Cell complexity: talking through microtubules (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, May 08, 2018, 11:26 (2393 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: Healthy adult cells don’t usually make TNTs, but stressed or ailing cells appear to induce them by sending out signals to call for help. It’s unclear, though, how healthy cells sense that their neighbors need help or how they physiologically “know” what specific cargo to send.

The evidence for cellular intelligence builds with every article David posts on the subject. Not to be equated with human intelligence of course, but if you saw an animal, bird, insect in trouble and calling for help, and you saw its neighbour providing that help, you wouldn’t hesitate to acknowledge that this was a sign of intelligence. It’s only because these organisms are so tiny and invisible to the naked eye that some folk dismiss the idea.

Under “Stimulus causes protein signalling”:

DAVID’s comment: These are biomechanical molecules that control the speed of reactions in an automatic fashion. Note the tail moves. It is the coordinated dance of these molecules working automatically that produces life.

One should also note that in all forms of life there are automatic activities and non-automatic activities. If we take ourselves as the macrocosm, we depend on a mass of automatic activities that we never even think about until conditions change. Then we use conscious intelligence to make adjustments (though most of the time we have to rely on someone else’s intelligence to do that). I suggest that it is the same in the microcosmic world. Most cellular activity will be automatic. It’s only when things change that intelligence is called on, and the first article tells us that cells can also call on “someone else’s intelligence” to do the job.