4 ms·
There's a poster out there of all the relevant chemistry of human mitochondria. It's a pretty big poster, about a square meter of paper. Every pore and protein'
by Balgair 6y ago
There's a poster out there of all the relevant chemistry of human mitochondria. It's a pretty big poster, about a square meter of paper. Every pore and protein's function is represented. The Kreb's Cycle is in a corner of this thing. All the chain reactions are there, with lines trying to vainly connect it all together. The font on it is ~9 pt., I think. And it's double sided. I can't find a good link on Google, but other biologists will know what I'm talking about.
That poster is the result of ~70 years of hardcore work and blood and sweat of ~10k+ people on the human mitochondria. That poster alone is worth billions of dollar of research and will likely save billions of lives. And it's just the normal functions of the human mitochondria. One of many organelles in a 'typical' human cell. I'm not aware of any attempts to produce such a thing for something as complicated as the ER or the nucleus.
Our understanding of bio is very much limited. But I want to stress that Bio is complicated much more beyond what anyone thinks it is. There is a good quote to help grok the ocean we are looking into:
Imagine a flashy spaceship lands in your backyard. The door opens and you are invited to investigate everything to see what you can learn. The technology is clearly millions of years beyond what we can make. This is biology.
–Bert Hubert, “Our Amazing Immune System”
- hak8or 6y agoCan someone find this poster? I would utterly love to buy it and hang it somewhere, but I can't find it when googling.
- ArmandGrillet 6y agoThe two posters on this website look similar to the provided description: http://biochemical-pathways.com/#/map/1 http://biochemical-pathways.com/#/map/1
- Balgair 6y agoThis is exactly it! Thank you for the find!
- mprovost 6y agoRoche will send you a free copy! https://www.roche.com/sustainability/philanthropy/science_education/pathways/pathways-ordering.htm https://www.roche.com/sustainability/philanthropy/science_ed...
- Balgair 6y agoHoly Cow! I didn't know they were free. Thank you so much for the link!
- TeMPOraL 6y agoI'm guessing you're talking about the Roche poster. IIRC, it's only useful as art - it's too detailed for a high-level overview, and way underdetailed if you want to work with any of the pathways displayed on it. This only highlights your point: bio is much more complicated than people think it is.