Flashback: The Tamiflu Myth: What Big Pharma and the CDC Forgot to Tell the ...

[Green_Manalishi]

Hi. As i was reading the article, the following is stated:

There are about 17 amino acids in the proteins which humans eat, but only 4 critical amino acids are used to make DNA. The banding or repeating pattern of the 4 amino acids, like a string of colored beads, is used to make partial copies of sections of the DNA to make protein-string hormones which control how cells operate and reproduce.

I just wanted to ask if the statement that i highlighted is correct. The author seems to be confusing amino acids with nucleotides, or am i not grasping what he means?

 

[Biomiast]

Re: Flashback: The Tamiflu Myth: What Big Pharma and the CDC Forgot to Tell the

You are right, they are nucleotides. Or if we are talking about only adenine and others, we should say nucleobases. Nucleotides means nucleobases + sugar + phosphate group. I read a small portion of the article yesterday and I encountered a few mistakes as well. In this particular case, he probably mixed amino acids with nucleic acids. To be an amino acid, adenine and others need a carboxyl group, but they don't have one.

Also, as far as I know, there are more than 17 amino acids in human diet, but I thought maybe some of them are synthesized inside the human after digestion. You see, the guy talks with a certain confidence that you begin to doubt what you know.

A few days ago I attended a conference where the speaker said DNA makes RNA and RNA makes DNA in the cell. I was so sure that he is talking about something I didn't understand initially, I went through all the things I know about DNA and tried to find some explanation about his statement, but in actuality he mistaken the protein with DNA.

I suspect there is a similar deal with the author of that article OR there is a thing that we both didn't encounter before. It is possible but it isn't likely, or so I think.

 

[Green_Manalishi]

You see, the guy talks with a certain confidence that you begin to doubt what you know.

Yes, and i assume that if someone writes an article about a particular topic, he/she must at least know the basic stuff of what he/she is talking about.

I suspect there is a similar deal with the author of that article OR there is a thing that we both didn't encounter before. It is possible but it isn't likely, or so I think.

Yes, it is possible that there could always be something that escapes us, everyone is entitled to make mistakes. But for example is this article when the author writes something like that, one has always more doubts about the knowledge of the author in this specific matter, and so forth in what he states in the rest of the article.