Biologists Rethink the Logic Behind Cells’ Molecular Signals
I think (hope) that the deterministic model known as lock and key has been known to be a flawed view for quite some time. Books published in the early 00s (notably &quot;Ni Dieu ni gène&quot;, by Kupiec and Sonigo) were already making this point in a popular science format, and explaining that even the concept of cells exchanging signals was flawed.<p>A cell has no evolutionary reason to transmit signals. It will however eat molecules it can use, and excrete molecules that are no longer needed, because this allows the cell to survive and reproduce. A white blood cell eating a bacteria doesn&#x27;t do so with an intention to protect some organ somewhere in the body, it does so like predator eats prey. Leukocytes who eat well, ie face a bacteria they can eat, then multiply, and end up eating all the bacteria, before dying off when there&#x27;s nothing more to eat. So they protect the body and then remove themselves, not because they have the intention to do it for the greater good, or because they received a signal, but because they have evolved to prey on bacteria within the ecosystem of the body.<p>Thinking of the body as a well ordered mechanism is a flawed view, there are no locks and keys, and most likely very few signals if any. Thinking of the body as a dynamically balanced ecosystem seems much closer to how cells behave and to the fantastically complex feedback systems that have evolved over eons and are now balancing the populations of cells in our bodies.<p>We may be ecosystems of individually oblivious and dumb little cells, but isn&#x27;t it wondrous that from this emerges a complexity that can say &quot;I&quot; and has consciousness of self?