
Cells Talk and Help One Another via Tiny Tube Networks - sethbannon
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cells-talk-and-help-one-another-via-tiny-tube-networks/
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stephengillie
Previous discussion (same article, quantamagazine.org, 24 days ago):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17217203](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17217203)

> _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](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17005810)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16839636](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16839636)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16982396](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16982396)

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ethn
Cellular cybernetics is about to become very interesting.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbiogenesis](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbiogenesis)

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singularity2001
tl;Did read: Long-overlooked “tunneling nanotubes” and other bridges between
cells act as conduits for sharing RNA, proteins or even whole organelles.

Long article, but very good gif:
[https://static.scientificamerican.com/sciam/assets/Image/TNT...](https://static.scientificamerican.com/sciam/assets/Image/TNTs.gif)

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programmarchy
A series of tubes? Hmm, sounds familiar.

