RSS 2.0 Feed

» Welcome Guest Log In :: Register

    
  Topic: Measels and Cancer< Next Oldest | Next Newest >  
Steviepinhead



Posts: 532
Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Jan. 06 2007,16:59   

I guess we're still unclear whether the questioner was a one-time drive-by, or a sincerely interested person who's just away thinking or researching.

Sticking with the charitable interpretation, however, I'll add this tidbit from PZ Myers' roundup of one of the sessions at the Phoenix conferece he's been attending.  As you'll see, there's a tie-in with cancer/multicellular animals (the bolding is mine):
Quote
N.W. Blackstone: Foods-eye view of the transition from basal metazoans to bilaterians. This was another weird talk that came from a completely different perspective and made me think. It might actually be a little too weird, but it's still provocative and interesting. Blackstone is looking at everything from the perspective of metabolic signaling—he's clearly one of those crazy people coming out of the bacterial tradition. Cells communicate with one another with the byproducts of metabolism, where the redox state of membrane proteins are read as indicators of the internal state of the cells (he later calls this "honest signaling", because there aren't any intermediates between the cell and the expression of its metabolic state). The big innovation in the eukaryotes was to escape volume constraints by folding their chemiosmotic membranes into the interior of the organism, and the major animal innovation was the evolution of the mouth, which allowed specialized acquisition and processing of food patches. Subsequent evolution was to allow the animal to sense and seek out and exploit food patches in an environment where they were dispersed in a non-uniform manner. Another interesting tangent was the question of cancer: long-lived sponges and cnidarians don't get cancer. His explanation was that it was because their cells use that "honest" metabolic signaling, so that rogue cells don't have a way to trick the organism into allowing them to use more resources than they actually need; the only way to signal is to exhibit genuine metabolic distress, and cells with metabolic problems will die. Our cells have these indirect, multi-layered signaling mechanisms that allow cancer cells to "lie" to the organism as a whole.


More, uh, food for thought...

  
  6 replies since Jan. 02 2007,14:47 < Next Oldest | Next Newest >  

    


Track this topic Email this topic Print this topic

[ Read the Board Rules ] | [Useful Links] | [Evolving Designs]