Defining sentient cells: Cell receptors (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, April 11, 2018, 21:48 (2418 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: And there you go again! There are umpteen websites on the subject of “How do cells make decisions?” Here is the first one on the long list:

How Do Cells Make Decisions: Engineering Micro- and ...
https://www.hindawi.com/journals/jo/2010/363106

Abstract
Cell migration contributes to cancer metastasis and involves cell adhesion to the extracellular matrix (ECM), force generation through the cell's cytoskeletal, and finally cell detachment. Both adhesive cues from the ECM and soluble cues from neighbouring cells and tissue trigger intracellular signalling pathways that are essential for cell migration. While the machinery of many signalling pathways is relatively well understood, how hierarchies of different and conflicting signals are established is a new area of cellular cancer research. We examine the recent advances in microfabrication, microfluidics, and nanotechnology that can be utilized to engineer micro- and nanoscaled cellular environments. Controlling both adhesive and soluble cues for migration may allow us to decipher how cells become motile, choose the direction for migration, and how oncogenic transformations influences these decision-making processes.(My bold)

You and others may tell us the decision-making processes are all automatic, but as you so rightly say over and over again, nobody can tell the difference, and both views have equal validity.

The full understanding of the signal pathways described above are not completely researched. When they are fully understood, as they are now in other situations, it will be shown to be a meaningful series of molecular reactions and nothing more: a stimulus with a series of molecular reactions to provide a molecular response, all based on information coded into the molecular 3-D shapes.