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Quote by Ray Nayler

“you and I having this conversation right now, and anyone reading the magazine, is part of an unbroken chain of communication – an interpretive process, with messages being exchanged millions of times per second, between cells and even organelles within cells, that stretches back, totally unbroken, 3.7 billion years. That’s 3.7 billion years of conversation going on between living structures in order to allow us to be here today. If there had ever been a break, even for a second, you wouldn’t be here. If you were looking for a metaphysical thought to give you a sense of overwhelming wonder, all you need is to meditate for a moment on the fact that you are part of this unbroken exchange, a conversation that goes all the way back to the puddle, or the clay-like substrate, that all life emerged from.”

Quote by Ray Nayler

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Ray Nayler

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“To make things even more challenging, cells must also be able to make all of their component molecular machines using only the resources that are available in the local environment. Think of the magnitude of this accomplishment. Many bacteria are able to build all of their own molecules from the a few simple raw materials like carbon dioxide, oxygen, and ammonia. A single bacterial cell knows how to build several thousand types of proteins, including motors, girders, toxins, catalysts, and construction machinery. This cell also builds hundreds of RNA molecules with different orderings of nucleotides, as well as a diverse collection of lipids, sugar polymers, and a bewildering collection of exotic small molecules. All of these different molecules must be created from scratch, using only the molecules that the cell eats, drinks, and breathes.”

InspirationalHumorScienceCellsComplexityBacteriaResourcefulMolecularBiosynthesis
Book:The Machinery of Life
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“Endrocrine cells have neither dendrites nor axons, but many are like neurons in other ways. Some are electrically exitable: when pancreatic beta cells see an increase in extracellular glucose concentration they fire in bursts of spikes that are like the phasic bursts of vasopressin neurons; these bursts lead to calcium entry and trigger insulin secretion. In both neurons and endocrine cells, peptides are packages in vesicles just as neurotransmitters are. Typically, peptide secretion is the result of the same process as that by which neurotransmitters are released: exocytosis is triggered in both cases by an increase in intracellular calcium. In neurons, this happens when spikes depolarize the neuron, opening voltage-sensitive calcium channels, and the same occurs in spiking endocrine cells. However, endocrine cells have another trick. Th cell bodies of all eukaryotic cells contain rough endoplasmic reticulum, which sequesters free calcium, and activation of receptors for some neurotransmitters or hormones can release calcium from these stores. In many endocrine cells, this 'calcium mobilization' can trigger exocytosis of vesicles without any involvement of spikes. There is no rough endoplasmic reticulum in axon terminals, so spikes are necessarily involved in the release of synaptic vesicles.”

CellsCalcium MobilizationEndocrine
Book:The Heart of the Brain: The Hypothalamus and Its Hormones
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“The MWC equilibrium framework not only has been exploited for thinking about the activity of the chemotaxis receptors but also has served as a null model for the switching behavior of the bacterial flagellar motor. This motor switches between clockwise and counterclockwise rotation, as a result of the binding of CheY-P to the FliM part of the motor. The distribution of duration times in the counterclockwise rotation state of the motor appears to defy description in terms of the MWC model and Ising-type conformational spread model, instead demanding that the system operate out of equilibrium with constant energy dissipation. The emergence of such nonequilibrium effects where the MWC framework breaks down represents one of the most exciting frontiers for thinking about the function of allosteric molecules in the context of living cells.”

EnergyCellsEquilibriumAllosteric MoleculesAllosteryMwc
Book:The Molecular Switch: Signaling and Allostery
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“The cellularists, it is but fair to recall, regarding the cellule as the simplest anatomical element, believed it proceeded necessarily from a former cellule, omnis cellula e cellula, holding it to be the vital unit, living per se, and regarded an entire organism as the sum of these units. But we now know that that was a deduction from incomplete and superficial observations, for the cellule, a transitory anatomical element, has the microzyma for its anatomical element. It is this which alone possesses all the characters of an anatomical element, living per se, and which must be regarded as the unit of life. It is what I have already stated in the following terms: The microzyma is at the beginning and at the end of every living organization. It is the fundamental anatomical element whereby the cellules, the tissues, the organs, the whole, of an organism are constituted living.”

LifeScienceCellsMicrozyma
Book:The Blood and Its Third Anatomical Element
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