Joined: 6 Feb 2005 Age: 44 Gender: Male Posts: 24,182 Location: 28th Path of Tzaddi
13 Apr 2021, 9:58 pm
This is really fascinating. I'm about 2/3 of the way through, the bit about the two-headed flat worms that can be cut into several pieces and regenerate as two-headed is really catching my interest. The overall idea of what's being presented here - cell differentiation is guided by the kind of bioelectric template that's often described by tadpoles but the idea is that it's the ion channels of the cells that get the whole network talking on a level that's more 'meta' than neurons (it would have to be the case to tell neurons to be neurons and have a language for that) and that cell differentiation in various steps between zygote, embryo, fetus, etc. is mostly guided by that electrical software layer.
What's pretty radical about this - instead of it just being the hardware unpacking itself to code, or even some of the things I remember Robert Sapolsky talking about where fractal bifurcation is coded for without exact specifics, this a whole other governance (software) layer managing the process.
_________________ “Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.” - James Baldwin
Joined: 6 May 2016 Age: 60 Gender: Male Posts: 3,965 Location: Missouri
13 Apr 2021, 10:52 pm
Sounds interesting. Saved on YT to watch/listen to when my brain is more up to taking things in.
_________________ "There are a thousand things that can happen when you go light a rocket engine, and only one of them is good." Tom Mueller of SpaceX, in Air and Space, Jan. 2011
13 Apr 2021, 9:58 pm
