4 ms·

I found that spending a bit of time visualizing the scale and complexity of cells is helpful for not finding this sort of messiness surprising. A similar thing

I found that spending a bit of time visualizing the scale and complexity of cells is helpful for not finding this sort of messiness surprising. A similar thing that used to surprising me was the idea that some viruses, like herpes simplex, hide out inside cells for years and years. A cartoon of the HIV life cycle: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/watch-the-life-cycle-of-hiv-in-colorful-new-detail/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/watch-the-... The complexity insides eukaryotic cells is startling, and compared to individual molecules they are massive. (Prokaryotic cells are 0.1 - 5 microns, while eukaryotic ones are 10-100 microns. That means eukaryotic cells are larger in volume by 2-9 orders of magnitude! It also lowers the impressiveness of comparisons between the number of gut bacteria cells and human cells.) If you think of each cell as a person, then the body is an army of 30 trillion soldiers each with his own copy of instructions to follow (which he copied from someone else) and many possible ways to get hurt or die. It's not so surprising that some fractions of the soldiers will have very small errors in their copy of the instructions, which they will pass on as copies to other soldiers, or that individuals could get a tape worm and still fight.

eternalban 8y ago
Scale factors in biological systems are collosal. It amuses me when I hear e.g. Alan Kay talk about objects as biological cells. (Conceptually, sure.)
- Balgair 8y ago
  Yes, the thermodynamics alone are vastly different between an Elephant and a mouse, let alone between an Elephant and a bacterium. We are somewhat fortunate that life can exist across such vast scales, as it really gives us a lot of things to study and think about.
  - eternalban 8y ago
    I meant the scale range when considering the constituent components of any given biological organism: Let's say we take the hardware basis -- cpu, instruction sets, registers, buses, etc. -- as the 'organic chemistry' analogue -- the substrate. Just the basic cell, which is a profoundly amazing machine, would require layer upon layer of software. By the time we reach the level of an 'organ' or 'system' along the biological model, it would be a monster. We humans, for example, have apparently (per my search engine) somewhere between 10^13 to 10^14 cells. That's 4 to 5 orders of magnitude larger than the total number of computers on this planet.
mncharity 8y ago
> visualizing the scale and complexity of cells You might like my crufty and slowwwly-loading page http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/Atoms http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/Atoms for "nanoview" (zoom so that 1 nm looks like 1 mm). And http://bionumbers.hms.harvard.edu/ http://bionumbers.hms.harvard.edu/ to look up biological numbers. So cells are zoomed to large garbage bags, rooms and buildings, proteins[1] look like bits of Play-Doh, and atoms like sand.[2] [1] http://www.clarifyscience.info/stable/2015/mol-mach-2014-poster--scaled.pdf http://www.clarifyscience.info/stable/2015/mol-mach-2014-pos... [2] http://www.clarifyscience.info/assets/2017-Atoms/assets0/wk/Jebel_Ali_from_a_beach_in_Dubai-with-Salt--800.jpg http://www.clarifyscience.info/assets/2017-Atoms/assets0/wk/...

eternalban 8y ago

Scale factors in biological systems are collosal. It amuses me when I hear e.g. Alan Kay talk about objects as biological cells. (Conceptually, sure.)

Balgair 8y ago
Yes, the thermodynamics alone are vastly different between an Elephant and a mouse, let alone between an Elephant and a bacterium. We are somewhat fortunate that life can exist across such vast scales, as it really gives us a lot of things to study and think about.
- eternalban 8y ago
  I meant the scale range when considering the constituent components of any given biological organism: Let's say we take the hardware basis -- cpu, instruction sets, registers, buses, etc. -- as the 'organic chemistry' analogue -- the substrate. Just the basic cell, which is a profoundly amazing machine, would require layer upon layer of software. By the time we reach the level of an 'organ' or 'system' along the biological model, it would be a monster. We humans, for example, have apparently (per my search engine) somewhere between 10^13 to 10^14 cells. That's 4 to 5 orders of magnitude larger than the total number of computers on this planet.

mncharity 8y ago

> visualizing the scale and complexity of cells You might like my crufty and slowwwly-loading page http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/Atoms http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/Atoms for "nanoview" (zoom so that 1 nm looks like 1 mm). And http://bionumbers.hms.harvard.edu/ http://bionumbers.hms.harvard.edu/ to look up biological numbers. So cells are zoomed to large garbage bags, rooms and buildings, proteins[1] look like bits of Play-Doh, and atoms like sand.[2] [1] http://www.clarifyscience.info/stable/2015/mol-mach-2014-poster--scaled.pdf http://www.clarifyscience.info/stable/2015/mol-mach-2014-pos... [2] http://www.clarifyscience.info/assets/2017-Atoms/assets0/wk/Jebel_Ali_from_a_beach_in_Dubai-with-Salt--800.jpg http://www.clarifyscience.info/assets/2017-Atoms/assets0/wk/...