6 ms·

I studied an BSc in genetics and none of our lectures or textbooks presented mitochondria any differently from the classic bean shape they introduce in school.

I studied an BSc in genetics and none of our lectures or textbooks presented mitochondria any differently from the classic bean shape they introduce in school. This is surely old news to folks who specialise in mitochondria, but it's easy to miss out on these fundamentals even if you've studied in a relevant area at degree level, because there's just so much to know in biology. In fact, it's one of those fields where the more you learn, the more you realise we'll never reach a satisfactory understanding in our lifetime. You could chuck an endless supply of PhD students at every constituent domain for generations and still feel like you've scarcely scratched the surface of the many things there are to question.

epicureanideal 2y ago
> You could chuck an endless supply of PhD students at every constituent domain for generations and still feel like you've scarcely scratched the surface of the many things there are to question. Sounds like a much better use of tax dollars than some other uses!
admissionsguy 2y ago
> the more you realise we'll never reach a satisfactory understanding in our lifetime Depends on how long you intend to live, really
- mananaysiempre 2y ago
  > Depends on how long you intend to live, really https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/11/09/ars-longa-vita-brevis/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/11/09/ars-longa-vita-brevis/
  - conor_mc 2y ago
    Thanks for sharing. That was a great story.
    - ninalanyon 2y ago
      And thank you for posting the thank you because it was that that prompted me to bother to follow the link. I too think it was a great story, well told.
  - Anotheroneagain 2y ago
    What books did Caesar read? In reality, books are not that useful. History doesn't show too much accumulation of knowledge over time - there is virtually no continuity between the bronze age and classical antiquity. Almost everything was lost, and built anew. Then it was all lost in another dark age. A few scraps remained. In fact, civilisation rises and falls as brainpower rises and falls. There only was a long period of rise recently, but, it's been long over, and we now live off the scraps of what it produced.
    - ninalanyon 2y ago
      Caesar almost certainly read classics of Greek philosophy and Roman literature. But what does your comment have to do with books? There were none in the Bronze Age, nor for many centuries after it.
      - Anotheroneagain 2y ago
        I was commenting on the absurdity of the story. It just doesn't seem to be how knowledge works. Nothing was discovered by such slow, long term accumulation of knowledge. Instead, knowledge seems to be discovered very quickly when the potential is there, and it decays and gets forgotten if the potential is lost. For example, it was perfectly possible to be born when there was no powered flight at all, and live to see the moon landing. And, while there are all the plans, and everything there was to write down about Saturn V, we can't do it again, as the human potential isn't there anymore. In fact, we can't even fly supersonic anymore.
        Symbiote 2y ago
        We certainly know how to do both those things (and military planes fly supersonic daily). That's because it's written down.
        Anotheroneagain 2y ago
        I think it's now a historical fact that we in fact don't, as it's now virtually certain that the Artemis program, with all that knowledge available, will at the very least take longer to send people to the Moon, than the Apollo program did with no prior knowledge at all. Somebody once claimed that the problem isn't that Johnny can't read, or that Johnny can't think, but that Johnny doesn't even know what thinking is, which is certainly a correct observation, but he incorrectly blamed it on the American schooling system. But Johnny doesn't know what thinking is the same way that somebody who was born blind doesn't know what seeing is. You don't have to be taught to think, you just do. You figure things out, then you learn that others also know them. Or, sometimes that they don't, and know something completely different about the thing for whatever weird reason. And such a person can live their entire life without thinking, convinced that being smart is simply about learning more and faster, and if they study hard, they will understand the topic on that deeper level like the old masters did, and perhaps they will also contribute something new one day. But the thinking never comes.
  - admissionsguy 2y ago
    Fortunately, biology is broad but not particularly deep, so even undergrads routinely contribute to research. The story is a much better analogy for fundamental theoretical physics. Source: got some background in both, decided it didn't make sense to do theoretical physics before longevity is solved.
jhedwards 2y ago
I'm reading an excellent book right now called Cells, Embryos and Evolution, in which one topic is the exploratory nature of certain biological processes. One of the processes described is the dynamic instability of microtubule growth. Microtubules randomly grow and shrink from an anchor in the cell until they hit something that stabilizes them. Through their random growth they explore the cell, which means that processes depending on microtubules are robust against changes in size and shape of both the containing cell and the target object that needs the microtubules. The author explains that we still don't know how microtubules are stabilized, which I thought was fascinating. Except that the book was written twenty years ago, and now we DO know how they are stabilized. It turns out that the author was the person who discovered microtubule instability, and since then we have not only figured out what stabilizes them, but have developed numerous cancer drugs based on those molecules: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK9932/#_A1831_ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK9932/#_A1831_ The progress of science is really incredible.
- UltraSane 2y ago
  Have we made much progress in understanding how the Kinetochore works?
authorfly 2y ago
Not in genetics, but the kind of cursory neuroscience education that "AI" courses contain often goes no further than a sample cell at one point in the first weeks. I have found that the majority of AI graduates believe each cell contains one Mitochondria, even those who can explain the chemical processes behind associative memory and understand how there are multiple binding sites/receptors in most of those processes. It goes to show how much simple diagrams influence understanding. The synaptic gap diagrams show multiple receptors and abstracted neurotransmitters, and gradients of multiple Ca or K ions. The neuron diagram shows one Mitochondria. That start influences their understanding for years.
nialv7 2y ago
> This is surely old news to folks who specialise in mitochondria from Wiktionary: > mitochondrion, Coined in German by Carl Benda in 1898, from Ancient Greek μίτος (mítos, “thread”) + χονδρίον (khondríon), diminutive of χόνδρος (khóndros, “grain, morsel”) from Wikipedia article on Carl Benda: > In an 1898 experiment using crystal violet as a specific stain, Benda first became aware of the existence of hundreds of these tiny bodies in the cytoplasm of eukaryotic cells and assumed that they reinforced the cell structure. Because of their tendency to form long chains, he coined the name mitochondria ("thread granules"). So yeah, I guess this is known ever since mitochondria was first discovered, definitely "old news". I can't understand why it is always depicted as bean-shaped.
- Symbiote 2y ago
  > I can't understand why it is always depicted as bean-shaped. Do you disagree with the reason suggested in the article?
jugg1es 2y ago
I have a BS in neurobiology from 2005 and the one lesson I took away and has been reinforced over and over again for me is that we know very little about biology. For example, epigenetics was only just getting talked about when I graduated. We are still only scratching the surface.

epicureanideal 2y ago

> You could chuck an endless supply of PhD students at every constituent domain for generations and still feel like you've scarcely scratched the surface of the many things there are to question. Sounds like a much better use of tax dollars than some other uses!

admissionsguy 2y ago

> the more you realise we'll never reach a satisfactory understanding in our lifetime Depends on how long you intend to live, really

mananaysiempre 2y ago
> Depends on how long you intend to live, really https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/11/09/ars-longa-vita-brevis/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/11/09/ars-longa-vita-brevis/
- conor_mc 2y ago
  Thanks for sharing. That was a great story.
  - ninalanyon 2y ago
    And thank you for posting the thank you because it was that that prompted me to bother to follow the link. I too think it was a great story, well told.
- Anotheroneagain 2y ago
  What books did Caesar read? In reality, books are not that useful. History doesn't show too much accumulation of knowledge over time - there is virtually no continuity between the bronze age and classical antiquity. Almost everything was lost, and built anew. Then it was all lost in another dark age. A few scraps remained. In fact, civilisation rises and falls as brainpower rises and falls. There only was a long period of rise recently, but, it's been long over, and we now live off the scraps of what it produced.
  - ninalanyon 2y ago
    Caesar almost certainly read classics of Greek philosophy and Roman literature. But what does your comment have to do with books? There were none in the Bronze Age, nor for many centuries after it.
    - Anotheroneagain 2y ago
      I was commenting on the absurdity of the story. It just doesn't seem to be how knowledge works. Nothing was discovered by such slow, long term accumulation of knowledge. Instead, knowledge seems to be discovered very quickly when the potential is there, and it decays and gets forgotten if the potential is lost. For example, it was perfectly possible to be born when there was no powered flight at all, and live to see the moon landing. And, while there are all the plans, and everything there was to write down about Saturn V, we can't do it again, as the human potential isn't there anymore. In fact, we can't even fly supersonic anymore.
      - Symbiote 2y ago
        We certainly know how to do both those things (and military planes fly supersonic daily). That's because it's written down.
        Anotheroneagain 2y ago
        I think it's now a historical fact that we in fact don't, as it's now virtually certain that the Artemis program, with all that knowledge available, will at the very least take longer to send people to the Moon, than the Apollo program did with no prior knowledge at all. Somebody once claimed that the problem isn't that Johnny can't read, or that Johnny can't think, but that Johnny doesn't even know what thinking is, which is certainly a correct observation, but he incorrectly blamed it on the American schooling system. But Johnny doesn't know what thinking is the same way that somebody who was born blind doesn't know what seeing is. You don't have to be taught to think, you just do. You figure things out, then you learn that others also know them. Or, sometimes that they don't, and know something completely different about the thing for whatever weird reason. And such a person can live their entire life without thinking, convinced that being smart is simply about learning more and faster, and if they study hard, they will understand the topic on that deeper level like the old masters did, and perhaps they will also contribute something new one day. But the thinking never comes.
- admissionsguy 2y ago
  Fortunately, biology is broad but not particularly deep, so even undergrads routinely contribute to research. The story is a much better analogy for fundamental theoretical physics. Source: got some background in both, decided it didn't make sense to do theoretical physics before longevity is solved.

jhedwards 2y ago

I'm reading an excellent book right now called Cells, Embryos and Evolution, in which one topic is the exploratory nature of certain biological processes. One of the processes described is the dynamic instability of microtubule growth. Microtubules randomly grow and shrink from an anchor in the cell until they hit something that stabilizes them. Through their random growth they explore the cell, which means that processes depending on microtubules are robust against changes in size and shape of both the containing cell and the target object that needs the microtubules. The author explains that we still don't know how microtubules are stabilized, which I thought was fascinating. Except that the book was written twenty years ago, and now we DO know how they are stabilized. It turns out that the author was the person who discovered microtubule instability, and since then we have not only figured out what stabilizes them, but have developed numerous cancer drugs based on those molecules: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK9932/#_A1831_ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK9932/#_A1831_ The progress of science is really incredible.

UltraSane 2y ago
Have we made much progress in understanding how the Kinetochore works?

authorfly 2y ago

Not in genetics, but the kind of cursory neuroscience education that "AI" courses contain often goes no further than a sample cell at one point in the first weeks. I have found that the majority of AI graduates believe each cell contains one Mitochondria, even those who can explain the chemical processes behind associative memory and understand how there are multiple binding sites/receptors in most of those processes. It goes to show how much simple diagrams influence understanding. The synaptic gap diagrams show multiple receptors and abstracted neurotransmitters, and gradients of multiple Ca or K ions. The neuron diagram shows one Mitochondria. That start influences their understanding for years.

nialv7 2y ago

> This is surely old news to folks who specialise in mitochondria from Wiktionary: > mitochondrion, Coined in German by Carl Benda in 1898, from Ancient Greek μίτος (mítos, “thread”) + χονδρίον (khondríon), diminutive of χόνδρος (khóndros, “grain, morsel”) from Wikipedia article on Carl Benda: > In an 1898 experiment using crystal violet as a specific stain, Benda first became aware of the existence of hundreds of these tiny bodies in the cytoplasm of eukaryotic cells and assumed that they reinforced the cell structure. Because of their tendency to form long chains, he coined the name mitochondria ("thread granules"). So yeah, I guess this is known ever since mitochondria was first discovered, definitely "old news". I can't understand why it is always depicted as bean-shaped.

Symbiote 2y ago
> I can't understand why it is always depicted as bean-shaped. Do you disagree with the reason suggested in the article?

jugg1es 2y ago

I have a BS in neurobiology from 2005 and the one lesson I took away and has been reinforced over and over again for me is that we know very little about biology. For example, epigenetics was only just getting talked about when I graduated. We are still only scratching the surface.