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How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

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Re: How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

#71

Post by rv-de »

asdff wrote: post #51
porknubbins wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After learning CS I can’t help but see biology as crazy algorithms run on a living computer. Like someone was thinking “how can we match possibly any shape of invader? Screw it cells are cheap we’ll brute force randomly try them all.”

Tons of biology can be modeled mathematically strikingly well, and most of that was figured out a long time ago. Sewall Wright was developing graphical models of evolution in the 1920s.

what you refer to is modelling of a selection of observed metrics not the biology itself. very different.

Re: How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

#72

Post by DrAwdeOccarim »

im3w1l wrote: post #33
jcims wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Molecular machines' is not an overstatement. Here's an example of some of them working in harmony to maintain an essential electrochemical gradient across the lipid bilayer that encapsulates the mitochondria: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQmTKxI4Wn4 It's a 7 minute video, if you only have a little time, skip around, but make sure you listen to the part starting at 6:17. DNA isn't just the blueprint for the machin…

Thanks for posting this. Looked further into atp synthase. Absolutely amazing. A little turbine, driven by the flow of protons, spinning in 120 degree discrete clicks, around catalyst pockets, where each click changes the shape of the pocket to a new one. And after the pocket has gone through a complete cycle, adp and phosphate have been fused. Never seen the chemical (proton concentration), converted into something…

It can also run backward when ATP concentrations are too high.

Re: How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

#73

Post by longtom »

nahuel0x wrote: post #35

This is mind blowing: > For the first half of the twentieth century, the going theory was that the invading element—the “antigen”—served as a template around which a corresponding antibody was molded. Only in 1955 did scientists discover the much stranger truth. It turned out that the cells that produce antibodies—called B cells, because they were first discovered in the bursa of Fabricius, an organ that does for bir…

Culture, intelligence, memes, innovation etc. are also evolutionary subprocesses of our species. Evolution is gradient descent, so is learning. It's all the same. Entropy minimization or competitive negentropy consumption, if you want.

Re: How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

#74

Post by kgc »

nahuel0x wrote: post #35

This is mind blowing: > For the first half of the twentieth century, the going theory was that the invading element—the “antigen”—served as a template around which a corresponding antibody was molded. Only in 1955 did scientists discover the much stranger truth. It turned out that the cells that produce antibodies—called B cells, because they were first discovered in the bursa of Fabricius, an organ that does for bir…

Unfortunately the thymus also loses mass in the process, so as you age, its function decreases.

Re: How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

#75

Post by AstralStorm »

flobosg wrote: post #62
panabee wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

extremely naive, dumb questeion: could cancer cells stem from some errant mutation of B cells? this might help explain why cancer cells grow uncontrollably and also escape detection by the immune system.

> could cancer cells stem from some errant mutation of B cells? That is exactly how lymphomas originate.

Also the replication machinery being easy to trigger is why it's the second most common cancer after skin cancers. (Which shares some of those features in addition to being even more exposed to insults and less controlled.)

Re: How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

#76

Post by AstralStorm »

jcims wrote: post #40
im3w1l wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for posting this. Looked further into atp synthase. Absolutely amazing. A little turbine, driven by the flow of protons, spinning in 120 degree discrete clicks, around catalyst pockets, where each click changes the shape of the pocket to a new one. And after the pocket has gone through a complete cycle, adp and phosphate have been fused. Never seen the chemical (proton concentration), converted into something…

ATP synthase is amazing. It uses the driving force from the potential gradient (aka voltage) built by the proton pump in the first video to spin at ~21,000 rpm and crank out ATP. I read that your body creates (and then consumes) about its own weight in ATP every day. This channel has a ton of great videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/WEHImovies/videos Here's one on kinetichore and mitosis (which also shows kinesin a…

Immediate step is a cell which is long and has a natural ion gradient. E.g. one with flagella on just one side. Then the better ones would evolve machinery to speed up the gradient, which happened to be using some energy but made said cell move and digest faster, thus also reproduce faster. At this point this could still be shut down during lack of food or activity, as there was a natural gradient when activity was nearby.

The membrane is the later invention, dating to organelles which are suspected to be microcellular parasites that got integrated and then reduced. These membranes were much more efficient, however they were very hard to turn off for hibernation as the membrane is a static gradient and hard to disrupt temporarily.

Re: How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

#77

Post by ajuc »

nahuel0x wrote: post #35

This is mind blowing: > For the first half of the twentieth century, the going theory was that the invading element—the “antigen”—served as a template around which a corresponding antibody was molded. Only in 1955 did scientists discover the much stranger truth. It turned out that the cells that produce antibodies—called B cells, because they were first discovered in the bursa of Fabricius, an organ that does for bir…

And then we're replicating that in our computer systems :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_immune_system

Re: How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

#79

Post by Engineering-MD »

AstralStorm wrote: post #75
flobosg wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> could cancer cells stem from some errant mutation of B cells? That is exactly how lymphomas originate.

Also the replication machinery being easy to trigger is why it's the second most common cancer after skin cancers. (Which shares some of those features in addition to being even more exposed to insults and less controlled.)

Where do you get that figure from? All the figures I have state lung and bowel cancers are the most common, along with prostrate and breast for sex specific cancers (although looking at their rates they would be the higher even though their rates in the other sex are exceedingly low).

Re: How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

#80

Post by nahuel0x »

longtom wrote: post #73
nahuel0x wrote: post #35

This is mind blowing: > For the first half of the twentieth century, the going theory was that the invading element—the “antigen”—served as a template around which a corresponding antibody was molded. Only in 1955 did scientists discover the much stranger truth. It turned out that the cells that produce antibodies—called B cells, because they were first discovered in the bursa of Fabricius, an organ that does for bir…

Culture, intelligence, memes, innovation etc. are also evolutionary subprocesses of our species. Evolution is gradient descent, so is learning. It's all the same. Entropy minimization or competitive negentropy consumption, if you want.

yes, but this process is running inside a single individual. As above, so below.
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