The Chicken May Have Come Before the Egg

Muondecay writes "The age old question of which came first, the chicken or the egg, has been tentatively answered. The verdict? The chicken, or rather a key protein needed to form the shell of the egg. The protein, called ovocledidin-17, was known to be involved in binding calcite molecules that formed the shells, but the mechanism behind this was unclear until now. The protein acts as a molecular machine, binding to nanoparticles of calcite and guiding them to begin self-assembly of the shell. This gives tremendous insight for developing methods of nano-scale self-assembly based on natural processes, as well as settling heated cocktail party arguments everywhere."

Comments

Re:Me fail logic? That's purple!

[jellomizer]

I agree, a lot of people see things on the extreams. Sure there are things in the world that are opposites. But most of what goes on usually is in a borderless state. You see it every where, political parties who debate the same crap for generations, both saying the other is wrong and assumes that one is right. While chances are is that they are both wrong.

It is also why I equally dislike the hard evangelical religions who figure most of the world will go to hell. And the far athiests who see's any one with the idea that God could exists as a product of iditocy.

As paridoxal this statement seems. Normally if you know that someone has a belief or phelosophy different then your own. And you see this person as sub human. Then you are probably a polerized person. No more enlighted then the rest of the public

total BS

[frovingslosh]

This report is total BS and not worthy of mention. We know that reptiles lay eggs (not all but a good number), and we know that dinosaurs laid eggs (having found fossils). There is extremely strong evidence that birds evolved from dinosaurs, and at some point in that evolution, the chicken appeared. Clearly the thing that the first chicken (wherever you care to draw the line) hatched from was an egg. So the egg came before the chicken.

Oh come on, there's 2 answers

[NotSoHeavyD3]

There's answer A which is the egg came first because eggs evolved long ago and many other animals lay eggs. (Like dinosaurs and fish which existed long before chickens.) If you mean a chicken egg then they evolved together. (IE there's is no hard and fast delination between not chicken/chicken and like wise none for not chicken egg/chicken egg.)

Useless Editors... Again...

[Bueller_007]

The link provided in the summary is to http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cookie_setting_error.html. Are you shitting me? I mean, come on. Don't "editors" actually bother to click on the links?

The link to the abstract of the article is here: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/123506601/abstract

It reads:

Growing a good egg: Metadynamics simulations show that the eggshell protein ovocleidin-17 induces the formation of calcite crystals from amorphous calcium carbonate nanoparticles. Multiple spontaneous crystallization and amorphization events were simulated; these simulations suggest a catalytic cycle that explains the role of ovocleidin-17 in the first stages of eggshell formation (the picture shows one intermediate of this cycle).

And for what it's worth, this article is completely irrelevant to the question at hand, and the egg came well, well before the chicken.

Cute Logic, but Flawed.

[LifesABeach]

1. All Chickens come from eggs.
2. Not all eggs come from Chickens.

The egg came first.

And it did not happen over night, but by gradual changes caused by the egg's environment.