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Mitochondria Are Alive

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Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#261

Post by dukeofdoom »

incompatible wrote: post #253
beambot wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These all come down to arguments about semantics and don't add anything to the science. This accurately describes much of science... > My heart can exist independently of me, and be transplanted into other people, but does it mean that it is alive? The cells that comprise your heart are very much alive, but they will die without support infrastructure. They live, they replicate, they die -- like every cell in your…

"Very much alive," in the sense of being a living organism in their own right. By that standard, each cell in the human body can also be considered a separate living organism, simply cooperating with other humans cells in a complex way. It makes sense, since we have no problem identifying the trillions of bacteria cells living on or in the human body as separate living organisms.

"Sperm and egg cells, known as gametes, fuse during fertilization to create a zygote. "

Since all humans were just 2 cells at one point. It seems to follow that the entirely of the code for what a human is, is contained in just those 2 cells. Not just code for a finger. But even code for our deeply ingrained fear of snakes. Was just at one point contained in those 2 cells. Kind of blows your mind.

If they are separate living organisms, then there seems something recursive about humans if they can be just 2 cells at one point.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#262

Post by opello »

dekhn wrote: post #245
satvikpendem wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure you should be relying on an LLM as any indication of anything... More seriously, considering something as being alive in order to engineer them better does not necessarily change the fact of them actually being alive or not, in my opinion.

If LLMs work the way I understand them to, they are trained on large corpora which contain a statistical preponderance of statements which are consistent with the current scientific mainstream, so it may not be completely crazy to try doing this; you'd get the scientific mainstream explanation, and possibly a few alternative hypotheses if they had enough literature support.

> which are consistent with the current scientific mainstream

This seems to require a high amount of curation of training inputs, but I haven't done real digging into it, just going off the more casual "all of stackoverflow" or "all of reddit" type comments frequently thrown around. But if there is such a curation I'd agree, I just don't think there is that curation.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#265

Post by positus »

dukeofdoom wrote: post #261
incompatible wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Very much alive," in the sense of being a living organism in their own right. By that standard, each cell in the human body can also be considered a separate living organism, simply cooperating with other humans cells in a complex way. It makes sense, since we have no problem identifying the trillions of bacteria cells living on or in the human body as separate living organisms.

"Sperm and egg cells, known as gametes, fuse during fertilization to create a zygote. " Since all humans were just 2 cells at one point. It seems to follow that the entirely of the code for what a human is, is contained in just those 2 cells. Not just code for a finger. But even code for our deeply ingrained fear of snakes. Was just at one point contained in those 2 cells. Kind of blows your mind. If they are separat…

[flagged]

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#267

Post by thinkling »

725686 wrote: post #241
thinkling wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

They were, originally. Over the eons, they have lost many of their original genes. Source: Nick Lanes fantastic books, specially Power, Sex, Suicide

Saw another recommendation for that book in this discussion and will be reading it. Thanks.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#268

Post by type0 »

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…

> There have been many such endosymbiotic events in the history of life - there are subfields of evolutionary biology that study these processes.

Exactly, if mitochondria is alive then so is chloroplasts and who knows what else. The line needs to be drawn somewhere, also life and death isn't as clear-cut as many used to believe

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#269

Post by TeMPOraL »

Random thought after reading all the philosophical and semantics tangents in the comments here:

A good example of a memetic equivalent of endosymbiosis could be Christianity - Catholicism in particular. Historically, as Christianity spread around the world over the two millenia, it would often adapt and absorb indigenous beliefs and practices of converted populations[0]. Many would die out over time, but some got integrated into the core and exported globally.

It's just the right time of year to think about Christmas[1]. Can you imagine Christianity without one of its two core holidays? That makes it probably the closest memetic equivalent of a mitochondria - you can still see in it the distinct outline of an ancient Roman festival that was absorbed early on, but all of its memes live on in Christianity. In our times, the holiday is vital to the overall faith, and itself could not exist independently[2].

--

[0] - I've always been taught that this was intentional slack to make it easier for people to accept a new religion, but nowadays I feel it might have been a fundamentally unavoidable outcome. Maintaining organizational coherence and belief consistency at a scale of a whole continent requires communication and bureaucratic technologies that didn't exist until the last 100-200 years.

[1] - Or at least so most shops would have me believe; in western commercial calendar, Christmas starts when Halloween ends.

[2] - Well okay, I admit this might be a weak part of the analogy - in the western world, Christmas got commercialized to the point it could likely survive as an independent secular tradition.

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