until a bug is found featuring a manual transmission with five fully meshed forward gears, sliding reverse, and synchronizers.

Simple question: Why is this a story and not many of the myriad of other clever biochemical solutions found in nature? I can only come to the conclusion I have already stated: Some people ascribe something special to mechanical constructs and consider them to be in some way non-natural.

Let me take a wild stab at what might underlie the fascination.

Yes; it relates to the question of what kind of stuff can be encoded in nature's DNA, plus the mechanism that turns genotype into phenotype. Can it generate a wheel on an axle? A ball bearing?

Mechanical constructs are non-natural because they have precise shapes which have to be developed on a macroscopic scale, and some of those shapes have to be detached (rotating parts versus stationary).

There are constructs that come close: bones and joints. We see some perfect balls and discs in these, plus complex surfaces that articulate together tightly.

Biochemical solutions are interesting, but less so because things are not alive at those scales. The joint between two bones is not only a mechanical structures, but it's living tissue. It has to be supplied with nutrients and so on.

Previously submitted to HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6376191

Thanks.

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