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Mitochondria Are Alive

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Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#221

Post by dekhn »

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?

Yes, it's taken on faith by scientists that we live in an objective universe with cold hard reality outside our consciousness. It seems like a reasonable assumption, consistent with all our observations. It seems not unreasonable to assume that in the early universe there was nothing living, then at some point, through random chance, the first living things became alive (possibly from some non-alive replicators), and then later, the first living things with consciousness came to be. Again, all of this is consistent with our observations, but effectively taken on faith/treated as an assumption.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#222

Post by thinkling »

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…

> Most of their genes, the code for their structure, are in the nuclear DNA.

Are they? I was under the impression that mitochondria are closer to pseudo-cells living inside human cells.

Wikipedia seems to confirm this [1]:

> Although most of a eukaryotic cell's DNA is contained in the cell nucleus, the mitochondrion has its own genome ("mitogenome") that is substantially similar to bacterial genomes.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrion

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#223

Post by _yb2s »

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…

There are a huge number of different organelles that evolved independently through events like this- other people mention chloroplasts but there are many others, and probably many yet undiscovered.

I would argue that the type of event that produced mitochondria is likely not rare at all, but certain pairings will so outcompete others that we should expect only one to survive and dominate.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#224

Post by JumpCrisscross »

jjk166 wrote: post #218
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is possible it happened other times but those lineages were out-competed, for whatever reasons, and are now extinct Chlorophyll probably outcompeted retinal [1]. (The stuff in our eyes.) The reduced form of my claim is that mitochondrial life so freakishly outcompetes its competitors as to be in a class of its own. Which still yields a rare Earth, albeit a first among many. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purp…

In an evolutionary process, one lineage running away is the most likely outcome. It's very unlikely that two competing lineages would evolve to be exactly equal at the same time and remain equal for an extended period of time.

> In an evolutionary process, one lineage running away is the most likely outcome

What are you basing this on?

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#225

Post by dekhn »

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…

what about obligate intracellular parasites like mycoplasma? They are awfully close to mitochondria but we think of them as alive. They've lost many of their genes and can't survive without the host. Looking at those, you could almost see a path from an obligate intraceullular parasite to an organelle derived from a phagocytosed prokaryote.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#226

Post by WalterSear »

hshshshshsh wrote: post #154
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If reality can emerge out of nowhere I don't see it unlikely for life to emerge in some other planet If everything however unlikely is likely because creation is unfathomable, sure.

Not everything. Life in particular. Because without life (a conscious observer) reality cannot exist. So it should be a property of reality for life to emerge.

A 'quantum observer' is merely a physical system that interacts with the quantum system being measured. It doesn't have to be conscious or animate.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#227

Post by kylebenzle »

thinkling wrote: post #222
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…

> Most of their genes, the code for their structure, are in the nuclear DNA. Are they? I was under the impression that mitochondria are closer to pseudo-cells living inside human cells. Wikipedia seems to confirm this [1]: > Although most of a eukaryotic cell's DNA is contained in the cell nucleus, the mitochondrion has its own genome ("mitogenome") that is substantially similar to bacterial genomes. [1] https://en.w…

OP above you is correct. Maybe you are thinking about it wrong?

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#228

Post by satvikpendem »

Rumudiez wrote: post #137
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> are organisms without mitochondria too though. So it’s viable. True, it's an anaerobic ersatz cnidarian [1] that may be an escaped cancer [2]. [1] https://daily.jstor.org/who-needs-mitochondria-anyway/ [2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6343361/

> [discovered in] gut bacteria from a researcher’s pet chinchilla wow. we could be surrounded by so many extraordinary organisms and not even know it because there's so much variety just in our own backyards

There was a study where participants were asked to swab their belly buttons and lots of new organisms were found.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/12/1-458-bac...

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#229

Post by jessriedel »

asveikau wrote: post #170
jessriedel wrote: post #153

This article managed to hit two classic science journalism cliches in just the first few paragraphs. (1) “Someone hypothesizing a very dramatic theory with weak evidence was considered wrong by most colleagues but later vindicated when strong evidence emerged”. (No mention of thousands of other dramatic hypotheses that turned out wrong.) (2) “You may have heard in unsophisticated popularization that [philosophical cl…

For #1, I disagree with how you assess this. Firstly, the one who makes the logical fallacy inference that this implies all or most dramatic hypotheses are true is ... You. Not the author of the article. The author of the article is only talking about one specific theory. If I tell you a story about a chicken crossing the road, I'm not obligated to tell you about all the chickens who don't cross any roads. Second, th…

My point isn’t that these can’t be interpreted correctly, it’s that these framings teach us nothing new because they have been repeated a thousand million times and this article does not attempt to go beyond the superficial cliche.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#230

Post by jessriedel »

liyamchitayat wrote: post #211
jessriedel wrote: post #153

This article managed to hit two classic science journalism cliches in just the first few paragraphs. (1) “Someone hypothesizing a very dramatic theory with weak evidence was considered wrong by most colleagues but later vindicated when strong evidence emerged”. (No mention of thousands of other dramatic hypotheses that turned out wrong.) (2) “You may have heard in unsophisticated popularization that [philosophical cl…

Hi! for point 2# I had many debates about this with Prof. that are cell biologists, and if you google "Are mitochondria alive," the answer Gemini will give you is no. This is very controversial in my academic circles, but I appreciate your thoughts!

My point is that it’s largely a semantics dispute, not a scientific one.
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