
First Mechanical Gear Found in a Living Creature - zdean
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/the-first-gear-discovered-in-nature-15916433
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ihsw
This article was posted to reddit, and incidentally the author is a redditor.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1m9eke/scientists_d...](http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1m9eke/scientists_discover_the_first_mechanical_gear_in/?sort=top)

They're taking questions.

~~~
mkmk
Just to clarify, it looks like the journalist is taking questions, not the
author of the paper.

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m-photonic
"They're rather specialized, and there are lots of other jumpers that don't
have them, so there must be some kind of advantage."

Not necessarily. Evolution has a lot to do with path dependence and in no way
guarantees the best of all possible adaptations.

~~~
muyuu
Almost every complex AND specialized adaptation has an advantage.

In this case it seems pretty obvious that gears can be better than friction at
transmitting torque.

~~~
possibilistic
I don't think you can really get away with saying that.

I think a better phrasing would be, "the summation of all adaptations in
addition to environmental state (including benefits or constraints to itself
and all others) has led to the survival in its present environment".

It's really about optimization gradients in a particular
time/environmental/social niche. Everything can change with the purturbation
of any factor--but that's evolution for you. Adative curve fitting.

~~~
muyuu
You (and the other posted) have conveniently ignored the word "almost" in my
post.

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dekhn
I'm pretty sure that the bacterial flagellum is effectively a mechanical gear:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotating_locomotion_in_living_s...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotating_locomotion_in_living_systems)

~~~
pygy_
No, it converts the proton concentration gradient into mechanical energy.

The ATP synthase also works that way. The ADP and Pi are mechanically squeezed
against each other in order to create the covalent bound.

See the last two videos of [0] for the general process. The first three focus
on details.

[0] [http://www.mrc-
mbu.cam.ac.uk/category/slideshows/atpmovies](http://www.mrc-
mbu.cam.ac.uk/category/slideshows/atpmovies)

~~~
dekhn
"ADP and Pi are mechanically squeezed against each other in order to create
the covalent bond."

I have a PhD in Biophysics. If I ever said "ADP and Pi were squeezed
together", I'd have been laughed out of journal club. The fine details of the
reaction coordinate are still being argued about.

I'll grant you there are no canonical gears as a mechanical engineer would
recognize them. I wasn't talking about the motive coupling. But a number of
the physical structures (proteins) that couple the anchoring to the moving
body have gear like properties. These are used to orient and clock the moving
body in its cycle.

OK, I'll up it a notch since you guys are being picky. There are motor
proteins which use ATP hydrolysis to do directed (non-random) motion. One of
the plausible (IIRC it's passe now) mechanisms involved coupling the ATP
hydrolysis free energy to a physical ratchet-like mechanism which, while
didn't physically look like a gear when you looked at static crystal
structures, seemed to behave like one using various subtle time-resolved
mechanisms.

~~~
pygy_
Doctor of medicine here, with basic notions of chemistry and biochemistry from
courses I took 16 years ago. I sure know what I'm talking about!

;-)

More seriously, I had inferred the squeezing from the videos I linked to.

If I understand properly, the mechanical constrains on the ADP, Pi and AA
residuals involved result in the formation of the high energy covalent bound
between the two phosphates.

Thus mechanical -> chemical energy.

I thought that the pressure between the electron clouds of the two molecules
caused some superficial electrons to hop, resulting in the new covalent bound
(that's what I meant by squeezing), and the dehydration.

Is this mostly correct (with possible intermediate steps where either the Pi
or the ADP end up in a temporary covalent bound of even higher energy with
subunits of the ÀTP synthase), or is this pure hogwash?

Also, thanks for the explanations regarding the flagellum, that's very
interesting :-)

 _> I'll grant you there are no canonical gears as a mechanical engineer would
recognize them. I wasn't talking about the motive coupling. But a number of
the physical structures (proteins) that couple the anchoring to the moving
body have gear like properties. These are used to orient and clock the moving
body in its cycle._

Is it mediated by alternating, matching stripes of charged or polar AA
residuals?

~~~
jdgiese
Protein-interaction videos often make molecular reactions seem "deterministic"
when in reality everything is quite stochastic; the molecules are "bouncing"
around like crazy and each step may go back and forwards several times before
completing. That said, I love the videos--its really amazing to think about
all these little proteins bending and folding around all the time!

~~~
pygy_
The stochastic aspects were also completely neglected in my chemistry courses.
We were just taught about macroscopic, aggregate probabilities, and high level
descriptions of the reactions, but not the nitty gritty details.

I knew that chemical bounds were vibrating (with a frequency proportional to
their energy, E=h(nu)), but, for some reason, I had never envisioned
macromolecules wiggling and vibrating as a whole.

 _Updating mental model_ :-)

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stcredzero
_> In 2 milliseconds it has bulleted skyward, accelerating at nearly 400 g's—a
rate more than 20 times what a human body can withstand._

This is entirely incorrect. 9g is the limit that someone can stay conscious,
but the body can withstand a lot more.

Experimental subject John Stapp withstood 46.2 g.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=G-force#Horizontal...](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=G-force#Horizontal_axis_g-
force)

~~~
ByronT
I think it depends on the direction of the acceleration. The John Stapp
experiment was horizontal acceleration, right? Right above that:

"... if g-forces are not quickly reduced, death can occur. Resistance to
"negative" or "downward" g, which drives blood to the head, is much lower.
This limit is typically in the −2 to −3 g (about −20 m/s² to −30 m/s²) range."

~~~
milkshakes
relevant:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia_Coaster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia_Coaster)

~~~
guard-of-terra
Surprisingly it doesn't use reverse g "upwards" but rather an ordinary 10g
"downwards". I wonder why is that and can't they make the system much smaller
by aiming for the head.

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alan_cx
I wonder how its prevents wear? Could be something quite revolutionary there
for the finding. Some sort of new organic lubricant, or something in the gears
that self lubricates.

~~~
john_b
Maybe it doesn't. The last paragraph of the article implies that wear
eventually would compromise the gears, but that the insect molting and
replacing the old gears with new ones (frequently?) prevents it from being a
problem.

~~~
npsimons
Which leads to the classic answer to the age old question of how you make a
car last forever: buy three, one to keep, and the other two for parts.

~~~
jacquesm
That's for very small values of 'forever', after 3x the average lifespan of
some critical component you are again without transportation.

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ruethewhirled
I found it amusing that to view the 1 second video at the end I had to watch a
30 second advert first

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mrb
Why do they say the gears "look nothing like what you'd find in your car"?
They look very similar to me.

~~~
ocharles
To me it appears that there are teeth on one "side" of the gear, but on the
back of it is a flat surface. The valley between the teeth is sloped from
front to back, going from a deep valley to no valley at all. At least, that
was what I took from that picture.

~~~
Kliment
Just like herringbone gers you find in old sewing machines, designed to self-
align in one direction.

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drakaal
The Transformers evolved from naturally occurring gears. It says so in Issue 1
of the comic series.

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ffrryuu
Does that mean the patent for the gear is now invalid?

~~~
nilved
No, the issus is obligated to pay royalties.

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jere
>Even stranger is that the issus doesn't keep these gears throughout its life
cycle. As the adolescent insect grows, it molts half a dozen times, upgrading
its exoskeleton (gears included) for larger and larger versions.

Gotta catch em all.

~~~
charlieflowers
It's kind of like getting your timing belt replaced.

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jasonkolb
So assuming we can one day mimick this feat of engineering, can I look forward
to my car _literally_ dying on me in traffic?

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kriro
Maybe a little cruel but I'd be interested in some sort of study where a large
number of issus' are placed in an environment with a couple of predators.

Repeat this with young and adult versions and see if/how much the gear system
(adults don't have it) improves the odds of surviving attacks.

~~~
gizmo686
What you would be testing is how much of an advantage the young have over the
adults. I find it extremely unlikely that the gears are the only difference.

~~~
kriro
Yes and the gears would be hard to isolate as the lone cause (adults have more
experience fighting prey etc.) so maybe you'd have to genetically engineer two
groups one with gears and one without.

Either way the hypothesis they gave as to why the gears are eventually mutated
away makes sense but has me wondering why they don't keep replacing them
instead of settling on living without them.

Thus I'd like to quantify the edge said gears provide as a starting point for
the investigation :)

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mschmo
Some proteins like ATP synthase kind of act like gears as well:
[http://www.mrc-
mbu.cam.ac.uk/sites/default/files/images/imag...](http://www.mrc-
mbu.cam.ac.uk/sites/default/files/images/image/atpsynanim.gif)

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educating
This is misleading. It looks like a gear, but they are just evolved nodules
that caused friction that helped the bug escape predators better. We call it a
gear but it is just a mix of physics, life, and death.

~~~
noselasd
If this isn't a gear, then what is a gear ?

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rocky1138
Hmm.. the text wouldn't load for me. Anyone have a copy of the article?

~~~
lifeformed
It's Ghostery, it killed it somehow. Not sure if it's the site's fault or
Ghostery's?

~~~
djim
I just incognito when Ghostery messes up the page view.

~~~
rocky1138
I tried the viewtext.org Chrome extension, but it hasn't worked in a while :(
I really loved that one.

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jberryman
Can someone explain what this means? I don't get it:

> Most other bugs synchronize the quick jolt of their leaping legs through
> friction, using bumpy or grippy surfaces to press the top of their legs
> together

~~~
BrandonY
I don't know much about biology, but I imagine that if your legs were very
lightweight and bumpy, and you pressed them firmly against each other, they
would probably stick together pretty well, and so if you tried to move them
both in the same direction, but with differing amounts of force, they'd
probably stay together and therefore press down in sync.

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lifeisstillgood
OMG - that electron microscope picture, as long as it is genuine, just blows
you away. it's a picture of a gear - cogs and teeth and - wow ...

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fosap
I can swear I saw pictures of this years ago. I a series of lectures by
different speakers. This can't be a new finding.

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yohann305
In other words, we, human beings, are just reinventing natural occurring (or
may have been extinct) mechanics and are putting patents on it.

Okay if you own a patent and sued someone for it, it's time to hand back the
money!

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ThomPete
I would like to see the patent trolls trumf that.

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electronous
God is real.

~~~
drdaeman
Unless declared integer.

------
swamp40
It is for beauty like this that I believe all living things were originally
designed by _some_ intelligence, somewhere.

Perhaps designed to mutate and evolve, or perhaps that was a limitation in the
source materials, but there are some _beautifully_ engineered _living_ systems
on our planet.

~~~
Slackwise
Just because something looks "engineered", doesn't mean it is.

A perfect example is the eye. An organ of great complexity, but one that is
very easily explained by logical evaluation, as well as existing living
creatures and fossils:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nwew5gHoh3E](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nwew5gHoh3E)

If you're a software engineer, I hope you understand how procedural systems
and algorithms can transform data and functions. Similar processes take place
via chemistry and biological interaction. Conway's Game of Life is a good
example of a simple system giving rise to complex interaction and patterns.

Complex beauty can arise from the interaction of systems, but if you say to
yourself that it "must have been engineered by something greater than me", you
settle in your mind, and shortcut around critical thinking and never progress
toward _understanding_. And that's a great, great shame.

~~~
pygy_
What more, the vertebrate eye has a flaw: its blind spot. The fibers of the
optic nerve and the central retinal blood vessels irradiate in front of the
retina.

You may think that it is a necessary defect, but the squid eye, which evolved
independently to end up almost identical to its vertebrate counterpart doesn't
have it. The nerve fibers and blood vessels run behind the retina.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalopod_eye](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalopod_eye)

------
teddyh
This gives us four possibilities:

1\. This geared creature must be considered part mechanical. A cyborg, if you
will.

2\. A "gear" is no longer (and was never) a "mechanical" device, but instead
an organic one. Using gears is no longer (and was maybe never) doing
mechanics.

3\. Whether something is mechanical or organic depends on the process which
created it. This is the "colored bits" or "patent" view. (If I build something
using intuition instead of reason, am I no longer doing mechanics?)

4\. A gear is no longer (and was never) either mechanic or organic, and is
simply a physical process. The whole "mechanical" and "organic" division is a
false dichotomy.

~~~
bitwize
5) Organic creatures have mechanical systems as part of their physiology.
"Mechanical" doesn't mean "made of metal", it means "uses movement and
friction to achieve some effect". Some mechanical devices, such as levers and
swivels, are seen frequently in the animal kingdom; others, such as gears,
pulleys, and wheels, are almost never seen in nature. Discovering one of this
latter category is a fascinating find.

~~~
sliverstorm
Pulleys are not that rare. Block and tackle is, but you have pulleys in your
hands.

~~~
jlgreco
Wikipedia defines pulleys as _" A pulley is a wheel on an axle that is
designed to support movement of a cable or belt along its circumference"_,
though I think the wheel/axle requirement is probably shouldn't be considered
a _hard_ requirement.

On the other hand, I don't think I would call the loops that fishing line
passes through along the length of a fishing pole "pulleys".

I guess I'd say that block and tackle is not common, and neither are "wheeled
pulleys", but "friction pulleys" are.

~~~
sliverstorm
If your line is out, and you take up slack and the fishing pole starts to bow,
the loops are indeed functioning as pulleys.

~~~
jlgreco
Absolutely, in the technical sense, though I would hesitate to actually
describe it that way. It seems strange.

Alternatively, shoelace eyelets are pulleys ('block and tackle' in fact) , but
describing them that way seems odd.

