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Mitochondria Are Alive

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Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#321

Post by staplers »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #255
staplers wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Best argument I've heard for Gaia theory, intentionally or not.

We probably can keep a heart alive outside of body, through artificial means, for minutes, maybe hours - and I mean keep it functioning, not just chilling it to slow its death. It's plausible we'll learn to be able to keep it alive for days, months, years, decades. At which point we could say that the "supporting infrastructure" of the rest of a human body isn't necessary for the heart to be independently alive? What…

  At which point we could say that the "supporting infrastructure" of the rest of a human body isn't necessary for the heart to be independently alive
A human body would be supporting it, inside of itself or not. Similar to Earth and its "independent travelers" today.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#323

Post by djaygour »

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Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#324

Post by smolder »

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…

Right, the requirement for life is an entropy gradient sustained long enough as well as the right materials present to capture that.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#325

Post by smolder »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #224
jjk166 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The success of birds, bees, trees, plankton, mammals and so on. Many life forms have been rendered obsolete when the right adaptation comes along and forms a new branch.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#326

Post by mjan22640 »

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…

The benefit of mitochondria is in the isolation of the high power reactions, that involve chemically aggressive elements, from the rest of the cell. That allows for high energy throughput without self damage. Cells that do not have mitochondria run the same or analogous power producing reactions, but at a much lower volume, to keep the damage sustainable. An alternative option to mitochondria would be to evolve some means for isolation of the power production.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#327

Post by smolder »

Jerrrrrrry wrote: post #291
quantadev wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's based on the fact that one explanation of why there's not even millions more species of all life, is because the more successful ones simply cannibalized the less successful ones. This would've started even before complex life, almost at the chemical level. I say cannibalized, because avoiding eating your own species is a higher brain function that would've came far later, so it came down to eat or be eaten. Sti…

>I say cannibalized, because avoiding eating your own species is a higher brain function that would've came far later, Two convergent intuitions as to why this is true, but for the wrong reasons: Species (maybe only [di?]morphic ones) rarely kill other instances of their own species, only maim - usually to the point of socially/reproductive shame/selective behavior; as infra-species violence is usually done for sexua…

> it is not generally advantageous to actually hurt the opponent more than needed to signal dominance

It is advantageous to beat a rival and take their energy even within a species. That's part of the whole 'survival of the fittest' thing. Preserving them for cooperation or something like slavery happens, but it's a rare strategy specific to intelligent animals like the GP implies.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#328

Post by beltsazar »

rsync wrote: post #125
roncesvalles wrote: post #119

It's such highly unlikely chance events that make me think we really are alone in the universe (we = a sentient civilizational lifeform). There's just no way the long series of extremely improbable events that led to our rise was replicated anywhere else, and it took the sheer vastness of this universe for it to have emerged even once.

There is ~1M bacteria in a single drop of seawater. Now multiply that by (the ocean) and multiply the interactions by X billion years. It seems impossible for a symbiosis like this not to have happened . No matter how low the odds are, the counts of those potential interactions bring this outcome to a certainty.

This is a such common logical fallacy that we should have name for it.

> No matter how low the odds are, the counts of those potential interactions bring this outcome to a certainty.

"No matter how low", really? Are you suggesting that your multiplication result is infinite? Otherwise, no matter how big the result is—even if it's Graham's number or TREE(3)—but as long as it's finite, there are odds so low that bring the outcome extremely unlikely.

The thing is we don't know even a ballpark estimate of the odds, but you were saying like we have a lower bound of the odds. The universe is unfathomably huge, true, but we also don't know if abiogenesis is less unfathomably unlikely.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#329

Post by larodi »

positus wrote: post #265
dukeofdoom wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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]

Yeah?! You think so? Perhaps yours a strong argument against consumption of anything born this way, renders all meat consumption a bad thing with these same arguments… I bet 5€ you had your burger this morning and it had plenty of already dead cells in it, not to account for the yeast in the bread…

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#330

Post by blurbleblurble »

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…

It's wild to me that today's popular biologists like Michael Levin don't give Lynn Margulis credit in every single podcast/interview.
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