Quote:
Originally Posted by tlhood
I think someone on the thread hypothesized that the milk molecules were acting like a transport system for nutients, allowing more concentrated amounts to reach the polyps.
Or something along those lines.
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If elements of that are true, I suspect it's a gross over-simplication.
first and foremost, there's not really such thing as a 'milk molecule'. What we perceive as 'milk' is a combination of sugars, fats, protein, and various enzymes all in an aqueous medium.
Further, which enzymes, and how much fat will depend on the kind of milk and whether or not it was pasteurized, as pasteurization inactivates most enzymes.
If we're going to hypothesize that something in that mix is a 'transport mechanism', it would be helpful to define what is meant by the term 'transport mechanism' and 'nutrient'. In biology, transport mechanisms are usually very specific to a particular pathway - i.e. a specific molecule designed to bind to a specific other molecule as well as fit in to a specific receptor. The only molecules in milk that are designed to directly interact with other molecules in milk are the enzymes, and they have very specific relationships with the fats, sugars, and proteins in milk - relationships specifically related to breaking said fats, sugars and proteins down, not 'transporting' them anywhere. Most of them are torched in the kind of milk you can buy at the supermarket anyway.
As for 'nutrients' - it's an open question whether any of the raw ingredients in milk can be used by corals directly. Corals can absorb mineralized nutrients like nitrate and phosphate as well as some amino acids directly from the water, but I seriously doubt they have any capacity to either absorb or break down a molecule like lactose. I suspect that the carbohydrates in milk such as lactose are broken down by bacterial pathways just like any other carbon source in a tank and not used directly by the coral. The fats are an interesting wild card though.
Milk has over 400 different fatty acids in it. I've never heard of anyone experimenting with adding fats to a reef tank, or how they interact with corals. milk fatty acids can have up to 18 carbon atoms per molecule though, so at the very least they'd make milk a very potent organic carbon source.