Cell Signaling Technologies – Detailed 3D model of human cells
digizyme.com
digizyme.com
It really shows how busy and complex life is.
...and it's "just" a cell, we have billions of them. Some die, some come into being every moment. The individual cells may depend on each other for survival, but it's still a mystery how all of this function and cling together into a big warm blob without falling apart into individual pieces.
How was this done? Raytracing? If yes, what was the resolution of the spacial data?
The scale seems wrong in some cases, though I'm not entirely sure. The mitochondria look far too small to me. For the ER which is similarly small it is quite clear that it's only showing a tiny subsection. In other parts the scale looks pretty good. And it does manage to convey how busy cells are a bit better than many visualizations.
For the audience here it might be worth emphasizing that these are pretty close zooms on cells, you can see individual proteins here. If you imagine an image of a cell, each visualization shown here is maybe a single pixel of that full image of a cell (I'm probably off by an order of magnitude here or two).
- Drew Berry (https://www.drewberry.com/)
- Janet Iwasa (http://onemicron.com/)
- Irving Geis, one of the pioneers in biomolecular art (https://pdb101.rcsb.org/sci-art/geis-archive/about)
Whenever I feel sad, reading about DNA, Ribosomal machines, and the complexity of a single cell makes me feel special. Life is the most complex organization of molecules and live emerges from the universe.. Its amazing to see we're all such a complex machine.
As a programmer starting to get acquainted with the stupendous complexity of life at the molecular level - I'm hoping there's many more of us in the months and years to come.
It's not possible to overstate the importance of this fact - all these structures and processes evolved - weren't designed - but evolved !
It's also incredible how scientists keep breaking through all kinds of scale related barriers to successfully study them
Why not: designed to evolve
Without evidence, it's just not worth the time.
We have evidence of evolution. Every observation fits the model. If you can refute it, you'll win a Nobel prize.
Or look at ATP, the power currency of all lifeforms we know off minus virii. Almost all bigger lifeforms converted to mitochondrial production but then you have things like slime mold that doesn't for some reason and plants which have both mitochondria and photosynthesis. The entire ATP system is a mess because it has it's fingers in every other process. Impossible to optimize because any change just kills the cell. If that is designed, it's garbage.
A simpler explanation is chlorophyll is balancing energy production vs. safety.
Instead, for a safe, steady energy output, the pigments of the photosystem had to be very finely tuned in a certain way. The pigments needed to absorb light at similar wavelengths to reduce the internal noise. But they also needed to absorb light at different rates to buffer against the external noise caused by swings in light intensity. The best light for the pigments to absorb, then, was in the steepest parts of the intensity curve for the solar spectrum — the red and blue parts of the spectrum.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-are-plants-green-to-reduc...
And again, organisms with purple chlorophyll have and continue to exist, so it's not like it's impossible or produces very incompetitive lifeforms.
For what? Along what metrics? To what end?
Evolution has no purpose. There's nothing to optimize for.
I think it was Alan Watts, "The way the oceans ways, the Universe peoples."
Since "it" has no goals, "it" can't optimize for anything, even survivability. That just happens.
- - - -
It's a matter of wonder that this apparently meaningless gyration of agitated molecules gives rise evidently to teleological entities, you and me friend, who can have goals.
The question before us is can we optimize for survivability, if that is our goal, or, if not, harmonize our goals with that goal (for those who do not shall surely perish, eh? Or do we take that on faith?)
How do you know what will work? It seems naive to me to criticize the only example we have, that has been successful so far for nearly four billion years and counting.
However, jumping in a scientifically-grounded discussion with "But what about design?" is kinda silly and unlikely to be useful.
Frankly, I think you're right, I believe God exists and created the Universe such that it includes evolution of life, and that this redounds to His glory. Hallelujah!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis
especially the "Primordial origin of biomolecules" section
You may also enjoy reading about the PAH world hypothesis
> His posthumously published book, The Phenomenon of Man, set forth a sweeping account of the unfolding of the cosmos and the evolution of matter to humanity, to ultimately a reunion with Christ. In the book, Teilhard abandoned literal interpretations of creation in the Book of Genesis in favor of allegorical and theological interpretations. The unfolding of the material cosmos is described from primordial particles to the development of life, human beings and the noosphere, and finally to his vision of the Omega Point in the future, which is "pulling" all creation towards it. He was a leading proponent of orthogenesis, the idea that evolution occurs in a directional, goal-driven way. Teilhard argued in Darwinian terms with respect to biology, and supported the synthetic model of evolution, but argued in Lamarckian terms for the development of culture, primarily through the vehicle of education.[15] Teilhard made a total commitment to the evolutionary process in the 1920s as the core of his spirituality, at a time when other religious thinkers felt evolutionary thinking challenged the structure of conventional Christian faith. He committed himself to what the evidence showed.[16]
> Teilhard made sense of the universe by assuming it had a vitalist evolutionary process.[17][18] He interprets complexity as the axis of evolution of matter into a geosphere, a biosphere, into consciousness (in man), and then to supreme consciousness (the Omega Point).
Someone here did something similar or can recommend some resources?
there's another book called cell biology by Alberts et al
But I don't even know enough to know how incredible it is
I studied Biology before but had issue remembering the names