Genome complexity: stem cell controls (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, November 05, 2015, 19:59 (3094 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: With no explanation as to how those cellular communities can plan for the future giant gaps in complexity.
dhw: The explanation would be intelligent thought 
DAVID: And what does the intelligent thinking in a community of cells?-What does the intelligent thinking in your brain, which is a community of cells? We don't know how thought emerges from cells. What does the intelligent thinking in a colony of termites? What we do know is that cells and termites communicate, and that somehow they come up with intelligent and complex solutions to all kinds of problems. In any case, as I pointed out in my previous post, since your God presumably has no brain or neurons, and your NDE patients can think intelligently without a brain, and since you favour dualism, you can hardly insist that thinking is confined to brains and neurons.
 
dhw: According to many eminent scientists, single cells are intelligent, and the 50/50 chance that they are right would mean that intelligence (which would include the ability to think and plan) does not depend on neurons and a brain.
DAVID: Not' many' scientists. You just name a very few. And the 50/50 is because there are only two possibilities. In my biologist eyes it is 90/10 in my favor.-I am in no position to conduct a roll call, but a quick google offers the following as evidence that this is not such a way-out concept as you would like to believe:
1.	Microbial intelligence - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbial_intelligence-"Microbial intelligence (popularly known as bacterial intelligence) is the intelligence shown by microorganisms. The concept encompasses complex adaptive behaviour shown by single cells, and altruistic and/or cooperative behavior in populations of like or unlike cells mediated by chemical signalling that induces physiological or behavioral changes in cells and influences colony structures.
Complex cells, like protozoa or algae, show remarkable abilities to organise themselves in changing circumstances.[1] Shell-building by amoebae reveals complex discrimination and manipulative skills that are ordinarily thought to occur only in multicellular organisms.
Even bacteria, which show primitive behavior as isolated cells, can display more sophisticated behavior as a population. These behaviors occur in single species populations, or mixed species populations. Examples are colonies of Myxobacteria, quorum sensing, and biofilms.
It has been suggested that a bacterial colony loosely mimics a biological neural network. The bacteria can take inputs in form of chemical signals, process them and then produce output chemicals to signal other bacteria in the colony.
The mechanisms that enable single celled organisms to coordinate in populations presumably carried over in those lines that evolved multicellularity, and were co-opted as mechanisms to coordinate multicellular organisms.
Bacteria communication and self-organization in the context of Network theory has been investigated by Eshel Ben-Jacob research group at Tel Aviv University which developed a fractal model of bacterial colony and identified linguistic and social patterns in colony lifecycle [1] (also see Ben-Jacob's bacteria)."