
Normally when we think about the components of the human body, we think of it as the parts that we can interact with like organs or systems. Looking at ourselves this way does little to shed light on our origins, but one level finer does. Each of those organs and systems are made up of smaller independent functioning units we cannot see. It is amazing to think that our body is built from trillions of microscopic blocks expressing themselves in different ways. Not only is it amazing, but it also makes you wonder how all those cells come to be stuck together. And maybe even more puzzling is how each cell - which each contain the same set of instructions - knows what role it should fill.
On two levels our bodies have grown from a single cell to the trillions each of us consist of. One level spans billions of years, through the indirect guiding force of evolution our DNA has morphed to create a more and more complex survival machine. Also, over a period of nine months every time a new human is created, one cell follows those evolved instructions to create more and more cells as we grow and our bodies take form in the womb.
We know that these tiny things outside our scope of vision have ways to communicate with each other. Mostly with chemical signals where one cell sends out a chemical that another cell is set up to detect. That's great, but it's hard to take that knowledge and understand how that can enable the amazing orchestration of our existence. I think this is a subject that is so deep with details, that there is quite bit that nobody knows yet. There are some things that give us a glimpse of understanding though.
A pretty illuminating example is one that I saw Bonnie Bassler use in this video about how bacteria talk. The Vibrio Fischeri bacteria can detect how tightly packed it is with others of it's kind. That's one single cell "communicating" with other cells. I think this example gives at least a hint of understanding of how many different types of similar communications going on in our bodies might make us tick.
But how did all these different cells and communication mechanisms in our body come to be? There's a long, long story about that which we can unfortunately theorize about the exact details. A series of posts on Nirmukta called "Complexity Explained" provides a lot of enlightening information on the subject. The twelfth post here also contains a good explanation of cell differentiation in section 12.3, which is like the launching pad for understanding how the cells in our body know what job to fill.
When you think about our bodies on a microscopic scale, and how each of our building blocks is actually using a similar bag of tricks as some single celled luminescent bacteria floating in the sea - it paints a beautiful picture of how closely related we are to every other living thing on earth. The closer we look at ourselves, the more we realize that we are another configuration of life only slightly different from millions of others.
On two levels our bodies have grown from a single cell to the trillions each of us consist of. One level spans billions of years, through the indirect guiding force of evolution our DNA has morphed to create a more and more complex survival machine. Also, over a period of nine months every time a new human is created, one cell follows those evolved instructions to create more and more cells as we grow and our bodies take form in the womb.
We know that these tiny things outside our scope of vision have ways to communicate with each other. Mostly with chemical signals where one cell sends out a chemical that another cell is set up to detect. That's great, but it's hard to take that knowledge and understand how that can enable the amazing orchestration of our existence. I think this is a subject that is so deep with details, that there is quite bit that nobody knows yet. There are some things that give us a glimpse of understanding though.
A pretty illuminating example is one that I saw Bonnie Bassler use in this video about how bacteria talk. The Vibrio Fischeri bacteria can detect how tightly packed it is with others of it's kind. That's one single cell "communicating" with other cells. I think this example gives at least a hint of understanding of how many different types of similar communications going on in our bodies might make us tick.
But how did all these different cells and communication mechanisms in our body come to be? There's a long, long story about that which we can unfortunately theorize about the exact details. A series of posts on Nirmukta called "Complexity Explained" provides a lot of enlightening information on the subject. The twelfth post here also contains a good explanation of cell differentiation in section 12.3, which is like the launching pad for understanding how the cells in our body know what job to fill.
When you think about our bodies on a microscopic scale, and how each of our building blocks is actually using a similar bag of tricks as some single celled luminescent bacteria floating in the sea - it paints a beautiful picture of how closely related we are to every other living thing on earth. The closer we look at ourselves, the more we realize that we are another configuration of life only slightly different from millions of others.





