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How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

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Re: How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

#91

Post by BlueTemplar »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #78

Thankfully, we do have a (now scientifically proven !) working "cure" – though it mostly works at the onset of the first symptoms, when the virus is only starting to get a foothold in the body : https://hcqmeta.com/ https://hcqtrial.com/

Hmm, finally managed to find some criticism of the 2nd link :

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/hcqtrial-com-astroturf-and-...

Ok, that doesn't look good… (Still, I would have preferred that doctors would be free to decide by themselves which drug to prescribe for a new disease. After all, they have skin in the game !)

Re: How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

#92

Post by kitd »

kitd wrote: post #58
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…

As a layman, I found "The Gene Machine" by Matt Ridley a fascinating exposition on how 'mechanical' genetics can be.

Apologies, it's "Genome" by that author:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Genome-Autobiography-Species-23-Cha...

Re: How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

#93

Post by andromeduck »

ggghhhfff wrote: post #88
andromeduck wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you going to run a GPU sim on a bunch of meat?

I believe what is meant here is that the alternative is to have a highly developed capacity for abstract thought that you then use to collaborate with your species to develop antibodies in a laboratory (humans are an example of this, although we don’t rely upon this mechanism)

Yeah but how is that going to arise out of nature? It's like asking why birds use vision + magnetism to navigate when they could just use GPS -- the MVP is too massive and inflexible.

Re: How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

#94

Post by im3w1l »

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…

I feel like learned nothing about how the pump works from that sodium - potassium video. They just handwaved it away with "conformational changes". Would be neat if they zoomed in on the moving parts.

This one has a little more, even if a lot of questions still remain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEefVREZ1Ao

Re: How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

#95

Post by im3w1l »

AstralStorm wrote: post #76
jcims wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

So if you have a long cell with an ion-gradient along it, I guess you have to have the turbines attached to something right? Or else the protons will just push it around rather than spin it? And then there is still the issue of protons just flowing around the turbine rather than through it. It may be possible, but to my layman intuition it sounds way harder to get right than a membrane.

I wonder if maybe an intermediate step could be just channels and turbine. But no pump. If the amount of protons surrounding membrane varies over time, the cell can open the channels when there are many protons outside, and close the channels when there are few (forcing equalization through turbines).

Or maybe it can use acid protolysis to create protons?

Re: How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

#96

Post by jcims »

im3w1l wrote: post #94
jcims wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I feel like learned nothing about how the pump works from that sodium - potassium video. They just handwaved it away with "conformational changes". Would be neat if they zoomed in on the moving parts. This one has a little more, even if a lot of questions still remain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEefVREZ1Ao

Nice! Glad i'm not the only one decending into these worm holes.

Re: How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

#97

Post by asdff »

rv-de wrote: post #71
asdff wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Everything in biology is observed metrics

Re: How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

#98

Post by jcims »

im3w1l wrote: post #95
AstralStorm wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

So if you have a long cell with an ion-gradient along it, I guess you have to have the turbines attached to something right? Or else the protons will just push it around rather than spin it? And then there is still the issue of protons just flowing around the turbine rather than through it. It may be possible, but to my layman intuition it sounds way harder to get right than a membrane. I wonder if maybe an intermedi…

This makes a lot of sense, thanks!

Re: How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

#99

Post by thro1 »

Entaroadun87 wrote: post #3

Really like this analogy: It is a somewhat astonishing fact of life that the exact same DNA is shared by every cell in your body, from the skin to the brain; those cells differ in appearance and function because, in each of them, a molecular gizmo “transcribes” some DNA segments rather than others into molecules of single-stranded RNA. These bits of RNA are in turn used as the blueprints for proteins, the molecular m…

AFAIK every neuron cell in the brain has (minimally) different DNA.

Re: How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

#100

Post by panabee »

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.

is it possible that other cancer cells are further downstream mutations of B cells? thanks for sharing. sorry if these are dumb questions.
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