One of life’s greatest questions finally answered: What came first, the chicken or the egg?
“It had long been suspected that the egg came first but now we have the scientific proof that shows that in fact the chicken came first.”
It turns out there’s a protein, ovocledidin-17 (OC-17), that’s only found in the ovaries of chickens that is crucial to the formation of an egg’s shell.
OC-17 coverts calcium carbonate into calcite crystals, which in turn form the shell. No OC-17, no shell, and since OC-17 is only found in chicken ovaries, the chicken had to have come first.
Well, shit. Huh.
Science. Kicking ass and answering all the questions.
It was a world first and revealed that one potential purpose of the protein ovocledidin-17 is to speed up the production of eggshell within the chicken so that in 24 hours an egg is ready to be laid.
“What we have really identified is that the protein seems to accelerate the crystallization process so it can make that eggshell appear far quicker. In simple terms it accelerates calcite formation,” Freeman said.
They also found that the egg can’t be produced without the protein ovocledidin-17 in the chickens’ ovaries, so that means that the chicken must have come first. Right?
“Obviously, it’s not really what we were trying to get out of our simulations, but it’s an interesting question isn’t it?” Freeman said.
Rather than putting an end to bickering over the true order of the egg, the researchers were trying to understand more about how shell is formed so that they can apply their findings in other disciplines, including medicine.
“The quote my colleague John Harding always says is, ‘could we ever be as clever as algae?’” Freeman said.
“They produce these wonderful shells that protect them in the North Sea. That crystal structure is far in advance of anything that we as humans can create in the lab,” Freeman said, adding, “We can’t make a human skeleton in the lab…”
Perhaps one day they will be able to. And perhaps one day someone will conclusively put an end to the argument – was it the chicken or the egg?
Science. Neat, but not always big on the absolute conclusions.
hawberries
