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which have cells like humans
by redcobra762 3y ago
which have cells like humans
- fnordpiglet 3y agoAll living things have at least one cell, but they do not all operate in the same way. There’s possibility that worm cells and human cells behave similarly in this, but it’s also fully possible they behave in very dissimilar ways.
- redcobra762 3y agoWhich is why this is interesting! I just wanted to combat the whole "this isn't relevant to humans" pushback. There's potential value here.
- fnord77 3y agonobody said "this isn't relevant to humans" The article is written in such a way that you think it is about human cells until you get fairly far into it.
- Affric 3y agoTrue, and obviously worms and humans aren’t closely related. With that said, this research is about how cells cooperate to form a multicellular animal. I think it would be interesting to use the results to design an experiment that could be applied to animals more closely related to humans (that with these results in hand you could get passed the animal ethics committee).
- fnordpiglet 3y agoWell, it’s how mitochondria in cells in worms cooperate. We already know cells cooperate through many channels and some channels we understand quite well. This is truly only about worms right now. Obviously generalizing to other animals will be important next steps. But the title and text of the article implies a much more general understanding than we actually have. It’s not to diminish the results in the least. But science isn’t served by claiming progress we haven’t made, it makes it harder to fund the next step by building an assumption of nonexistent progress.