Asparagus is high in Aspartate – My meal at Brio Tuscan Grill, Arboretum, Austin, Tx, Dec. 8, 2014
This morning I measured my bp and found it to be slightly elevated at 145/95. Two days ago it had been 165/115 and I decided to take a half pill of Lisinopril 20mg (so 10mg) to see what effect that had. The Lisinopril just happened to be in a multiyear old prescription bottle on my dresser. I haven’t taken bp meds in many years. The 10mg of Lisinopril didn’t lower my bp that night, but in the morning my bp was 135/85, which for me feels quite good as I have rarely measured the classic 120/80 or below, which would likely have me faint if I exercised. In fact, I stopped taking Lisinopril before because it would make me light headed after exercise. That, and I also blamed it for contributing to my tinnitus that developed after I started taking it 10 yrs ago. It seems that the initial 10mg I took 2 days ago is still active a bit in my body. This morning I found the half-pill I bit and bit it again to give myself a 5mg dose. I’m curious to see if this is effective. Lisinopril acts a a diuretic. I’ve been wondering the last two days what else would naturally act as a diuretic.
D is for Aspartic Acid (ASP). Sometimes in sequences it is indistinguishable from Asparagine (ASN) and is given the one letter code B to code for the ambiguous amino acid (ASP/ASN). Aspartic Acid is non-essential in humans and is important in the synthesis of other amino acids, including Isoleucine, Lysine, Methionine, Arginine, and it’s sometimes substituter Asparagine. I happened to have pubchem open on Asparagine (https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Asparagine) and was just reading that Asparagine (a beta-amido derivative of Aspartic Acid) is a “nontoxic carrier of residual ammonia to be eliminated from the body” and acts as a diuretic.
A quick google search finds the “duh” vegetable with Asparagine … Asparagus! Webmd says:
Asparagine was the first amino acid to be discovered when it was isolated from asparagus nutrition by French chemists Louis Nicolas Vauquelin and Pierre Jean Robiquet in 1806.
While I can’t find any information on Aspartic Acid’s role as a diuretic, it seems as a precursor to Asparagine, it would be important as well. When I learned the amino acids with a song I wrote, I referred to Aspartic Acid by it’s conjugate base form Aspartate because it rhymed better 🙂 I’ll use Aspartate and Glutamate for the rest of this post.
Aspartate is encoded by the codons GAC and GAU. The other two codons beginning with GA (GAA and GAG) encode Glutamate, which is structurally and chemically similar to Aspartate. The Aspartate codons GAC and GAU are also a single mutation of the first nucleotide (G to A) to codons AAC and AAU which encode previously mentioned Asparagine, which is often substituted for Aspartate.
Aspartate and Glutamate are both neurotransmitters that stimulate NMDA receptors.
Aspartate, along with Phenylalanine, are used in the sweetener aspartame.
Food sources of Aspartate are asparagus, avocado, molasses, sausage meat, oysters, and wild game. I have an avocado in the fridge that needs to be eaten. I wonder what it taste like with molasses… pretty good!
Last night I went to a “first Friday” open-house at The Odin in north Austin and met some people working on some very interesting projects. I met one of the co-founders of trilobio, a startup company working on “revolutionizing synthetic biology by changing the way synthetic biologists do science”.
Yesterday, I wrote about Alanine, the first common amino acid assigned a letter by IUPAC for bioinformatics research. The letter B is not assigned to a single amino acid but is instead used for both Aspartic Acid (Asp-D) and Asparagine (Asn-N) when it is either unclear or either amino acid may be found in a peptide sequence. Notice that the 3-letter codes for Asp-D are GAC and GAU and the 3-letter codes for Asn-N are AAC and AAU, so these two amino acids that are very close in molecular weight and size are separated in the genetic code by only a single nucleotide mutation between A and G in the first position.
C is for Cysteine, which is also abbreviated by Cys. It is sometimes abbreviated by the symbol Cyz when acting as a deprotonated catalytic residue. Cym also refers to the deprotonated form. Cyx is sometimes used to refer to Cysteine when the thiol is oxidized to form a disulfide derivative. The two sulfur-containing amino acids are more easily oxidized than the other amino acids.
Cysteine is the smallest and simplest of the two sulfur-containing proteinogenic amino acids (encoded by the genetic code). The other sulfur-containing amino acid is Methionine-Met-M.
Cysteine is encoded by the codons UGC and UGU. Notice that these codons are a single first position mutation (U to A) from the codons AGC and AGU which encode the similarly sized amino acid Serine-Ser-S. Also notice that the nearby UGA codon, which is normally described as a stop codon in the standard genetic code, can also encode for the “21st proteinogenic amino acid”, Selenocysteine-Sec-U, which is a modification of Cysteine in which Selenium replaces Sulfur. Additionally, Cysteine codons UGC and UGU are a single second position mutation (G to A) from the codons UAC and UAU which encode the slightly more acidic amino acid Tyrosine-Try-T, which is somewhat hydrophobic like Cysteine.
Of interest, “Cysteine has been proposed as a preventive or antidote for some of the negative effects of alcohol, including liver damage and hangover” is a quote from the wikipedia article on Cysteine. From the same article, Cysteine is important for flavoring food, breaking disulfide bonds in hair perms, and in detecting protein structure or investigating protein folding processes using site-directed spin labeling techniques.
A friend brought this David Bowie deck over on this night 3rd of Dec. It was synchronistic for me, so including a pic for this post.
It’s been a while since I have regularly posted and I would like to document daily the exit of the wormhole that I’m feeling in my own timeline. To increase the probability of doing this, today I’m going to talk about Alanine, one of the amino acids encoded by the genetic code that has a heritage shared by all life forms known to exist.
Amino acids are fundamental to all known life. Through their amine and carboxyl ends, they link together to form a chain of amino acids that folds up into a dynamic 3-D functional shape called a protein. These proteins can be enzymatic and catalyze reactions or they can be structural.
In bioinformatics, latin letters have been assigned to each of the common amino acids for standardization of storing protein sequence data. The Latin alphabet becomes then a reasonable choice for ordering the amino acids.
A is for Alanine. Alanine has a very simple side chain, or residue, of a single methyl group (CH3). It is the second smallest amino acid after Glycine, which has no residue. The methyl group results in it being non-polar and aliphatic. It is ambivalent, meaning it does not have a strong preference for being inside or on the surface of a protein. It is non-essential in humans and can be synthesized from pyruvate or branched chain amino acids such as Leucine, Isoleucine, and Valine. The largest common amino acid, Tryptophan, is a derivative of Alanine.
Alanine is encoded by all codons starting with GC (GCA, GCC, GCG, and GCU).
The “Alanine World” hypothesis (ref: https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms20215507) proposes that ancestral proteins predominantly relied on Alanine to provide the basic scaffold and secondary structure of the protein.
I haven’t heard of the Alanine World hypothesis before today. I do remember reading about the RNA World hypothesis. It makes sense to me that some amino acids were here along with RNA in the beginning. I imagine that future computer simulations will provide convincing evidence for how and when our unique genetic code came into existence.
Another death in my circle today – my friend just texted that her mother passed away this morning. I am grateful that I was able to visit her and her Mom earlier this year.
Today started with some magic – the simple kind where I confidently imagined where my lost airPods were and immediately found them more or less where I imagined they would be. An hour later, I used the airPods for an unexpected call that opened the door for an entire new parallel universe I had seen through the door keyhole a month ago. I spent the rest of the day preparing for the potential opportunity to walk through the door. Until a few moments ago, when I heard the news that a friend passed away today. He had been in my thoughts this last week as I knew he was ill. I’m still shocked to hear the news. RIP Brucie.
This song randomly started playing on my phone today.
It’s been a few days since returning from a 9 day road trip with Zae. We learned we can travel together in a free flowing state. Zae is very much in the moment. She is more free flowing than me and being with her gives me a taste of what it might be like for other’s to be with me when I’m in a free flowing state. I often would be planning ahead when she would interject “Do we need to decide that now?”. We were 4 hours from Austin, and 1 hour from checking out of the camper we had rented for the night when she asked “Can we stay another night?”. As in many cases before, I found myself quickly scanning the set of universes around me and focusing on the two major sets – staying or leaving – and feeling into my body as I resonated with the energy of each set. Being so close, time wise, to the two sets of universes did give me a stronger body sensation of each set of universes. This is one thing I learned from the trip, that while it is possible to quantum sense multiple futures that are days, weeks, months, or years away, it is easier to quantum sense multiple futures when they are minutes or hours away. A related corollary is that the larger the differences in the two sets of universes, the stronger the difference in feeling it will have in my body when I’m quantum sensing each set of universes.
Artwork created from our to go boxes from Pasta Cafe Italian Bistro, Roswell, NM, Sept. 14, 2021
Our trip started out with a long drive to Roswell, NM, on Sept. 8, 2021. Along the way, we were talking about “would of, could of, should of” and how that really doesn’t serve us, and how we have both come to this point in the present moment from different paths and experiences. We then saw this church sign on the side of the road with the message “It is not where you’ve been, but where you are going”. Of course, there are lots of different messages in these words. The message we heard was to live fully in the present moment.
“IT IS NOT WHERE YOU’VE BEEN BUT WHERE YOU ARE GOING”
We continued our drive, making a few rests stops along the way, but still on the road at sunset.
Sunset on drive to Roswell, NM, Sept. 8, 2021
We got in late and checked into the Day’s Inn. Feeling hungry, we almost ordered takeout from the nearby Pasta Cafe, but for some reason decided not to. It was a bit synchronistic that we ended up eating at the same Pasta Cafe on the way back home a week later, having the spaghetti with home made meat balls and the green chili alfredo, and then driving back later for chocolate cake dessert.
We decided to skip the first day of the festival and camp at Orvis Hot Springs in Ridgway, CO. On Friday, we took our time driving to the festival, stopping to enjoy the beautiful mountain scenery.
Painter near Ridgway, CO, Sept. 10, 2021
The festival was at Tico Time Resort at the northern border of New Mexico. When we got there, the performers were testing their equipment and most people were cooling off in the river running through the property.
Main Stage, Tico Time Resort, Unison Festival, Sept. 11, 2021SUP Acro Yoga, Unison Festival, Tico Time Resort, Sept. 11, 2021Scott Nice set, Unison Festival, Tico Time Resort, Sept. 11, 2021
We decided against camping at the festival and instead stayed at a hotel nearby in Aztec, NM, the Presidential Suites – one of the few hotels allowing pets. The double queen bed room was the one we ultimately found to be the most roomy and comfortable for both of us. I found myself drawn to one of the books that Zae brought with her, “The Little Book of Stoicism”, by Jonas Salzgeber.
The Little Book of Stoicism, by Jonas Salgeber
In reading the book on Stoicism, I understand now that Stoicism is not about the suppression of emotion, which seems to be a common assumption. Even the google definition #1 says “the endurance of pain or hardship without the display of feelings and without complaint.” The second definition is only slightly better, still stressing an indifference to pleasure and pain:
Stoicism: an ancient Greek school of philosophy founded at Athens by Zeno of Citium. The school taught that virtue, the highest good, is based on knowledge; the wise live in harmony with the divine Reason (also identified with Fate and Providence) that governs nature, and are indifferent to the vicissitudes of fortune and to pleasure and pain.
What I came to believe from reading a few pages, is that Stoicism is about being present with, and not possessed by, our natural emotions, however strongly they are. For instance, on our road trip, there were a few times when I felt very strong emotions. I want to encourage myself to feel these emotions, and feel the debts of these emotions, and be present with them as they move through my body. Even if I am feeling emotions based on grieving the perceived loss of a future possibility, or an unrealized expectation, these emotions are valid and I want to feel them fully. However, I don’t want to have those emotions take me down a rabbit hole of depressions that affects the rest of my trip. I want to observe them as they pass through my body and know that by being present with them, and feeling them as if in meditation, that they will not remain stuck in my body.
Some quotes on Stoicism from wikipedia seem relevant to post here:
The universe itself is God and the universal outpouring of its soul; it is this same world’s guiding principle, operating in mind and reason, together with the common nature of things and the totality that embraces all existence; then the foreordained might and necessity of the future; then fire and the principle of aether; then those elements whose natural state is one of flux and transition, such as water, earth, and air; then the sun, the moon, the stars; and the universal existence in which all things are contained.
Constantly regard the universe as one living being, having one substance and one soul; and observe how all things have reference to one perception, the perception of this one living being; and how all things act with one movement; and how all things are the cooperating causes of all things that exist; observe too the continuous spinning of the thread and the structure of the web.
This quote from wikipedia on Stoicism seems consistent with the model I use for universe surfing:
Stoic theology is a fatalistic and naturalistic pantheism: God is never fully transcendent but always immanent, and identified with Nature. Abrahamic religions personalize God as a world-creating entity, but Stoicism equates God with the totality of the universe; according to Stoic cosmology, which is very similar to the Hindu conception of existence, there is no absolute start to time, as it is considered infinite and cyclic. Similarly, the space and Universe have neither start nor end, rather they are cyclical. The current Universe is a phase in the present cycle, preceded by an infinite number of Universes, doomed to be destroyed (“ekpyrōsis“, conflagration) and re-created again,[27] and to be followed by another infinite number of Universes. Stoicism considers all existence as cyclical, the cosmos as eternally self-creating and self-destroying (see also Eternal return).
This quote also resonates with my own personal spirituality:
A distinctive feature of Stoicism is its cosmopolitanism; according to the Stoics, all people are manifestations of the one universal spirit and should live in brotherly love and readily help one another.
Back to the trip, we stopped at Echo Pavilion where Zae played the ukulele and had a photo shoot.
On the way back to Austin, we stopped at the Inn at the Delta. Before we checked out, we discussed staying another night but due to not being in a very Stoic state, our emotions led us to get on the road. Later, after our emotions calmed, we both regretted the decision as it was quite a nice place to stay. Maybe we will return another day.
Inn at the Delta, Room #5
We made our way back to Roswell for the night and in the morning went to Bottomless Lakes State Park. Olli was living his herd dog instincts to protect us from the dangers of the deep.
Bottomless Lakes State Park, Sept. 15, 2021
We did another photo shoot before getting back on the road towards Austin.
Somewhere outside Roswell, NM, Sept. 15, 2021
We found a camper for the night in Garden City, TX, which is where we hung our artwork shown at the beginning of this blog post. Upon checkout, we decided last minute to stay another night even though we were only 4 hours from Austin. It felt relaxing to have a “free day” to not be on the road and was a reminder to me to insert rest days into my future road trips.
On the way home, we stopped at a park in Eden as we did at the beginning of our road trip.
Park in Eden, Sept. 17, 2021
I’m noticing a desire to be a bit more public in posting pictures from my trip. To date, I’ve kept posts absent of personal pictures and details. I can sense that in the future, I do post without these restrictions.
Head versus heart – my head says that our trip was quite perfect in all ways – healing, grounding, free flowing, intimate, loving, romantic in a friendship way and centered in the universe with which I feel most alignment and seems most aligned with Zae’s wishes. My heart feels desire for more romance, deeper intimacy, and an attachment to limitless possibilities of future growth together with Zae.
surfing the universe 