The view of biology often presented to the public is oversimplified and out of date. Scientists must set the record straight, argues a new book.

Review of 2023 book: How Life Works: A User’s Guide to the New Biology Philip Ball. ISBN9781529095999

  • @stoneparchment@possumpat.io
    5•9 months ago

    I would encourage you to read the linked Science paper and Dan Nichol’s paper, Is the Cell Really a Machine?

    You feel that if a codon isn’t meant for something, if it doesn’t have a purpose– then it is junk. This is a mindset that is reflective of the machine model of the cell. We used to expect that each protein was bespoke for a function, each transcript necessary.

    The whole paradigm shift at hand is this model falls flat, even for coding regions. I think you’re actually very spot in here with the prokaryotic DNA or the plant genomes (love me some violets for their weird genomes). Some parts of a genome will rapidly change and appear to serve no real purpose, but the next bite is the important one: even if it seems like there isn’t a purpose, like a top-down prescription for functionality, those regions are still doing something while they are present.

    For example, some long non-coding regions affect the likelihood that a person will develop Parkinson’s disease, or in the case of plants with various polyploidies, the relative expression of their genes won’t necessarily change, but the absolute expression may.

    Basically, you aren’t wrong that these regions dont have a purpose, because no genes have a purpose. The cell isn’t a machine.

    • @CrayonRosary@lemmy.world
      0•9 months ago

      The cell isn’t a machine.

      What do you mean by this? I feel like you think the meaning is obvious after everything you’ve said, but it’s not.

      Even if we accept that everything you said is true, all it means is that the cell is a very, very complex machine. More complex than current models account for. It’s just chemistry, after all. The chemicals behave in predictable fashion or else life wouldn’t be possible at all. Molecules moving around, transforming, causing other molecules to transform, etc, etc, to turn food into shit and babies. You can always use the word “machine” to describe that, no matter how complex it is. Just like the word “algorithm” can be used to describe the function of code no matter how complex it is, whether it’s a simple path finding algorithm, or the newest machine learning one.

      But I probably shouldn’t use the word “function” because that implies purpose, and, as you say, no part of the chemistry of life has purpose. I hope you can detect my snark. That’s a pretty lame argument that’s philosophical at best. The purpose of the machinations of the cell is to maintain life and reproduce. No mater how many times you say it, your words won’t change the fact that that is the purpose of the chemistry of life.

      You’ve twisted around the word “purpose” in your head until it has no useful meaning. Nonsense. A molecule can many overlapping, hard to discern purposes. That does not mean it doesn’t have a purpose.

      • @stoneparchment@possumpat.io
        1•9 months ago

        When I say “the cell isn’t a machine”, it is in specific reference to the machine model of the cell, which is a previously established conceptual framework in the field of molecular biology. If you want to understand why that model is falling out of favor today, you’re invited to read the article linked by OP and/or the articles I have linked in other comments.

        The gist is that the cell is more complicated, flexible, and emergent than any machine has ever been and will be for the foreseeable future, and the idea that we can simply map the functions of each molecule in the cell to get a perfect “circuit diagram” of how everything plays together is defunct.

        I don’t have time to mess with this thread any more. You can either accept what myself (an expert in this field), the author of this publication (which happens to be one of the most prestigious journals in the world), and others who do this research daily are saying about this, or you can not. Frankly, if you are an expert also, the field, the research, and the truth barely cares about our opinion-- it certainly doesn’t care about non-expert opinions on the internet.