
What Bodies Think About: Bioelectric Computation Outside the Nervous System - adenadel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjD1aLm4Thg
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keithwhor
This is an absolutely fantastic talk.

tl;dw (others can jump in if they'd like):

\- Organism morphology seem to be highly dependent upon large-scale electrical
potential differentials between cells

\- These electrical networks are primarily regulated by cell-to-cell gated ion
channels; simple chemical pumps (the same types of membrane proteins that
control faster-acting electric potentials that enable muscle contraction,
neural activity)

\- These networks and patterns of bioelectric signalling have stable memory
(once a pattern between cells is induced, it remains stable) and are
responsible for driving "subroutines" of large groups of cells --
morphological gene, protein expression downstream of this

Michael Levin mentions a few times how they manipulate these bioelectric
fields towards desired morphological outcomes ("we don't apply electrodes",
etc.)... but I have a feeling the CS-y people might still get a little lost,
so, I'll try to summarize as best I can. (Some nuance will be lost, apologies
in advance.)

The gated ion channels (mentioned above) are simply protein complexes that
transfer ions (K+, etc.) across cells (and thus regulate the overall
bioelectric signature: charge of specific tissues, regions). As protein
complexes these gates themselves can be altered either in the way they're
built (genetically) or with a "cocktail of chemicals", this cocktail being one
that interferes to some degree with the rate at which ions are transferred
between cells.

To make an analogy to human society to help you understand: imagine individual
cells (or cell types, tissues) are like countries, and imagine ions are
engineers. Gated ion channels are border crossings, complete with Visa
requirements and regulations. To stably get more engineers from [Head Country]
to [Tail Country] to build a head, you'd try to find a way to prioritize
skilled immigration acceptance in [Tail Country]. This means you modify [Visa
requirements] slightly, but not enough to relax immigration requirements
completely and throw the country's economy into chaos.

Modifying [Visa requirements] (gated ion channel behavior) is a much more
nuanced and stable way to change organism morphology, and it _appears_ to be
as elegant as it sounds re: regulating downstream effects. Really exciting
stuff. If I had remained in academia I would be extremely interested in
pursuing this field of research, definitely having a moment of rose-tinted
glasses here :).

To opine on my own: what I'm really interested in, personally, is the
applications to individual organ regrowth that isn't just restricted to [whole
organism morphology]. The _immediately obvious_ benefit of this work, to me,
is the prospect of eliminating transplant lists altogether.

~~~
Osiris30
Do you have any good recommendations for books, textbooks, links, lectures or
papers for beginners to start to understand this area?

~~~
keithwhor
When I was in undergrad I pretty much just read the textbooks directly and
used Wikipedia for supplementary reading. I donate (nearly) every year to
Wikipedia because I would not have graduated without it.

This is the exact Molecular Cell Biology text we were assigned a decade ago
(though I’d imagine it’s significantly updated now):

[https://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Cell-Biology-
Lodish/dp/0716...](https://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Cell-Biology-
Lodish/dp/0716776014)

The first principles of a an education in biochemistry are roughly, (1) the
central dogma: DNA (transcribed) -> RNA (translated) -> Protein. (2) basic
principles of diffusion and chemical equilibria.

Most biochemical systems do work by leveraging potential energy gradients
across membranes. For example: there’s a lot of K+ on one side of a membrane,
and very little on the other. If you selectively open a channel between the
two compartments, we know that statistically the ion (K+) flow will be
directionally towards where there’s less K+ (diffusion). Biochemical systems
use natural properties of stochastic systems to do work: if we know K+ is
traveling in one direction, you can imagine a flywheel of sorts positioned to
turn that ion movement into useful energy (ion channels).

The processes by which energy is transferred and utilized is pretty much the
field of biochemistry in a nutshell.

~~~
pmayrgundter
I'm curious if you have come across any reference to non-ionic current flow,
e.g. semi-conductive. I feel like I've seen it mentioned, possibly along the
cytoskeleton and via gap junctions, but can't come up with anything offhand.

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smallnamespace
So what's the effect of widespread use of microwaves (and soon with 5G,
terahertz radiation) on the bioelectrical communication that's going on within
our bodies?

I keep seeing industry studies that say there aren't any health effects, but
that's purely due to the argument that the _thermal_ effects of microwave
radiation aren't sufficient to harm us (i.e. we're not cooking ourselves).

What about non-thermal effects? And how do microwaves affect, say, the long-
range navigation of birds or insects, which we do know must have an
electromagnetic component since they're in part using the Earth's magnetic
field?

~~~
keithwhor
We’re really talking about electrochemical gradients here: sustained
bioelectric fields that represent the differential accumulation of ions in
cells / tissue. Radiation would need to be ionizing and intense or have enough
of a heating effect to materially alter the structure of gated ion channels
(like, you literally put an organism in a microwave) to make a difference. In
both cases the result would likely be failure to thrive (complete disruption),
but moreso due to the fact you’ve destroyed every other protein in the
organism in this process.

I’m not going to be completely dismissive of possible side effects of long
range microwave radiation on tissue, but you’re essentially asking something
akin to, “how does my fridge magnet affect the Sun’s magnetic field and
boundaries of the heliosphere?” i.e. orders of magnitude differential in
effect size. Hope that helps!

~~~
smallnamespace
I wonder what you think about this paper?

[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jcmm.12088](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jcmm.12088)

'extensive evidence has been published clearly showing that the EMF exposure
can act to produce excessive activity of the VGCCs in many cell types
suggesting that these may be direct targets of EMF exposure.'

> Radiation would need to be ionizing and intense or have enough of a heating
> effect to materially alter the structure of gated ion channels

I don't understand this point — why is it necessary that radiation be ionizing
to affect VGC ion channels in a transient fashion that could still lead to
long-term biochemical changes?

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pmayrgundter
Amazing and exciting.

If anyone is working in this area and would like to discuss, I'm eager to.
I've been working on an independent thesis in the area for a few years and
have extensive notes and extended ideas towards general intelligence theory
and A.I.

I hope to contact the Levin lab about assisting with work there too; so maybe
collaboration on some open-source support tools?

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snaky
Discussed 3 days ago at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18700328](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18700328)

~~~
adenadel
For some context, I submitted this talk a couple weeks ago and today HN asked
me if I wanted to resubmit because it hadn’t got much attention.

~~~
faitswulff
HN meaning dang?

~~~
adenadel
Yes, if you submit a link that doesn’t get much attention sometimes he will
email you with a second chance for the submission. You also get an extra one
upvote bump.

