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Living cells are very fast and crowded places (2012)

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Re: Living cells are very fast and crowded places (2012)

#31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't be silly; you're trillions of blobs of goo.

And a lot of those blobs aren't even 'you'...

Not that many actually, the estimations about people being made of more non self stuff than selfstuff were based on no serious measurement and its more of an urban legend than a fact.

Re: Living cells are very fast and crowded places (2012)

#32
post #18

> cells are extremely crowded and busy places Cells are extremely crowded and busy... and random and violent places. Molecular biology dances in a nano moshpit from hell. The Inner Life of a Cell is badly misleading. It reinforces many educationally toxic misconceptions. Yes, the graphics technology was limiting. But the video doesn't attempt to mitigate the negative impact. For instance, adding a couple of frames of…

> It's a balloon flapping madly in a hurricane, tethered to an intoxicated panicked mouse clinging to a rope Welp, my desk is now covered in coffee. Thanks for that one, I'll be stealing it ;) It may be better to think of a cell as more of a liquid crystal than anything else, considering the densities. The synapse of neurons is incredibly dense with structures and scaffolding proteins. Even most grad students still t…

What do you mean by MMI?

Re: Living cells are very fast and crowded places (2012)

#33
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And a lot of those blobs aren't even 'you'...

Not that many actually, the estimations about people being made of more non self stuff than selfstuff were based on no serious measurement and its more of an urban legend than a fact.

Current estimates are that there are slightly more bacteria than human cells (3.8x10^13 vs 3.0x10^13) in a "reference man". However, the mass of the bacteria is only 0.2kg, so human cells totally dominate by mass. Interestingly, most of the human cells by count are red blood cells.

http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jour...

Re: Living cells are very fast and crowded places (2012)

#34
post #15

Although there is truth in the post, this is not entirely correct. Many chemical and biological processes take place in a much slower timescale than hundreds of thousands per second, many miles per hour etc. These processes include DNA synthesis/cell division, transcription, the transmission of electricity / ions between neurons, and many other basic processes. Also, Many proteins don't simply float every around the…

Also, speeds like "100 times per second" should be scaled down with the size scaling, if you want a feel for mechanics. Times Square is about 1km long, and a eukaryotic cell around 10 microns, so scale by 100 million. (A pretty typical protein, 5nm across, becomes 0.5 meters across in Times Square.) From this perspective even the rapid purposeful actions the article talks about go extremely slowly: 100Hz becomes a million seconds per action -- a couple weeks. The biomolecules do whip around at random very fast -- but net progress happens only after a lot of wriggling.

Re: Living cells are very fast and crowded places (2012)

#35
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a balloon flapping madly in a hurricane, tethered to an intoxicated panicked mouse clinging to a rope Welp, my desk is now covered in coffee. Thanks for that one, I'll be stealing it ;) It may be better to think of a cell as more of a liquid crystal than anything else, considering the densities. The synapse of neurons is incredibly dense with structures and scaffolding proteins. Even most grad students still t…

What do you mean by MMI?

Man-Machine Interface? (just a guess)

Re: Living cells are very fast and crowded places (2012)

#36
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a balloon flapping madly in a hurricane, tethered to an intoxicated panicked mouse clinging to a rope Welp, my desk is now covered in coffee. Thanks for that one, I'll be stealing it ;) It may be better to think of a cell as more of a liquid crystal than anything else, considering the densities. The synapse of neurons is incredibly dense with structures and scaffolding proteins. Even most grad students still t…

What do you mean by MMI?

mind machine interface

Re: Living cells are very fast and crowded places (2012)

#38
post #2

I am suddenly very uncomfortable, imagining myself as a roiling blob of goo.

If it helps, consider that you are the descendant of the original "grey goo" which since pervaded the surface of an entire planet. The inheritor of a billion years of techniques in construction, alliance, deception, and warfare. A uniquely coordinated swarm of assimilating nanotechnology, poised to leap into the cosmos.

... No pressure.

Re: Living cells are very fast and crowded places (2012)

#39
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And a lot of those blobs aren't even 'you'...

Not that many actually, the estimations about people being made of more non self stuff than selfstuff were based on no serious measurement and its more of an urban legend than a fact.

Nope. Its no urban legend. Recent findings now suggest there are free tissue bacteria species previously unknown about in humans. So the numbers of bacterial cells to human is only going up with understanding not down.
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