The World around us

By Don Welty

Flying here in the Wrangells, year after year, enables a person to observe many changes in the environment from one year to the next, especially in the many glacial valleys surrounding the McCarthy area. The most noticeable changes include glacial recession, melt water drainage changes, surges and landslides. Slower and less obvious changes occur as newly-exposed areas such as glacial moraines, gravel bars and slide areas become vegetated. The first plants to establish themselves in these areas are referred to as “pioneer plants.” With the help of a marvelous microbe they stabilize and add much needed nutrients to these barren areas. These microbes, called nitrogen-fixing bacteria, live in symbiosis (mutually beneficial relationship) with these plants, forming visible nodules on their roots in which the process of nitrogen cracking takes place. Some local examples of plants that contain these nitrogen crackers are dryas, mountain aven, lupine, locoweed, silverberry, and alder.

To appreciate the importance of these nitrogen fixers we can start with examining the importance of nitrogen in our world. Our atmosphere is made up of 21% oxygen and 78% nitrogen.

Both are integral parts of amino acids, which join together into proteins to form DNA and RNA. We get our nitrogen from our food either directly from plants or through animals that eat plants. Plants must get their nitrogen from the soil. Elemental oxygen is reactive so splitting it apart for life structures is not hard. Elemental nitrogen, however, has one of the hardest chemical bonds to break.

As our need for higher plant production has increased with population, the need for artificially produced nitrogen increased. In 1918 Fritz Haber was given the Nobel Prize for chemistry for discovering a large-scale process that could convert atmospheric nitrogen to ammonia.

This process required drastic conditions, using an iron-based catalyst with around 1000 degree F heat and 300 atmospheres of pressure. However these chemists of a century ago did not realize there was already a process for cracking nitrogen in place. Its designer did not receive the Nobel Prize and rarely receives recognition. This process did not require high heat and pressures. It was working quietly and efficiently supplying an estimated 100 million tons of nitrogen every year to the soil, a process carried out by so-called, “low life forms,” nitrogen-fixing bacteria. 1 Modern biochemistry has given us a glimpse of the enzyme system used in this process.

The chief enzyme is nitrogenase, which, like hemoglobin, is a large metalloprotien complex. Like Fritz Haber’s process, and like catalytic converters in cars today, it uses the principle of metal catalysis. However, like all biological enzymatic processes, it works in a more exact and efficient way than the clumsy chemical processes of human invention. Several atoms of iron and molybdenum are held in an organic lattice to form the active chemical site. With assistance from an energy source (ATP) and a powerful and specific complementary reducing agent (ferredoxin), nitrogen molecules are bound and cleaved with surgical precision. In this way, a “molecular sledgehammer” is applied to the NN bond, and a single nitrogen molecule yields two molecules of ammonia. The ammonia then ascends the “food chain,” and is used as amino groups in protein synthesis for plants and animals. This is a very tiny mechanism, but when multiplied on a large scale it is of critical importance in allowing plant growth and food production on our planet to continue. 2

Currently, in another application of genetic engineering, chemists are trying to improve the efficiency of the Haber process by implanting the genetic instructions for this nitrogenase complex into coliform bacteria (which may yield significant results when a host of associated bioengineering problems have been solved). 3 Thus, man tacitly acknowledges the pre-existence of a vastly superior technology for nitrogen breakdown, but fails to acknowledge or give thanks to God for it. And, once again, man does his imperfect best to copy the perfection of design that God achieved in the first week of this world.

Quoting Dr. David Demick, qualified pathologist, “One thing is certain—matter, obeying existing laws of chemistry, could not have created, on its own, such a masterpiece of chemical engineering.”4

Quoting Professor of Biochemistry at Lehigh University, Michael J. Behe, “Life on earth at its most fundamental level, in its most critical components, is the product of intelligent activity. The conclusion of intelligent design flows naturally from the data itself—not from sacred books or sectarian beliefs. Inferring that biochemical systems were designed by an intelligent agent is a humdrum process that requires no new principals of logic or science. It comes simply from the hard work biochemistry has done over the past forty years, combined with the consideration of the way in which we reach conclusions of design everyday.”5

Ah, but, intelligent design does flow naturally from sacred books also. In fact the Bible says that creation shows us His invisible attributes and eternal power. * Lets give credit where credit is due as we marvel at this amazing world around us.

For more info on this and other marvels in the world around us check out some of these websites: www.icr.org

www.answersingenesis.org www.evolution-facts.org

References:

1. Stryer, L., Biochemistry, 3rd ed., W.H. Freeman and Company, New York, pp. 576-77, 1988

2. Fine, L.W., Chemistry Decoded, Oxford University Press, London, pp. 320-330, 1976

3. Nitrogen Fixation and Nitrogenase<nitrolab.bio.uci.edu/complex.html>, 7 March 2001

4. http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v24/i2/hammer.asp

5. Michael J. Behe, Simon and Schuster, New York, pp.193, 1996

*Romans 1:20