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Mitochondria Are Alive

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Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#181

Post by hshshshshsh »

timschmidt wrote: post #178
hshshshshsh wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain in simple terms? I see physical reality as almost redundant and consciousness seems to be able to do everything.

From the first paragraph of the linked article: "Mistaking the map for the territory is a logical fallacy that occurs when someone confuses the semantics of a term with what it represents. Polish-American scientist and philosopher Alfred Korzybski remarked that "the map is not the territory" and that "the word is not the thing", encapsulating his view that an abstraction derived from something, or a reaction to it, i…

Okay. I can see that in day to day life. People confusing sentences with actual knowing. Like labeling something a tree and thinking you know what a tree is because you know it's a "tree".

But how did anyone verify there is an underlying reality outside consciousness? It's just an assumption right?

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#182

Post by casenmgreen »

joshuahedlund wrote: post #144
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it had been found the same event had occurred again, fairly recently Would love to know the source if you have it.

Might be referring to this: https://newatlas.com/biology/life-merger-evolution-symbiosis...

Yes. That's the one. Thank you.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#183

Post by casenmgreen »

joshuahedlund wrote: post #144
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it had been found the same event had occurred again, fairly recently Would love to know the source if you have it.

Might be referring to this: https://newatlas.com/biology/life-merger-evolution-symbiosis...

Huh. This is the correct news, but a different article to the one I recall. However, very interesting;

> The first occurred about 2.2 billion years ago, when an archaea swallowed a bacterium that became the mitochondria.

> The second time happened about 1.6 billion years ago, when some of these more advanced cells absorbed cyanobacteria that could harvest energy from sunlight.

> And now, scientists have discovered that it’s happening again. A species of algae called Braarudosphaera bigelowii was found to have engulfed a cyanobacterium that lets them do something that algae, and plants in general, can’t normally do – "fixing" nitrogen straight from the air, and combining it with other elements to create more useful compounds.

So, tremendously rare, at least to our knowledge at this time, but not a one-off.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#184

Post by timschmidt »

hshshshshsh wrote: post #181
timschmidt wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the first paragraph of the linked article: "Mistaking the map for the territory is a logical fallacy that occurs when someone confuses the semantics of a term with what it represents. Polish-American scientist and philosopher Alfred Korzybski remarked that "the map is not the territory" and that "the word is not the thing", encapsulating his view that an abstraction derived from something, or a reaction to it, i…

Okay. I can see that in day to day life. People confusing sentences with actual knowing. Like labeling something a tree and thinking you know what a tree is because you know it's a "tree". But how did anyone verify there is an underlying reality outside consciousness? It's just an assumption right?

> But how did anyone verify there is an underlying reality outside consciousness?

It's the stuff which continues existing when we stop believing in it.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#185

Post by liyamchitayat »

meneton wrote: post #179

This article is framed as if there is something novel and profound here, but the "aliveness" of mitochondria is simply a matter of how we choose to apply the label "life" - a human linguistic construct that exists independently of the biological phenomena. This is not a new discussion - science has been considering this question for many decades, just as it has with viruses. These all come down to arguments about sem…

Hi!

I agree with you, which is why I wrote this- but if you google "are mitochondria alive" gemini says it isn't. And yes, the cells in your heart have an effective and potenitial niche!

We seem to have many tools to engineer viruses, but few to engineer mitochondria- perhaps considering them as alive could change that!

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#186

Post by liyamchitayat »

outworlder wrote: post #86
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #78

Mitochondria are why I’m a Rare Earther. In Earth’s history, mitochondrial endosymbiosis occurred once. Without that you don’t have the energy budget for complex life. Moreover, there may be a narrow window where it can happen: modern microbiology has defences and selection pressures that it make inhospitable to the hobbling chimeræ the first mitochondrial cells would have been. Until mitochondria, the emergence of l…

Mitochondria seems to have been an 'accident', yes. That does not mean that other lifeforms in different planets require mitochondria or equivalent organelles. As long as they can perform the necessary chemical reactions (which could be different in a different environments) and extract enough energy, they should be good. How did mitochondria evolve in the first place? Could they have remained as independent organism…

One interesting thing is that many reactions actually have to occur in their own compartment- and since we have not lost the mtDNA, it may suggest that having an additional control center is beneficial.there are some interesting theories about the relations of that to lifespan https://www.cuimc.columbia.edu/news/mitochondria-are-flingin....

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#187

Post by [deleted] »

hshshshshsh wrote: post #169
dekhn wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no known scientific principle or theory with experimental support that without a conscious observer reality cannot exist. It's not something that can be tested, and lies in the realm of philosophy, not science.

I don't think reality has this property that what cannot be tested through scientific method is not true.

[deleted]

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#188

Post by tim333 »

liyamchitayat wrote: post #185
meneton wrote: post #179

This article is framed as if there is something novel and profound here, but the "aliveness" of mitochondria is simply a matter of how we choose to apply the label "life" - a human linguistic construct that exists independently of the biological phenomena. This is not a new discussion - science has been considering this question for many decades, just as it has with viruses. These all come down to arguments about sem…

Hi! I agree with you, which is why I wrote this- but if you google "are mitochondria alive" gemini says it isn't. And yes, the cells in your heart have an effective and potenitial niche! We seem to have many tools to engineer viruses, but few to engineer mitochondria- perhaps considering them as alive could change that!

I just tried that and it said:

>Yes, mitochondria are alive, though they are not considered "living" in the same way as a cell because they can't function independently...

Maybe it's learning!

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#189

Post by patcon »

outworlder wrote: post #86
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #78

Mitochondria are why I’m a Rare Earther. In Earth’s history, mitochondrial endosymbiosis occurred once. Without that you don’t have the energy budget for complex life. Moreover, there may be a narrow window where it can happen: modern microbiology has defences and selection pressures that it make inhospitable to the hobbling chimeræ the first mitochondrial cells would have been. Until mitochondria, the emergence of l…

Mitochondria seems to have been an 'accident', yes. That does not mean that other lifeforms in different planets require mitochondria or equivalent organelles. As long as they can perform the necessary chemical reactions (which could be different in a different environments) and extract enough energy, they should be good. How did mitochondria evolve in the first place? Could they have remained as independent organism…

Mitochondria allowed who different energetic regimes and structures. Like the scaffold that allows multicellular organisms to even hold together simpler are not possible (energetically) without mitochondria. It took the whole marriage of the two systems to allow the energy state (the "chemical reactions" as you say) to be possible

SFI Complexity podcast has a few great episodes on this

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#190

Post by francisofascii »

Teever wrote: post #4

As a layman I'm kind of baffled by the enduring pop-sci interest in mitochondria. To me the far more interesting organelle is the ribosome. This elegant self-replicating machine that is highly conserved across lifeforms is fascinating and much closer to the origin of life than mitochondria. How did ribosomes evolve? Are the ribosomes that we see in modern organisms the first design that did evolve? Why are they highl…

Mitochondrial health is considered a strong proxy for overall health.
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