Neuron Sparks

  “Equilibrium is death” - Dr. Nick Lane biochemist

The term Darwinian implies evolutionary change that is small and discrete. It may be small but it is interconnected in countless ways-not at all discrete.

We tend to think of whole animals evolving. Humans are a whole animal. We conceive of ourselves as a single unit but molecules, enzymes, lipids, nucleotides, genes, organ systems and relationships between organs evolve, quantum relationships evolve. Many levels of hierarchy of living systems co-evolve in a single organism. G-revs ( positive mutations)  must coordinate with all others. A G-rev increasing the diameter of the ureter can upregulate the entire body in a single generation by positively affecting 10 trillion other cells. All systems in an organism must evolve in concert. All cells must communicate with one another. How? Sensory systems, messaging systems: quantum, atomic, chemical, mechanical communication throughout the body 24/7/365/life. The term “natural selection” doesn’t begin to suggest the scope of this inter-intra-organ communication. Competition in the real world of pine trees and bears is a trivial subset of behavior at the organism level ( the whole feeding, fighting f-ing animal). Does an RNA molecule compete with another RNA molecule or an enzyme? - no - but it communicates in many ways.

Ninety nine and nine tenths percent of all evolution occurs deep within the bodies of animals as G-revved somatic cells divide and multiply mixing and matching genes for improved function ( evolving)  through a single lifespan in many cell divisions from tens to hundreds to many thousands. A human has 10 trillion ( with a T !)  somatic cells distributed among twelve organ systems, featuring five vital organs: brain, heart, liver, kidneys, lungs. These organs speak to one another genetically during a single lifespan.

We traditionally hear about evolution in the form of animals fighting for sex and survival with the genes of winners proceeding to next round as offspring benefitting from G-rev. This is Modern Synthesis dogma ( Darwin meets Mendel) the core of contemporary biology - the Kool Aid of our time - Don’t drink it.  For every battle between two lions, tigers, bullfrogs, snapping turtles or humans there are 50 trillion instances of cooperation and communication between cells in the service of DNA modification and evolution. Darwin’s “red in tooth and claw” trope is nano-trivial. Selection happens between somatic cells - other arenas of the hierarchy, from tribal populations to quarks are trivial.  A new generation of major organ cells carries a net positive array of mutation or net negative array. The bad die young.

G-rev occurs 24/7/365 in every cell in our bodies. A mutation might serve a heart cell but throw the liver out of whack. Organs communicate genetically via chemical and electrical signaling coordinating G-rev among themselves. All for one - one for all. The positive accepted revisions are then registered in the germline DNA. G-rev is transmitted to the following generation. You could accrue one gazillion G-revs throughout eleven organ systems before you are twenty years old but if this G-rev bounty doesn’t appear in the germline when you mate, it’s sayonara to all of that potential improvement of the species. Nature is wasteful but it’s not stupid.

How do all cells communicate with one another, germline included,  re: the usefulness of the latest mutation.How do the cells of our body communicate with one another? What is the pathway-vehicle- mechanism- medium? How are messages sent and received re: fitness of a mutation? Each of our twelve organ systems is crawling with neurons. Neurons are found throughout the vertebrate body not just in the brain. Most of us have by now heard of our gut and heart brains. We also have a pancreas brain and a lymphatic brain and a liver brain and a kidney brain.  This population of neurons beyond the noggin sends gene-altering signals, mobile introns customized via neuron sparks,  through a  rhizomic neural network. Individual cells work together swapping information through the nervous system evolving in concert, giving the improved animal an advantage in head- butting. The primary arena of evolution is not jungle or ocean but infinite realms within each organism.

JB Teapot ( see: Russell’s Teapot) There is a clearinghouse in the brainstem collecting, sorting and distributing genetic information from neural systems of specific organs. Afferent ( incoming)  information is compiled, sorted, compared, coordinated, summarized and coded then sent as a package to the germline for transmission to next generation of the whole organism.

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JB Questions-Observations:

1. Is differential gene splicing involved in synthesizing hundreds of pitch and hue proteins of the cochlea and retina? Are the hundreds of different perception cells coded via post-translational modification ( phosphorylation, methylation, ubiquitination, etc)? See Notch proteins for most likely path to cell specificity.
2. How much birdsong occurs beyond the upper range of human hearing?
3. Each of our ten trillion cells has one million tiny energy factories ( mitochondria). Keep your mitochondria happy with a walk around the house a few times a day for better health - wake them all up with exercise. If they are awake and fulfilling their destiny they will make you happy. If they remain static they will kill you in 1,000 ways.
4. Investigate the effect of high fructose corn sweetener on afferent neural function at hepatic cells ( liver). Does HFCS wreck signal processing via osmotic or osmolality  CA+2  or K dysregulation
5. Investigate induced remote organ G-rev, coordinated mutation, coordinated post translational modification to be encoded later in genome as base pair mod or histone acetylation, phosphorylation, methylation re:

1. leukocyte influx at liver
2. Channel-inducing factor at gut
3. Vascular permeability at lung and or brain
4. Neutrophil trafficking at heart
5. Granulocyte colony-stimulating factor at brain
6. other

6. JBT - The Blake Lens ( incorporating Dr. Nick Lane’s  theory of Proton transfer) A circulating pool of melted ice water four miles below the ice sheet of snowball earth during the Huronian glaciation 2.4 billion years ago as possible location of emergence of life. The ice in small, deep zones in the ice block is melted by an alkaline thermal vent that pushes mineral-rich water from heated rocks far below through spongiform mineral towers forming proton gradients across membranes where organic chemicals lodge in small holes between flowing mineral rich water of differing PH, a chemiosmotic reaction. There is great pressure from weight of ice sheet in the presence of hot and cold water creating  convection in the water as it travels from the zone of the heated vent tower into the chilled outer zones of the dark pool. There is a crack in the ice to the surface of the ice sheet four miles above where a pool of melted water is exposed to solar radiation. The Blake Lens provides an environment ideal for an orgy of endosymbiotic lateral gene transfer- experimentation.

JB Experiment: Locate existing thermal vent, flush and scour its internal compartments ( micropores) of all organic residue - create a clean breeding ground for new life - see if any new life emerges.

7. Is there neural crosstalk between lungs and pancreas? Liver and lung? Is there Notch protein crosstalk in these organ systems?
8. Ivy league universities are among the largest hedge funds in the world according to Ron Unz. JB idea: open these Ivy Hedges up to general population of investors multiplying their cash which is redistributed to students for free education at Ivys and elsewhere.
9. Do inorganic molecules undergo any sort of selection - natural or otherwise?
10. Organic matter itself is a great enzyme speeding up gradient reduction between the sun and outer space. The sun and the great cosmic void create a thermodynamic anomaly violating entropy that must be erased.
11. Was the Big Bang a gradient reduction event erasing disequilibrium between adjacent universes?
12. Investigate chains, cascades, hierarchies and taxonomies of disequilibrium from the big bang-adjacent universe to the sun-cosmos and all others down to  membrane osmolarity and beyond, down into microcosmos.
13. Would breathing antibacterial bathroom disinfectant ( dimethylbenzyl ammonium chloride)  kill pneumonia in an infected person? If so, it would be less trouble than a doctor. Cure pneumonia in five seconds - don’t try this at home yet.
14. JB neolog: Capacitor Effect: great reactivity built up behind a kinetic barrier that is released in an instant.
15. Would UV radiation be more likely to stimulate the origins of life in an atmosphere without oxygen? Is there something prohibitive about oxygen that gets in the way of early life? Life emerging from non-life?
16. Meteorite carrying cosmic amino acids crashes through the ice during Huronian glaciation 2.4 BYA (Billion Years Ago) and drops amino acid galactic passengers into a Blake Lens filled with mineral nutrients and proton gradient infused membranes - voila !  LIFE !
17. A hurricane ( or any weather system) is a dissipative structure dissipating energy gradients.
18. Is a city a living thing? It consumes stuff: energy, people etc. it grows and sends out new life as suburbs ( mini cities-little copies of itself), it excretes waste, cities die.
19. If there is a manifestation in the physical world of string theory - strings that interconnect clusters of adjacent universes, why not such a network of strings in the microcosmos at human body or any animal or plant body? Strings interconnecting the cells of all organs with a rhizomic network sending G-rev signals to the germline?
20. Would the pressure of ice five miles deep at Sturtian Glaciation (850-650 MYA) have crushed all hydrothermal vents into granules?
21. Investigate migratory, Notch-infused dendritic cells for a role as G-rev messengers at and between all organs, especially from the brain to the germline.
22. If a retrotransposon (jumping gene) can copy itself across an entire genome then why not from somatic cells to germline?
23. A single cell consumes 10 million molecules of ATP ( from mitochondria) every second. Keep your mitochondria happy and you will be happy.
24. What is the effect of ethyl alcohol ( wine, beer,whiskey, vodka etc) on epithelial lining of gastrointestinal tract? Is the pathogen barrier interrupted? Are lymphoid, myeloid, stromal players in this protection negatively affected? Does alcohol make one’s gut open to invasion by pathogens? Does alcohol inhibit barrier maintenance? Effects of ethyl alcohol on mitochondrial function?
25. Investigate corelation: trapped oxygen differential at ice block between Huronian, Sturtian and Karoo glaciations and evolution. Organics processes at Blake Lenses in each of the three glaciations re: oxygen availability.
26. Can an RNA molecule of any sort cause a neuron to fire its electrical charge or its chemical charge? Can it prevent such firing?
27. Investigate: eukaryotic cell nucleus as a free-floating organism like precambrian mitochondria.

April 14, 2016    12:45 AM