RuBisCO

Gives me a chuckle every time.

Memes don’t have to be funny to be a meme.

There is a small wormy parasite that attacks our red blood cells (RBCs).

It turns out that people with mutant and half-mutant RBCs are less likely to be attacked by the parasite.

Also, the red blood cells of the mutant variety are more likely to be cleared by white blood cells than those that are non-mutants.

Full-blown (homozygous) mutant RBCs kinda suck at their day jobs though. Whereas half-mutant (heterzygous) RBCs are still mostly functional by comparison.

So being a little weird, but not totally weird, gives an advantage over normies (wild-type) when the RBC parasite is common.

Were there no parasite around, the advantage would go to the non-mutant RBCs because they do their job best. Their downside is being easy targets.

For the curious: https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa072464?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori%3Arid%3Acrossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub++0www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

“Those are some good-lookin helices you have there. Wanna come back to mine and try out some novel ways to fold?”

Quickbeam chasing Saruman into Orthanc while shouting “Tree killer!” is my favorite part.

Ahhh, that explains it. Thanks!

Which episode is this?

The Hard Stuff

Username checks tf out.
o7

Veritasium - This equation will change how you see the world (the logistic map)