
Cells Talk and Help One Another via Tiny Tube Networks - edwinksl
https://www.quantamagazine.org/cells-talk-and-help-one-another-via-tiny-tube-networks-20180423/
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stephengillie
> _With microscopy techniques, the group examined the structures further and
> determined that they are open channels through which organelles and membrane
> vesicles move from one cell to another. At that point it became clear that
> the membrane tubes were “a completely new mechanism of cell-cell
> communication,” Rustom explained._

Vesicles are like a message in a bottle, thrown out into the "sea" of our
atmosphere. Or an email, and viruses are spam. Here, it's like cells create
point-to-point communication - like using lasers to send ship-to-ship
communications in space science fiction - to upload their vesicle-wrapped RNA
messages securely from client to server. Or server to client, as immune cells
show:

> _How exactly did the engineered stem cells rescue the mouse? First, they
> differentiated into immune cells called macrophages and traveled to the
> injured kidney tissues. Once there, the macrophages formed TNTs with injured
> cells and transferred lysosomes — tiny packages full of healthy enzymes — to
> the diseased cells, Cherqui explained. The diseased cells also sent their
> defective lysosomes back to the macrophages through the same channels._

This supports an economic cellular theory wherein not every cell in the body
can create all of the molecular structures and components it needs to survive
- but each cell can create some components in excess, so cells trade RNA and
proteins as they need.

Previously on HN:

Cells Talk in a Language That Looks Like Viruses. [0]

800 million viruses fall onto every square meter of Earth every day. They kill
20% of bacterial life every day. [1]

Video simulation of HIV infecting a cell and reproducing. [2]

    
    
      [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17005810
      [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16839636
      [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16982396

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Meerax
For the sake of curiosity, can anyone guess what the results would be of
temporarily stopping the cellular bridging action (lacking a better term) in
an organisim?

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mirimir
This reminds me of pili, use by bacteria in conjugation. I wonder if
eukaryotes have versions of tra and trb.

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agumonkey
Seriously cancer is absurdly sophisticated.

~~~
jcims
Biology is absurdly sophisticated. Cancer just seems to reveal more edge cases
that are 'supported' by the system but not typically expressed. I just learned
about exosomes not too long ago. This seems to be an even more advanced
intercellular messaging system.

It's also another example of why I'm in the panspermia camp. I don't think all
this crazy shit could evolve in the amount of time that Earth has been
hospitable to life. It just feels too complex.

~~~
resource0x
The alternative is to think of each cell as an individual conscious
intelligent being which knows what it is doing. It knows how to modify its own
DNA, and does it creatively, similar to a programmer, just a very smart one.
Our sense of "I" that encompasses all cells in the body is an illusion - this
"I" is really the consciousness of a single specialized (and appropriately
zombified) cell. Every organism is a symbiosis of conscious beings.

This doesn't explain where the "very first cell" comes from, but I find the
theory fascinating anyway. Unfortunately those who share this view are not
very vocal about it (who wants to be called a crackpot? :)

~~~
jcims
Yeah that's not far from the other idea I'm entertaining, lol. Not necessarily
that each cell is conscious or intelligent, but that there are creative
mechanisms at play that we don't perceive. Ones that guide or 'program'
evolution of DNA constructively rather than randomly.

To your point, the idea of a monolithic 'I' that represents the ~50 trillion
cells in my body is kind of ridiculous, particularly when roughly half of them
don't even share my DNA. In that same vein, it has always weirded me out that
we don't intuitively know how our bodies work...to the point that I even began
thinking of the human consciousness as kind of virus that infected the germ
line of primates with this extra meat in the noggin that intercepts the senses
and controls the body.

Anyway I just need to learn more about all of this stuff before I put any real
stock into my harebrained ideas.

~~~
resource0x
I think every cell (and every bacteria) has this capacity, but higher
intelligence can be disabled by some molecular switch (other senses cannot be
disabled, they are the property of life) . The one that carries the illusion
of human "I" is not particularly "advanced", but again, it's just a matter of
some extra axon or something :). I'm pretty sure humans were designed by
bacteria (or their descendants), but our species plays very modest role in the
overall scheme of things. We are certainly not the ones calling the shots :)
You can start here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBGt5OeAQFk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBGt5OeAQFk)

