Talk and converse with cells, a new path
Diagnosis and therapy of current medicine are still subjected to a medieval empiricism that recent discoveries and new technologies have not yet managed to eradicate. Just think of liver or cardiac biopsies, a large needle that picks up a thin cylinder of tissue, to understand how far we still need to go to reach the goal.
The question is, which way? I am reminded of the approach of today’s mechanic compared to yesterday’s: the second had his senses and intuition at his disposal to understand what the fault was, the first today inserts a pin in the control site and with the his computer diagnoses the fault and plans how to fix it. He has learned to communicate with all the car systems that respond to question.
Can a similar system be hypothesized in medicine? Avoid thinking about where you could insert it.You can imagine that the examination takes place in the following way: a small plate, capable of collecting the electromagnetic signals of the mucosal cells, is inserted into the inner part of the cheek, the surface of the plates communicates with the epithelial cells to which he asks for an account of the state of the art of the various organic districts. The answers are immediate and precise and the doctor can immediately tell us what is the cause of our ailments-
Science fiction? No, certainly not, if scientific research will turn its attention to the ways in which the body’s cells speak to each other, studying their language, grammar and syntax, and preparing an exhaustive vocabulary. Because it is certain that the cells, even two simple liver cells, located one next to the other, talk to each other, exactly as we humans do, who continually exchange information, sometimes even in excess; they do the same thing, morning and afternoon, evening and night included. What they say is easy to imagine, but it is as if they say it is the real problem.
I have stated that they talk to each other and this refers to a subject who converses, and who is therefore conscious and thinking. But are cells thinking subjects? Perhaps not in the common sense of the term with reference to a brain that manages communication, but certainly as a system that well knows its tasks and the strategies to implement them and that knows how to evaluate if variations or deviations are needed and how to correct them, communicating and interchanging them. with higher level and more complex contacts. Individuals, cells, aware of their role, aware of being an integral and inseparable part of a larger and more complex system to which they must be accountable, but at the same time in some way autonomous, capable of decisions, while integrated in and by the system.
Thinking subject, then? Maybe. A series of considerations arise spontaneously at this point. Let us consider a newly fertilized human egg cell in which the nuclear material (twenty-three pairs of chromosomes) has been recomposed. It is a single cell in whose chromosomes an amazing project has been drawn up for the construction of an individual, man, capable of self-perpetuating himself in time and space, with the use of a few billion trillions of information necessary for the oupo. A Treccani encyclopedia of which we discovered a few letters with which a few words were written and read. But the most incredible thing is that these chromosomes behave like an extended team of professionals, prepared and intelligent, in putting the project into action, executing it in every detail, without making mistakes in most cases, even making extreme decisions like that to interrupt the course of gestation if the fetus does not meet the required vitality requirements. One could think, without fear of error, that precisely that chromosomal convolution is the true intelligence present on our planet, also because what we consider such, the activity of our brain, is already, with its hundred billion neurons, entirely written in those same.
It can be understood from the above how the truly thinking subject is the chromosomal set, although this assumption refers to the problem of what is the actual level at which information exists and how it flows in space and time. The fact that a simple epithelial cell can be reprogrammed and transformed into totipotent, then brought back to the early stages of development, suggests that the chromosomal set of this cell also has the same information and the same project of the egg cell mentioned above, that is in every living cell, human and otherwise, there are all the necessary information and all the living projects that exist on this earth. And it is easy to understand how the communication between these subjects is the first characteristic that distinguishes them. Finally, if we consider that all the historical memory of the evolution of every form of life resides in the chromosomes, then we understand that the true journey towards knowledge has a single, precise, irrefutable direction.
In summary: the chromosomal material existing on earth represents the true intelligent subject and has the sole purpose of perpetuating itself in space and time. We are an expression of the artist’s work in us, our chromosomal kit, we are not the artists! Perhaps it is appropriate to bear this in mind. Now let’s go back to cellular communication to try to define what the cells say to each other, how they say it and to whom they turn to to communicate their situation, or any problems, and to receive indications of behavior
The most complex topic is the way they speak. Many forms of cellular communication are already known: “Cells communicate and interact with each other through the phenomenon of cell signaling. A signal cell produces a signal molecule. recognized by a target cell, by means of a receptor protein, which in turn produces intracellular signals. The entire process that translates the information carried by the extracellular messenger into intracellular changes is called signal transduction “. We could define the aforementioned level of communication as a biochemical level that takes place through well-known combinations of protein molecules, the coupling of which generates modifications of the quaternary structure that translate into incoming or outgoing communication signals. The architects of this mechanism are integral proteins, embedded and crossing the cell membrane at full thickness. In their outer extremity they appear on the surface of the cell like bushes, which in combination with the signal molecules activate a process of information transfer within the cell; which, through dedicated transporters, influences the cellular metabolic system or, by entering the nucleus, reports information on the active chromosomal segments in that cell.
This level refers to current pharmacological therapies, which use active molecules to influence cellular activity: the drug represents information capable of modifying and directing that cell or group of cells towards normal functioning (which may not all respond to the same way). At the biochemical level we could also assimilate some signal that should arise from the deformations of the cell membrane caused by mechanical waves, for example sound (the roar of the lion is capable of generating fear even if heard from behind the bars of a cage due to evident genetic reminiscences) . This last possibility refers us to an expansion of the meaning of information that we can define as any variation of the state of the elements of a field (in the Einsteinian sense), elements all interconnected and influencing each other: the field is like a large square in which an individual looks at the chiseled portal of the church in front of him, he does not receive and take in only the information that comes from the object on which he has voluntarily fixed his attention, but many other tens of thousands of data are read and processed at the same time without his being aware of it.
The same phenomenon occurs on the surface of the cell, namely that tens of thousands of data are managed and used for every need of the cell. But what are so many thousands of data for? Most of them belong to the category of controllers, that is, they have the task of verifying that the signal is managed correctly, a photocopy of what happens to our mobile phones in which, to ensure correct signal transmission, this is overloaded with stabilization bits . Another part, on the other hand, is necessary to ensure that the area in which the signal passes is stable, safe, protected, in order to allow it to transit smoothly. A last part relates to the conditions of the interface between even in the presence of variations. The attention of scholars has so far focused only on the chiseled portal, the chemical level of communication, if only for the fact that it is closer and more sensitive to our means of investigation and understanding. The question now is: where are the other tens of thousands of data and how are they articulated?
Let’s imagine that we enlarge the cell surface by about 10,000 times, taking us to a nanometric level: the bush represented by the outer part of the integral protein transforms into a gigantic tree whose foliage floats in the wind of the electromagnetic field in a sky of changing electronic clouds. continually causing chain changes. And the changes of the external structure cause equivalent modifications of the internal one, thus producing a conspicuous import of data, which are used by the cell both at the plasma and nuclear level. The conformational modification of even one of the subunits often determines, due to the interactions present in the protein, changes in the properties of an adjacent site (allosterism). And not just wind, but also rain and hail in the form of nano structures that shape the cell surface and represent a significant component of the communicative exchange. Not to mention the birds that fly in this sky, which come and go from their nest, constituting the basic information of cellular exchange.
Personally, I believe this is the level at which the homogeneity of the field gives full and true meaning to the concept of information defined above. In the complex system of electronic clouds that constitute the external surface of cells and their interface, we must suppose that the variations of the elements present in the field are the most used, complementary and above all implement communication mechanism at the biochemical level. This dialoguing, exchanging, transmitting, receiving information, by field variation makes us think of us with our cell phones and their functioning: the cell surface is like a portion of the earth’s surface, millions of messages travel through the air encountering various disturbances, they are intended for dedicated receivers capable of recognizing the base signal that may have been distorted, decrypt it, if needed, decode it and send it to the recipient. But if on the earth’s surface there are antennas and repeaters to make communications travel, which we can monitor in many ways and in any conditions, and we are almost always able to read everything that travels, on the cellular surface things are completely unknown scientists: the only certain thing is that repeaters and antennas are represented by integral proteins, but we know nothing about the codes of coding, decoding, transmission protocol, all the devilry that accompany the flow of so many thousands of data.
To find out more about this data traffic we should intercept them, inserting ourselves in the communicative context, but today we do not have physical means to do so, the space in which to place our bugs is too infinitesimal (however we do not have such small ones). The first goal of anyone wishing to study this type of communication would be to develop sensors capable of detecting the slightest variations in the field, which are nothing more than the words that the cells exchange. But there would remain the problem of understanding its meaning and this is possible only by setting up a research that has as its objective the possibility of talking to a cell, using as an experimental model the use of some large isolated cells with which to try to speak, using as a protocol the exchange of signals to and from the cell in order to allow a first approach to a grammar, a syntax and a vocabulary, to constitute the basis of the future dialogue with the cell, which must be considered an extremely intelligent individual, with multiple and profound knowledge that it could transmit to us. A working hypothesis could be that of a giant cell immersed in a culture medium and surrounded by highly sensitive sensors (they are the BMI, brain mental interface, or the Neuralinks, already existing and able to communicate with groups of cells) . The cell could be subjected to various physical conditions, for example by heating the culture medium or cooling it, and then detecting the variations on its surface, variations that would be encoded with the possibility of reproposing them. At this point the operator would first propose the temperature change and then, having restored the normal conditions, would send the coded signal for hot or cold waiting to understand what the cell response signal will be. It would be a Kind of operating conditioning as the dialogue would take place on known conditions, hot, cold, bright light, dark, etc., and would allow the operator and the cell to be in harmony, in agreement on simple basic conditions. I know that you know, you know that I know: this is the first contact. Then… you will have to continue. We are dealing with a kind of alien inside us, who does nothing to reveal himself to our senses, with whom today the exchange is almost nil, but who has not had the input of absolute silence. We are the ones who have to go and find him, to get to know him, have him tell us many things, and ask him who he really is and where he comes from. If it were a film, probably, when asked who it is, it would answer “Universal genetic corps, serial number 1245783501”.
