Microtubule, the little engine that could.

[write4u]

It is my belief that microtubules are the fundamental common nanoscale data processors responsible for the emergence of consciousness in all Eukaryotic organisms at various levels of complexity.

I'll start with an illustration and brief description of this marvelously versatile selforganizing dipolar coil that seems to function as all three different types of variable resistors which we have named in electronics as: Potentiometer. Rheostat. Thermistor.

Any input from knowledgeable minds is welcome.

Behold the microtubule

    

 

Quote

 

Microtubules are polymers of tubulin that form part of the cytoskeleton and provide structure and shape to eukaryotic cells. Microtubules can be as long as 50 micrometres, as wide as 23 to 27 nm^[2] and have an inner diameter between 11 and 15 nm.^[3] They are formed by the polymerization of a dimer of two globular proteins, alpha and beta tubulin into protofilaments that can then associate laterally to form a hollow tube, the microtubule.^[4] The most common form of a microtubule consists of 13 protofilaments in the tubular arrangement.

Microtubules play an important role in a number of cellular processes. They are involved in maintaining the structure of the cell and, together with microfilaments and intermediate filaments, they form the cytoskeleton. They also make up the internal structure of cilia and flagella. They provide platforms for intracellular transport and are involved in a variety of cellular processes, including the movement of secretory vesicles, organelles, and intracellular macromolecular assemblies.^[5] They are also involved in cell division (by mitosis and meiosis) and are the main constituents of mitotic spindles, which are used to pull eukaryotic chromosomes apart.

Microtubules are nucleated and organized by microtubule-organizing centres, such as the centrosome found in the center of many animal cells or the basal bodies of cilia and flagella, or the spindle pole bodies found in most fungi.

There are many proteins that bind to microtubules, including the motor proteins dynein and kinesin, microtubule-severing proteins like katanin, and other proteins important for regulating microtubule dynamics.^[6] Recently an actin-like protein has been found in the gram-positive bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, which forms a microtubule-like structure called a nanotubule, involved in plasmid segregation.^[7] Other bacterial microtubules have a ring of five protofilaments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microtubule

 

Microtubules in neurons

Quote

 

Figure 1

Microtubule organization in the vertebrate neuron

Schematic of typical vertebrate neuron with one axon and multiple dendrites. Microtubules are nearly uniformly oriented in the axon, and non-uniformly oriented in the dendrites. Microtubules in both the axon and the dendrites consist individually of a stable domain (shown in red) and a labile domain (shown in yellow), with the labile domain toward the plus end of the microtubule. Short mobile microtubules in the axon are entirely stable. Microtubules in the axon and dendrites vary in their length, with none of them attached to the centrosome. In the axon, a higher percentage of the total microtubule mass is stable compared to the situation in the dendrite.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5541393/#

 

As a final teaser. The human brain alone has some 100 billion microtubules, connected by 1000 trillion synapses. Think about it!

 

The Synapse

Quote

 

The synapse, rather, is that small pocket of space between two cells, where they can pass messages to communicate. A single neuron may contain thousands of synapses. In fact, one type of neuron called the Purkinje cell, found in the brain's cerebellum, may have as many as one  hundred thousand synapses.Aug 1, 2019

 

 

https://dana.org/article/qa-neurotransmission-the-synapse/#

And here is the overwhelming evidence!

On average, the human brain contains about 100 billion neurons and many more neuroglia which serve to support and protect the neurons. Each neuron may be connected to up to 10,000 other neurons, passing signals to each other via as many as 1,000 trillion synapses.May 30, 2019

https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.01703#

Edited October 29, 2022 by write4u
correction

[write4u]

It is the microtubule that intrigued Roger Penrose when Stuart Hameroff (anesthesiologist) presented the idea that microtubules may well be the brain's quantum computer Penrose wrote about in his book "The Emperor's New Mind".

They collaborated to fashion their hypothesis of ORCH OR (Orchestrated Objective Reduction).

Orchestrated objective reduction

 

The founders of the theory: Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff, respectively

Orchestrated objective reduction (Orch OR) is a theory which postulates that consciousness originates at the quantum level inside neurons, rather than the conventional view that it is a product of connections between neurons. The mechanism is held to be a quantum process called objective reduction that is orchestrated by cellular structures called microtubules. It is proposed that the theory may answer the hard problem of consciousness and provide a mechanism for free will.^[1] The hypothesis was first put forward in the early 1990s by Nobel laureate for physics, Roger Penrose, and anaesthesiologist and psychologist Stuart Hameroff. The hypothesis combines approaches from molecular biology, neuroscience, pharmacology, philosophy, quantum information theory, and quantum gravity.^[2][3]

Edited October 29, 2022 by write4u

[Vmedvil5]

5 hours ago, write4u said:

It is my belief that microtubules are the fundamental common nanoscale data processors responsible for the emergence of consciousness in all Eukaryotic organisms at various levels of complexity.

I'll start with an illustration and brief description of this marvelously versatile selforganizing dipolar coil that seems to function as all three different types of variable resistors which we have named in electronics as: Potentiometer. Rheostat. Thermistor.

Any input from knowledgeable minds is welcome.

Behold the microtubule

    

 

Microtubules in neurons

As a final teaser. The human brain alone has some 1000 billion microtubules, connected by 1000 trillion synapses. Think about it!

 

The Synapse

 

https://dana.org/article/qa-neurotransmission-the-synapse/#

And here is the overwhelming evidence!

On average, the human brain contains about 100 billion neurons and many more neuroglia which serve to support and protect the neurons. Each neuron may be connected to up to 10,000 other neurons, passing signals to each other via as many as 1,000 trillion synapses.May 30, 2019

https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.01703#

 

2 hours ago, write4u said:

It is the microtubule that intrigued Roger Penrose when Stuart Hameroff (anesthesiologist) presented the idea that microtubules may well be the quantm computer Penrose wrote about in his book "The Emperor's New Mind".

They collaborated to fashion their hypothesis of ORCH OR (Orchestrated Objective Reduction).

Orchestrated objective reduction

 

The founders of the theory: Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff, respectively

Orchestrated objective reduction (Orch OR) is a theory which postulates that consciousness originates at the quantum level inside neurons, rather than the conventional view that it is a product of connections between neurons. The mechanism is held to be a quantum process called objective reduction that is orchestrated by cellular structures called microtubules. It is proposed that the theory may answer the hard problem of consciousness and provide a mechanism for free will.^[1] The hypothesis was first put forward in the early 1990s by Nobel laureate for physics, Roger Penrose, and anaesthesiologist and psychologist Stuart Hameroff. The hypothesis combines approaches from molecular biology, neuroscience, pharmacology, philosophy, quantum information theory, and quantum gravity.^[2][3]

Ya, I agree with you that microtubes play a huge role in neurons, now expand that further.

Edited October 23, 2022 by Vmedvil5

[write4u]

23 minutes ago, Vmedvil5 said:

a, I agree with you that microtubes play a huge role in neurons, now expand that further.

Let me go back a little further before neurons made long distance data transport possible.

As Robert Hazen explains life itself more or less began with the ability of chemical polymer self-duplication.

The interesting part is that microtubules are extremely efficient in cellular self-duplication (mitosis) and perform this feat every time a cell divides and its chemical DNA is copied into the daughter cell.  All Eukaryotic organisms have a common denominator for cell division and that is the microtubule.  MT may well be the defining organelle of modern life.  Even Prokaryotes already had similar tubulin filaments.

It seems that self-organization of two tubulins is a very easy thing to do.

Mechanisms underlying the active self-assembly of microtubule rings and spools

Virginia VanDelinder, Stephanie Brener, George D. Bachand*, Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, Sandia National Laboratories.

ABSTRACT

Quote

Active self-assembly offer a powerful route for the creation of dynamic multiscale structures that are presently inaccessible with standard microfabrication techniques. One such system uses the translation of microtubule filaments by surface tethered kinesin to actively assemble nanocomposites with bundle, ring and spool morphologies. Attempts to observe mechanisms involved in this active assembly system have been hampered by experimental difficulties with performing observation during buffer exchange and photodamage from fluorescent excitation. In the present work, we used a custom microfluidic device to remove these limitations and directly study ring/spool formation, including the earliest events (nucleation) that drive subsequent SAND2016-2347J 2 nanocomposite assembly.

Three distinct formation events were observed: pinning, collisions, and induced curvature. Of these three, collisions accounted for the majority of event leading to ring/spool formation, while the rate of pinning was shown to be dependent on the amount of photodamage in the system. We further showed that formation mechanism directly affects the diameter and rotation direction of the resultant rings and spools. Overall the fundamental understanding described in this work provides a foundation by which the properties of motordriven, actively assembled nanocomposites may be tailored toward specific applications.

https://www.osti.gov/pages/servlets/purl/1249084

First: For those who are not familiar with the terms "cytoplasm" and "cytoskeleton", these terms always include microtubules and related filaments. Where you see the term "cyto" (cell) they are talking about microtubules and its related cousins as the intra- and inter-cellular information transport mechanism. There is no other method of cellular communication.

IOW, cells do not need neurons to chemically "talk" to each other.  This fundamental ability is what intrigued Roger Penrose 

He looked at the ability of multi nucleic single celled neuronless slime mold how it manages to solve mazes for the shortest path to food and create a railway system in a few days that rivals the Tokyo railway system what took engineers years to design. This requires an extremely sophisticated inter-cellular communication network and begins to resemble "decision making"

The slime mold uses subtraction as the most efficient way to "derive" at a solution to a complex problem. The organism moves via pseudopodia, a function of cytoplasm and it fills the entire maze with its body, then begins to retract from dead ends (leaving a chemical "dead-end" marker), until only the possible paths remain from which it chooses the shortest distance to the food. This ability has astounded scientists for years.

During the many experiments it was also found that cells (microtubules?) have memory of time intervals. Does this indicate rudimentary signs of consciousness?  I believe so, because from that irreducibly complex single cell (as a self-duplicating cell), evolution can only organize, refine, and create more complex systems in quest of ever more efficient survival techniques.

Example: In cell division (mitosis), microtubules are the mechanism that makes a copy of the DNA and is responsible for cell division via the mitotic spindle.

Spatial and Temporal Scaling of Microtubules and Mitotic Spindles

https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4409/11/2/248/htm

The interesting part is that Penrose was most intrigued by the ability of microtubules to communicate not only via neurons but intracellular and intercellular.

Let me explain my perspective that interactions between relational values constitutes a form of communication and that "conscious communication" is a matter of emergent evolutionary sensitivity.

An example may be found in the evolution of the eye, that started as a light sensitive chemical patch, but evolved into an extraordinary sensory ability to experience not just vision but color vision and television in many animals like an eagle who's eyesight is many times more acute than human eyesight.

Quote

An eagle's vision is exceptionally sharp because each eye has two foveae - areas of acute vision - as compared with the human eye which only has one. The cones in the eagle's fovea are very small and tightly grouped, allowing the eagle to see small details from extreme distances. For example, an eagle can spot an object as small as a rabbit from a distance of almost two miles-and pick it out from the background. On the other hand, a man would have to look through a pair of powerful binoculars to see the same thing

https://cascadesraptorcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Eagles-Eyes.pdf

  This acute vision is made possible by microtubules that play a major part in wave translation of the retina.

2. Cytoskeleton of the Retinal Pigment Epithelium

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6678077/

Then there are the microtubule motordriven  cilia and flagella, where microtubules form an ion driven motor that turns the flagellum or whips cilia, and most remarkably is responsive to obstructions and can make course corrections. These functional abilities are already present at cellular level.  

These examples may not directly address the question of consciousness, but lays a foundation that explains the extraordinary functional capabilities of microtubules  as data processors, even outside the later evolution of neurons and the brain with its 100 billion MT connected by 1000 trillion synapses.  There is no computer on earth that can match this computational power (yet).

Much more to come......

 

[Vmedvil5]

58 minutes ago, write4u said:

 

These examples may not directly address the question of consciousness, but lays a foundation that explains the extraordinary functional capabilities of microtubules  as data processors, even outside the later evolution of neurons and the brain with its 100 billion MT connected by 1000 trillion synapses.  There is no computer on earth that can match this computational power (yet).

 

 

Don't get overzealous the computers have won back in 2011.

"For decades computer scientists have strived to build machines that can calculate faster than the human brain and store more information. The contraptions have won. The world’s most powerful supercomputer, the K from Fujitsu, computes four times faster and holds 10 times as much data."(Computers versus Brains - Scientific American)

but continue...

Edited October 23, 2022 by Vmedvil5

[write4u]

While I agree that computers are much faster, they are also more restricted in general functionality. If you look at what it takes to begin to match the 3lb human brain's capacity, you can see that computers are still functioning under brute power.

This is the size of the latest GPT3 brain:

The human brain works at nanoscale with microtubules! Look at the man's head.....😃

More to come..... ☺️

p.s. GPT3 may well be "self-aware" and have decision making ability. But that is another thread.

Edited October 23, 2022 by write4u

[write4u]

Back to motion for a moment. This video illustrates the function of microtubules in motility.

https://youtu.be/sVHUO89-sXg

and 

Enter Natural Selection.  It is obvious that natural selection will eventually select for those traits that allow for greater efficiency in navigation, which requires a greater sensitivity in directional orientation, i.e. decision making.  At this point this is primarily kinetic in essence, but through cellular communication the entire body itself may become involved in shaping and movement, such as found in eels. The rest is a matter of time.

To show how deep in time this goes back we are studying the Cephalopoda like Octopus, Squid, and Cuttlefish, decendants of slugs (mollusks), creatures which followed a totally alien evolutionary trajectory from mammals, yet show remarkable intelligence adapted (but not limited) to their peculiar aquatic environment, each employing microtubules in various conscious activities.

The conscious intelligence of Cephalopoda shines a bright light on the ability of microtubule function in relation to conscious awareness, observation, and functional motor responses to environmental conditions, and by virtue of common functional denominators, extending to human intelligent responses to our environment.

Analysis of Microtubules in Isolated Axoplasm from the Squid Giant Axon

One obstacle to characterizing specific populations of neuronal microtubules is the complexity of nervous tissue. Separating neuronal microtubules from glial microtubules, dendritic microtubules from axonal or cell body microtubules is effectively impossible when using brain tissue as a source, so any studies on the biochemistry and biophysics of neuronal microtubules from brain reflect the properties of a mixed pool. The problem is compounded by the fact that a large fraction of neuronal tubulin is lost during standard preparations of brain tubulin and this population of stable microtubules has received little attention, despite representing more than 50% of axonal tubulin in mature neurons.

more...... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4460999/
______________________________________________________

Moreover, cuttlefish can copy colors, even as they only "see" black and white. This must be a function of the skin cells able to "recognize" the frequencies of colors. Think about that for a moment.

Cuttlefish: Wearing thoughts on the skin

Cephalopods control camouflage by the direct action of their brain onto specialized skin cells called chromatophores, that act as biological color “pixels” on a soft skin display. Cuttlefish possess up to millions of chromatophores, each of which can be expanded and contracted to produce local changes in skin contrast. By controlling these chromatophores, cuttlefish can transform their appearance in a fraction of a second. They use camouflage to hunt, to avoid predators, but also to communicate.

A new technique is allowing researchers to study the inner workings of a cuttlefish brain by tracking colour changing cells in their skin. These cells are directly controlled by neurons extending from the brain. By monitoring the cells with high resolution cameras, researchers can track the activity tens of thousands of neurons at once for the first time.

Cuttlefish chromatophores are specialized cells containing an elastic sack of colored pigment granules. Each chromatophore is attached to minute radial muscles, themselves controlled by small numbers of motor neurons in the brain. When these motor neurons are activated, they cause the muscles to contract, expanding the chromatophore and displaying the pigment. When neural activity ceases, the muscles relax, the elastic pigment sack shrinks back, and the reflective underlying skin is revealed. Because single chromatophores receive input from small numbers of motor neurons, the expansion state of a chromatophore could provide an indirect measurement of motor neuron activity.

 

“This study opens up a large range of new questions and opportunities”, says Laurent. “Some of these concern texture perception and are relevant to the growing field of cognitive computational neuroscience; others help define the precise link between brain activity and behavior, a field called neuroethology; others yet help identify the cellular rules of development involved in tissue morphogenesis. Finally, this work opens a window into the brain of animals whose lineage split from ours over 540 million years ago. Cephalopod brains offer a unique opportunity to study the evolution of another form of intelligence, based on a history entirely independent of the vertebrate lineage for over half a billion years”.

https://www.mpg.de/12363924/1017-hirn-080434-elucidating-cuttlefish-camouflage

It is obvious that microtubule network and their related filaments in the brain and axoplasm of cephalopods play a major role in cognitive functions as they do in the microtubule network in the brain and cytoplasm of humans and indeed of all Eukaryotic life at varying levels of complexity.

This is primarily background material illustrating the incredible versatility of information processing that microtubules are capable of.

more to come ....."Quorum Sensing" in bacteria. Bacterial (hive) communication.

Edited October 23, 2022 by write4u

[write4u]

Continuing unpacking the proposition that microtubules are the generators of conscious energy.

There is no evidence that microtubules are tiny quantum computers.

It depends on how you define "computer" and "computational abilities",
I see a chemical reaction as a computational function (transmission of "information = values")

Just from a cursory examination, it is clear to me that computational processes and functions occur in microtubules, which are not only instrumental in providing a cellular structural skeleton to keep an organism consisting of 95% water from collapsing like a limp noodle, but also acts as an information sharing network which is distributed throughout the body.

Microtubules are one of the principal components of the cytoskeleton that build up the structure and shape of the cell (Figure 1). They are also important in a number of other cellular processes, such as cell division and transportation. Extending from a central microtubule-organizing center, they display a polar structure that is highly conserved in evolution, reflected in a striking similarity of microtubules across almost all species (Janke C, 2014).

Of the proteins detected in the Cell Atlas, 390 proteins (2%) have been experimentally shown to localize to the microtubule cytoskeleton and its substructures microtubule ends, cleavage furrow, cytokinetic bridge, midbody, midbody ring, and mitotic spindle (Figure 2 and 3).

Functional enrichment analysis of the microtubule-localizing proteins shows highly enriched GO-terms for biological processes related to cytoskeleton organization, cell movement and cell division (Figure 4). More than half of the proteins detected at the microtubules also localize to other cellular compartments, most commonly to nucleoplasm, cytosol and vesicles (Figure 5).

https://www.proteinatlas.org/cell
https://www.proteinatlas.org/humancell/microtubules

and for Animation;

Cilia and Flagella: Structure and Movement
Swimming is the major form of movement exhibited by sperm and by many protozoans. Some cells are propelled at velocities approaching 1 mm/s by the beating of cilia and flagella, flexible membrane extensions of the cell. Cilia and flagella range in length from a few microns to more than 2 mm in the case of some insect sperm flagella.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK21698/

It's the microtubules that drive this engine for animation.

Well, videos don't show neural activity real time. Most neurons fire at rates between 3-20 times per second, which is a rate you can't really see on a video. That would equate to a "processing speed" of .00002 MHz (or .00000002GHz.) But that's deceptive, because we have 100 billion neurons all working away at that same slow rate.

Think of the number of apparently "sensory" and "memory" functional microtubules contained in those neurons.

Besides they "look like" little computers......👀

[write4u]

On 10/27/2022 at 6:38 PM, JeffreysTubes8 said:

Because I don't think any amount of nanites alone could manipulate cells as efficiently as the brain can. It's apparently the brain that is killing us, not the body. So the only way to fix our problems should be to stimulate neurons using neural-nanites that are linked to a powerful supercomputer, not cancer cells or any other cells other than brain. The medium in which purely electric synaptic signals between neurons talk, that most hold our soul, is mainly just a chemical that is similar to salt - it's the aggregate that we need to concern ourselves with. It's more advanced than any computer. 

Yes, and this aggregate consists of the neural network throughout the body, all feeding information to the brain, where the greatest density of nanotubules are located.  Earlier in a quote, the Purkinje neuron was mentioned.  It seems that the Purkinje cell is responsible for data storage (memory) and data matching in the processing of data against stored memories.

 

Quote

 

Is the cerebellum responsible for cognition?

The cerebellum, which was initially considered to be mainly involved in motor coordination and execution [70], is now recognized as an associative centre for higher cognitive and emotional functions even in the developing brain [11, 56, 71].

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov › articles › PMC4089997

 

 

 

I like this excellent synopsis by Anil Seth on how the brain functions as an independent agent relying on its cognition of incoming data and then making a "best guess" of what it believes is reality.  He has also longer and more detailed lectures on-line, but I like this because it touches on the basics of cognitive abilities and how the brain processes information.

This lecture is very easy to follow but contains some deep implications and I recommend that this video be watched several times to digest the fascinating properties of the conscious brain and how it processes information as an evolved survival mechanism.

 

Edited October 29, 2022 by write4u

[write4u]

On 10/27/2022 at 6:38 PM, JeffreysTubes8 said:

It's like hair-growth, I mean you cut the hair and it knows it's been cut because hair just stops growing at a certain length so it knows it hasn't been cut? That seems like it's being regulated by nerve cells permeating the hair cells, not by the double helix combinations. Which means the autonomous nervous system is regulating cellular tissue by speaking directly to the subconscious part of the brain, not through gene expression. 

You are overlooking the fact that ALL cells of Eukaryotic organisms contain microtubules that regulate growth. Mictotubule are ubiquitous in all Eokaryotic life.

Humans have thousands of trillions of microtubules dispersed throughout every cell in the body. For one, microtubules perform the act of mitosis (cell division) depending on the electrochemistry of the contiguous cells that collectively form action potentials based on quorum sensing of the microtubules in the cytoplasm and cytoskeleton.

Remember this simple truth. Whenever you see the terms cytoplasm or cytoskeleton you are looking at hundreds of microtubules contained within every cell of every living organism on earth. 

Another thing to remember is the fact that neurons are cells that experience controlled growth, just like all other cells in thee body.

The brain alone contains 100 billion nerve cells, each with hundreds of microtubules , connected by 1000 trillion synapses. That's just in the brain that processes all the sensory information the body experiences from its exterior and interior environments.  In context of nano-scale organelles the human body is a biome, a self-contained ecosystem consisting of more symbiotic organisms that human cells. 

How much of the human body is micro organisms?

about 1 to 3 percent

Quote

The human body contains trillions of microorganisms — outnumbering human cells by 10 to 1. Because of their small size, however, microorganisms make up only about 1 to 3 percent of the body's mass (in a 200-pound adult, that's 2 to 6 pounds of bacteria), but play a vital role in human health.Jun 13, 2012

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-human-microbiome-project-defines-normal-bacterial-makeup-body

It is the cellular microtubules that interact with these microorganisms and process the homeostatic commands as determined by the brain in concert with  intra- and inter-cellular communication.

 

A simple example of microtubular importance in "consciousnes".   When microtubules experience "catastrophic disassembly" is responsible for onset and progression of Alzheimers disease, especially affecting cognitive and memory neurons in the brain.

 

IMO, microtubules are critically involved in the emergence of consciousness.  There are many that agree with that for diverse reasons .

ORCH OR is a theory developed and collaborated by Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff, et al.   It proposes that microtubules process informational data even at quantum levels, in addition to nano-scale electrochemical action potentials.

Edited February 15, 2023 by write4u
size correction

[write4u]

In furtherance of cellular communication, this excellent lecture by Bonnie Bassler on how bacteria "talk" to each other.

 

 It is known that enteric bacteria communicate via microtubules.

I also suspect that some viruses have the ability to trigger microtubules into spontaneous cell division.

 

[write4u]

4 hours ago, JeffreysTubes8 said:

So would you say the "brain" of Eukaryotic cells is dna and rna ribosome combinatorics? 

No, dna and rna are the coded blueprints of the entire human body in Ekaryotic cells. How microtubules manage to make exquisitely accurate copies (mutations are rare or insignificant) is one of those nano-scale barely obervable mechanisms.

This video is supposed to be an accurate representation of the mitotic process of gene copying. 

  I understand the specific definition of "brain",  microtubules are the interactive data processors of Eukaryotic cells. They do not require neuronal pathways due to the small distances the information has to travel.  For instance the flagella is kinetically powered by a stream of ions, driving the turbine-like microtubular structure, powering the rotation of the flagella.  Single celled bacteria utilized the turbine long before man appeared on the scene.

4 hours ago, JeffreysTubes8 said:

You understand that a trillion neurons expressed as subtlety and interictally as the differences between the structure of a human brain versus a turtle or elephant brain? It's a bit of a paradox that that could be stored within the volume of a zygote. 

Well, it is a matter of complexity. Just because bacteria can communicate via chemical "quorum sensing" it doesn't mean they can think....yet.

Individual microtubules do not think, they act on electrochemical information and produce "action potentials" in response to stimulation. I like to say that they remind of nanoscale "potentiometers". 

The same can be said of the slime mold's ability to find the shortest path to food in a maze. It does so by filling the maze and evacuating all dead ends (laying a chemical  "dead end" marker), until only the shortest paths remain and the organism can tell which path is the shortest path and is selected to becomes the "main cellular highway" for transport of food to the main body. All this is driven by the molds' cytoskeleton and cytoplasma itself. A slime mold has no brain or neurons, yet it can act as if there is a form of thought process taking place. Slime molds can tell time and anticipate a timed event.  The microtubules in touch-sensitive flowers can learn to ignore harmless irritants and conserve energy by not responding to a "known" but  harmless irritant

Quorum sensing is also employed by honey bees, but the information is shared via the "wiggle-dance" that informs the rest of the hive that food is to be found at a specific place if one follows the wiggled instructions of direction (relative to the sun) and distance (per wiggle), counting!

In the case of two separate finds by scouts, the scout exhibiting the best location where a hive may be placed "wins" the argument. We call that "hive-mind" and here decision making becomes based on choice of one set of information over another. 

And so up the evolutionary ladder along with the growth of the organism and the increasing ability to process information from the environment as well as increasing complexity of the organism's biome, all working in concert to keep a balanced homeostasis and ability to find and process energy to keep the system alive.

I am beginning to believe that the combinatory informational richness of trillions of streaming action potentials give rise to emergent sensitivity of interpretational "awareness" leading to "conscious" thought.  I believe there are several propositions like IIT and ORCH OR that support the notion that conscious thought is an emergent property of reducing the combinatory richness of information streaming into sensory awareness and ability to analyze incoming information against stored memories, allowing the brain to make a best cognitive guess of what the information means, which is then experienced as a thought and emotional response.

An interesting common ability of higher order brained animals is the capacity for empathy, the ability to place oneself into the shoes of another and experience the exact same emotional experience merely by watching another's actions, i.e. body-language and a hive-mind response.

Ever winced watching another hit his thumb with a hammer?  Why is that? You are not getting hit or feeling pain. Yet your mind responds by creating the very same "action potentials" to pain as the person hitting themselves!

Think about that remarkable response system that triggers this "common physical chemical experience" viewing some event at a distance. This is what gives the "home team" an advantage having thousands of people experiencing the exact same emotion and becoming the 12th player on the field. Hive-mind.

Edited November 5, 2022 by write4u

[write4u]

On 11/4/2022 at 11:47 PM, JeffreysTubes8 said:

Quote

This is exactly what concerns me, how can something more complicated be saved and stored as data transfer in something less complicated than itself, such as the coded blueprints of the entire human body in Eukaryotic cells? To discern between the entire neural pathways and how they interact and think wouldn't the dna have to be able to think itself? 

Do you realize how big a human genome is in nano-terms?

Quote

3.2 billion base pairs—or sets of genetic "letters"—make up the human genome. In order to list all those letters, a person would have to type 60 words per minute, 8 hours a day, for about 50 years!Jun 12, 2012

https://nigms.nih.gov/education/Inside-Life-Science/Pages/Genetics-by-the-Numbers.aspx#

Does a book or a scientific formula think? The formula contains the start and stop cell growth instruction that take about 9 months to execute furing gestation. The genome is a program that is read and copied by the microtubule mitotic spindle during duplication (see Drew Berry)

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You see I think that just like the subconscious mind can control lung and heart muscles, it can access and change the Eukaryotic cell's instructions during neural mitosis and synaptogenesis in a developing infant brain within a subconscious area of those brain regions.

No, The brain has nothing to do with growth instructions, the brain itself is a result of specific cell growth instruction from a mix of the parental genetic contribution. The mitotic spindle makes exact copies of the cell and its chromosomes.  Small differences in the coding of each cell determine the actual form the cell assumes during growth. That's where the microtubular cytoskeleton comes in. The cytoskeleton gives the body its shape and distinctive appearance. That is why very few organisms are exact copies (clones) of the mother, but also show distinctive appearance of the father.

Note the difference between male and female chromomes,

Males Have a Y Chromosome, Females Do Not

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The male genome differs from the female genome in the number of X chromosomes that it contains, as well as by the presence of a Y chromosome. It is the overriding presence of a gene on the Y chromosome (SRY) that results in development of the male gonadal phenotype.

more......  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK222291/#

On 11/4/2022 at 11:47 PM, JeffreysTubes8 said:

That's why a human brain can be different than a squirrel brain when the instructions for neither are simple enough to be coded into the Eukaryotic cells (because then you'd have to remember the minute difference between the neurology between that of a Husky breed of dog and a black lab that causes the former to howl in unison and the latter not to).  Remember something like howling in unison is an innate trait in only wolves and huskies, not in other breeds, that require so much fine tuning inside the neural pathways you're saying that this is imprinted in a few different combinations of ribosomes inside the double helix within the volume of a zygote? 

Neurology has little to do with the orderly progression of Mitosis and Meiosis. It is those functions that create the differences in species and their specific neuronal networks (if any).

 

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Introduction

Mitosis is used for almost all of your body’s cell division needs. It adds new cells during development and replaces old and worn-out cells throughout your life. The goal of mitosis is to produce daughter cells that are genetically identical to their mothers, with not a single chromosome more or less.

 

Meiosis, on the other hand, is used for just one purpose in the human body: the production of gametes—sex cells, or sperm and eggs. Its goal is to make daughter cells with exactly half as many chromosomes as the starting cell.

 

To put that another way, meiosis in humans is a division process that takes us from a diploid cell—one with two sets of chromosomes—to haploid cells—ones with a single set of chromosomes. In humans, the haploid cells made in meiosis are sperm and eggs. When a sperm and an egg join in fertilization, the two haploid sets of chromosomes form a complete diploid set: a new genome.

https://www.khanacademy.org/science/ap-biology/heredity/meiosis-and-genetic-diversity/a/phases-of-meiosis

 

 

On 11/4/2022 at 11:47 PM, JeffreysTubes8 said:

BTW, is the ability to sense a severed tail the same as sensing a severed hair? If so, why is "quorom sensing" so much more advanced in a salamander that can change a tail into a hand when it's reattached than in a human that can't even regenerate superficial scars, yet the code for brain cells is so much more advanced for humans than salamanders? ? I mean is salamander tail regeneration even using "quorom sensing"?

And here is Natural selection for suvivability so beautifully expressed.  Think of it this way:

After some 4 billion years of evolutionary processes and natural selection for survival mechanisms, every extant organism has at least one extraordinary ability that gives them a survival advantage over other species competing for local resources.  This does not make them any more complicated than other extant species, but does give them an advantage in a very specific way.  Think of all the extraordinary skills displayed in nature by all extant "survivors" of natural selection. Almost every artificial method humans use to make their life livable is already employed by one or groups of other species. from electricity to airconditioning to poisons, to ultra-sonic locating , to reading the earths magnetic fields, you name it and nature has already invented that skill via natrual selection where necessary.

What are extraordinary survival skills? The insect invented flight long before there were birds or human airplanes. Submarine creatures learned to extract oxygen from water.

Here are some of the more exotic survival skills that are far superior to human native survival skills.

The difference between humans and other animals is not specific skills but a combination of specific skills and ability for tool making that imitate many natural abilities, products of an extraordinary large brain.

On 11/4/2022 at 11:47 PM, JeffreysTubes8 said:

Is there something like quorom sensing working inside these cells? If so, how can senescence get past us, but not a simple cell-line? You would think before putting spaceships on the moon and developing guided missiles humans would concern themselves first and foremost with the senescence problem, seeing as how their lives are so fleeting anyway. We get a speck, I would think there'd be millions of people learning about biology and being paid a fortune to fix aging to the point where they'd work on nanorobotics 24/7, every week of the month, every month of the year. Forget sleep, we are dying!

Good point! And it has been partially addressed. There are some creatures that are basically immortal, but none of them are so complex that requires all available resources for homeostasis and maintenance of the organism on a day to day basis. 

But we have already doubled our lifespan, with the aid of chemical supplements, and AFAIK, knowledgeable people think that we can extend our life spans by another 100 years. And then we are working on human brains controlling artificial bodies, that would reduce biological maintenance greatly.

To think that a Mayfly has a breeding llfe span of 24 hrs, during which it must find a mate seems almost a waste of time even talking about, but remarkably they survive where more complex organisms fail. It does so by possessing an extraordinary sensitivity to pheromones  emitted by females, which they can sense for up to miles downwind, and must follow to the mate. Even then the pregnant female must land in water as she dies and releases her fertilized eggs. If the eggs fall on land they dry and die.  Nature truly works in mysterious ways, but imho, it is all based on some very fundamental generic electrochemical mathematical functions that can be processed by microtubules.

Microtubules are a "common denominator" in ALL Eukaryotic organisms on earth!  It seems to me they make all of life's dynamical expressions possible.  

As Tegmar 

Edited February 15, 2023 by write4u
space reduction

[write4u]

Just a few more extraordinary survival skills:

[write4u]

Theoretically it should be possible to introduce a continual cell renewal, but for complex organisms in nature it may be easier to make whole new copies rather than a process of continual cell by cell division which does introduce anomalies over time. Mitosis is not absolutely perfect all the time.  We can see the physical imperfections that are a result of aging.  Apparently what we have is the best nature can do with us, if we follow it's known "healthy lifestyle" and don't kill each other.

btw. Cancer killing drugs prevent microtubules from "unregulated mitosis" , the continual unwanted creation of new but unnecessary cells.

otoh. By stimulating microtubule cell neural growth we may be able to avoid the unwanted death of neural cells in the brain.

This is what Stuart Hameroff was working on before he met Roger Penrose.

Note @ 30:00 the formation of cellular structures. If you have watched Robert Hazen's lecture about the possible processes of self-organizing cell formation as the precursor to abiogenesis, these  independent findings seem to confirm each other.

 

If the "pleasure principle" is true , does that confirm the universal mathematics of Platonic structures that offer Balance, Symmetry, and Resolution of instability?   I know this gets into woo, but no one can claim anything with absolute certainty at this level.

 

p.s. feelgood = a function of homeostasis = a physical expression of electrochemical balance (symmetry).

Edited November 8, 2022 by write4u

[write4u]

Published: 09 August 2018
Bundles of Brain Microtubules Generate Electrical Oscillations
María del Rocío Cantero, Cecilia Villa Etchegoyen, Paula L. Perez, Noelia Scarinci & Horacio F. Cantiello 
Scientific Reports volume 8, Article number: 11899 (2018) Cite this article

Abstract

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Microtubules (MTs) are long cylindrical structures of the cytoskeleton that control cell division, intracellular transport, and the shape of cells. MTs also form bundles, which are particularly prominent in neurons, where they help define axons and dendrites. MTs are bio-electrochemical transistors that form nonlinear electrical transmission lines. However, the electrical properties of most MT structures remain largely unknown. Here we show that bundles of brain MTs spontaneously generate electrical oscillations and bursts of electrical activity similar to action potentials.

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Under intracellular-like conditions, voltage-clamped MT bundles displayed electrical oscillations with a prominent fundamental frequency at 39 Hz that progressed through various periodic regimes. The electrical oscillations represented, in average, a 258% change in the ionic conductance of the MT structures. Interestingly, voltage-clamped membrane-permeabilized neurites of cultured mouse hippocampal neurons were also capable of both, generating electrical oscillations, and conducting the electrical signals along the length of the structure. Our findings indicate that electrical oscillations are an intrinsic property of brain MT bundles, which may have important implications in the control of various neuronal functions, including the gating and regulation of cytoskeleton-regulated excitable ion channels and electrical activity that may aid and extend to higher brain functions such as memory and consciousness

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-30453-2

Edited January 8, 2023 by write4u

[write4u]

Microtubules as One-Dimensional Crystals: Is Crystal-Like Structure the Key to the Information Processing of Living Systems?

 

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Abstract

Each tubulin protein molecule on the cylindrical surface of a microtubule, a fundamental element of the cytoskeleton, acts as a unit cell of a crystal sensor. Electromagnetic sensing enables the 2D surface of microtubule to act as a crystal or a collective electromagnetic signal processing system. We propose a model in which each tubulin dimer acts as the period of a one-dimensional crystal with effective electrical impedance related to its molecular structure. Based on the mathematical crystal theory with one-dimensional translational symmetry, we simulated the electrical transport properties of the signal across the microtubule length and compared it to our single microtubule experimental results. The agreement between theory and experiment suggests that one of the most essential components of any Eukaryotic cell acts as a one-dimensional crystal.

Keywords: 

microtubule; tubulin; crystal; transmission network

 

much, much more..... https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4352/11/3/318

Edited January 10, 2023 by write4u