Basic extraordinary cell biology

During a recent visit with my 12-year old daughter’s science teacher, I mentioned that I had read a few books on cell biology over the past couple of years and that I was interested in sitting in on one of the upcoming sixth grade science classes--my daughter had mentioned that they were beginning to study cell biology. I mentioned a few of the things that I had found interesting about cells to the science teacher. After noticing my enthusiasm, she retracted her invitation to watch the class and, instead, invited me to teach part of the class. A few days later I made my science teaching debut. I advised the sixth-graders that although I work as a lawyer during the day, I often read science books, and I often write about science on my website. I told them that I had no serious science education at the Catholic grade school I attended. I didn’t have any biology class at all until I was a sophomore in high school. That was mostly a nuts and bolts class taught by a Catholic nun who failed show the excitement the subject deserved. She also forgot to teach by Theodosius Dobzhansky’s maxim that "nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." I told “my” class that anyone who studies cells with any care will be greatly rewarded. Studying cells is actually autobiographical because “you are made of 60 trillion of cells.” These cells are so small that people cannot even see them. One of the students then confused trillions for millions. “Keep in mind,” I cautioned, “that a trillion is a million million.” With regard to their size, there is only one human cell--the human ovum--that you can see with the naked eye—it is much bigger than the other cells in your body. Despite its tiny size, the human ovum is so incredibly small that it’s smaller than the period at the end of this sentence. See this wonderful illustration of the size of human cells, and many other small objects.

The volume of a eukaryotic cell is typically 1000 times larger than that of a prokaryotic one. Page 28

I told the students that the study of cells is autobiographical “because each of you is a community of cells. You are a self-organized community.” [More . . . ]

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The inner life of your cells

I don't claim to understand most of this Harvard video regarding the inner life of cells, but I'm fascinated by the visuals. This 2006 video by Alain Viel, Robert A. Lue and John Liebler, functions as a biography about you (and me) and brings to mind the following passages from Harold M. Franklin's poetic/scientific book, The Way of the Cell, Page x (2001):

One response to the question, What Is Life?, is simply, Look around! Note the birds and butterflies, zebras and ammonites, the intricate web of life present and past, and joined the unending struggle to ensure its continuance in the face of human arrogance and mindlessness. This has been eloquently said by others, far better than I could, and it is not what I have in mind here. For the past 40 years, I’ve been immersed in research on the biochemistry and physiology of microorganisms, with emphasis on the fundamental aspects such as bioergetics and morphogenesis. In consequence, the central problems of life present themselves to me at the interface of chemistry and biology. How do lifeless chemicals come together to produce those exquisitely ordered structures that we call organisms? How can molecular interactions account for their behavior, growth, reproduction? How did organisms and their constituents arise on an Earth that had neither, and then diversify into the cornucopia of creatures that can live in each drop of pond water? My purpose is not to “reduce” biology to chemistry and physics, but to gain some insight into the nature of biological order. Inevitably, then, this is a personal book–one scientist’s attempt to wring understanding from the tide of knowledge. It grew out of the experience of a lifetime devoted to research, scholarship and instruction; but since my purpose is to make sense of the facts of life rather than to expound the facts themselves, this inquiry walks the edge of science proper. The arguments and conclusions presented here seem to me sound, but they are certainly not the last word on the subject. The most valuable lessons that the discipline of science teaches are to play the game of conjecture and reputation, to appreciate the provisional nature of our knowledge, and to prize doubt! If what I have written here encourages a few readers to look up from their gels and genes to peer at the far horizon, I shall be well content. Of my shortcomings as an investigator, scholar, philosopher and expository I am keenly aware . . .
Every month it seems that I hear yet another sad story about someone who has been stricken by a terrible disease or who has recently died. When they hear of these things, most people wonder, "How could this have happened?" Though I also mourn these events, I inevitably find myself wondering how bodies work at all. They seem far too complicated to work for even a second, much less for a lifetime. I know that they work, because I sitting here breathing and writing, but how is it possible that the extensive mechanical-seeming processes taking place within each of my cells successfully scale up to the organism level? Every breath is miraculous and every act of conscious generosity is beyond explanation (including religious "explanation"), at least to those of us who are honest.

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Computer animation of DNA at work, at the molecular level.

This computer animation was dramatic. I'd never seen anything like it. It is a lively model demonstrating how DNA is copied and how DNA is transcribed into RNA, among other things. These critical activities certainly need to zip along, given the total unraveled length of the DNA in each human…

Continue ReadingComputer animation of DNA at work, at the molecular level.