It is marvelous to live in a world where a protein sequence in Dicaeum eximium's acetylome is known.

Dicaeum eximium's common name is "Red branded flowerpecker," not "woodpecker," "flower pecker."



It apparently lives in the Bismarck Archipelago in the Southwest Pacific. The Bismarck Archipelago is a series of islands that don't get much attention, other than in history books relating to the Second World War, which was a nuclear war that started an oil war. It was a major area of combat for forces under Douglas MacArthur and a home to the large Japanese military base at Rabaul, a volcanic caldera that made an excellent deep water harbor, at least until - long after the war - the volcano that formed the caldera erupted, destroying the town.

Anyway, here is the sequence for Kat2a, an acetyltransferase involved in the expression of DNA (via histones) in Dicaeum eximium:

QANDACKCNGWKNPNPPTAPRMDLQQPVTNLSEPCRSCGHALGNSWGTSWAGRAGPSLGLTVAFPGTADHVSHLENVSEEEINRLLGMVVDVENLFMSVHKEEDTDTKQVYFYLFKLLRKCILQMSQPVVEGSLGSPPFEKPNIEQGVLNFVQYKFSHLPPKERQTMYELSKMFLLCLNYWKLETPSQFRQRSQNDDVATYKVNYTRWLCYCHVPQSCDSLPRYETTHVFGRSLLKSIFTVTRRQLLEKFRVEKDKLVPEKRTLILTHFPKFLSMLEEEIYGENSPIWEADFTMPAAEGAQLVSRPAAVSTVAVPTTPLFSKKLSSSSSAASLDTSTPEPLPGEKRKLPESLTLEDAKRIRVMGDIPMELVNEVMLTITDPAAMLGPETSLLSANAARDETARLEERRGIIEFHVIGNSLSQKSNKKILMWLVGLQNVFSHQLPRMPKEYITRLVFDPKHKTLALIKDGRVIGGICFRMFPTQGFTEIVFCAVTSNEQVKVREGRWAHTCAPQSLAWAGLSVAGGFSKDIKVPKSRYLGYIKDYEGATLMECELNPRIPYTELSHIIKKQKEIIKKLIERKQAQIRKVYPGLTCFKEGVRQIPIESVPGIRETGWKPLGKEKGKELKDPDQLYNMLKNLLAQIKTHPSAWPFMEPVKKSEAPDYYEIIRFPIDLKTMTERLKNRYYVTKKLFIADLQRIITNCREYNPPDSDYCKCANTLEKFFYFKLKEGGLIDK

A0A7K9KBP5 · A0A7K9KBP5_9PASE

Someone spent a lot of time and resources to find this out, even though there are very few people might actually care.

(I care about acetylomes, but frankly, I never heard of a flowerpecker until a half hour ago.)

This fills me, all the world's troubles not withstanding, with a sense of joy that someone spent a huge amount of time to produce this piece of data.

It is, has been, a beautiful world in which to live. I worry (a lot) that we'll screw it up, but the world and the humanity that finds these things out, are beautiful.

I just felt like saying that.