Lipton, Bruce

Question 1

How many cells do we have?

Answer 1

Each of us is made up of approximately fifty trillion single cells.

Question 2

What is Signal Transduction Science?

Answer 2

The science of Signal Transduction focuses upon the biochemical pathways by which cells respond to environmental cues. Environmental signals engage cytoplasmic processes that can alter gene expression and thereby control cell fate, influence cell movement, control cell survival, or even sentence a cell to death. Signal transduction science recognizes that the fate and behavior of an organism is directly linked to its perception of the environment. In simple terms, the character of our life is based upon how we perceive it.

Question 3

What is the science of Epigenetics?

Answer 3

Epigenetics, means “control above the genes.” It is the science of how environmental signals select, modify, and regulate gene activity. Our genes are constantly being remodeled in response to life experiences. Which emphasizes that our perceptions of life shape our biology.

Question 4

Are you an individual?

Answer 4

You are in truth a cooperative community of approximately fifty trillion single-celled citizens with every cell having all the same functions that a human being has.Almost all of the cells that make up your body are amoeba-like, individual organisms that have evolved a cooperative strategy for their mutual survival. Reduced to basic terms, human beings are simply the consequence of “collective amoebic consciousness.” As a nation reflects the traits of its citizens, our humanness must reflect the basic nature of our cellular communities.

Question 5

What controls your body & mind?

Answer 5

Our beliefs control our bodies, our minds, and thus our lives.It is not gene-directed hormones and neurotransmitters that control our bodies and our minds.

Question 6

What is the difference between Neo-Darwinism and “New Biology”?

Answer 6

Tha world defined by neo-Darwinism casts life as an unending war among battling, biochemical robots.The “New Biology,” casts life as a cooperative journey among powerful individuals who can program themselves to create joy-filled lives.

Question 7

What are the basic components of a cell?

Answer 7

The basic components of a cell are: - the nucleus that contains genetic material- the energy-producing mitochondria- the protective membrane at the outside rim- the cytoplasm in between

Question 8

What is affinity maturation?

Answer 8

Activated cells employ a mechanism that enables the cell to perfectly “adjust” the final shape of its antibody protein, so that it will become a perfect complement to the invading virus.

Question 9

Describe the process called somatic hypermutation.

Answer 9

Activated immune cells make hundreds of copies of their original antibody gene. Each new version of the gene is slightly mutated so that it will encode a slightly different shaped antibody protein. The cell selects the variant gene that makes the best fitting antibody. This selected version of the gene also goes through repeated rounds of somatic hypermutation to further sculpt the shape of the antibody to become a “perfect” physical complement of the virus.

Question 10

Which were the first life forms on this planet?

Answer 10

Single-celled organisms were the first life forms on this planet. Fossil evidence reveals they were here within 600 million years after the Earth was first formed. For the next 2.75 billion years of the Earth’s history, only free-living, single-celled organisms—bacteria, algae, and amoeba-like protozoans—populated the world.

Question 11

When and how did the first multicellular organism appear?

Answer 11

Around 750 million years ago the first multicellular organisms (plants and animals) appeared. Multicellular life forms were initially loose communities or “colonies” of single-celled organisms. At first, cellular communities consisted of tens and hundreds of cells. But the evolutionary advantage of living in a community soon led to organizations comprised of millions, billions, and even trillions of socially interactive single cells. Though each individual cell is of microscopic dimensions, the size of multicellular communities may range from the barely visible to the monolithic. Biologists have classified these organized communities based on their structure as observed by the human eye. While the cellular communities appear as single entities to the naked eye—a mouse, a dog, a human—they are highly organized associations of millions and trillions of cells.

Question 12

When and what did Charles Darwin emphasise?

Answer 12

He concluded 150 years ago that living organisms are perpetually embroiled in a “struggle for existence.” For Darwin, struggle and violence are not only a part of animal (human) nature but the principal “forces” behind evolutionary advancement. He wrote of an inevitable “struggle for life” and that evolution was driven by “the war of nature, from famine and death.”

Question 13

Who was the first scientist to establish evolution as a scientific fact and what was his theory?

Answer 13

The French biologist Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck presented his theory fifty years before Darwin and offered a much less harsh theory of the mechanisms of evolution. Lamarck’s theory suggested that evolution was based on an “instructive,” cooperative interaction among organisms and their environment that enables life forms to survive and evolve in a dynamic world. His notion was that organisms acquire and pass on adaptations necessary for their survival in a changing environment. Interestingly, Lamarck’s hypothesis about the mechanisms of evolution conform to modern cell biologists’ understanding of how immune systems adapt to their environment.

Question 14

What is important for evolution?

Answer 14

Evolution is more dependent on the interaction among species than it is on the interaction of individuals within a species. Evolution becomes a matter of the survival of the fittest groups rather than the survival of the fittest individuals.

Question 15

What activates genes?

Answer 15

When a gene product is needed, a signal from its environment, not an emergent property of the gene itself, activates expression of that gene.In other words, when it comes to genetic control, it’s the environment.

Question 16

What are cells made up of?

Answer 16

Cells are made up of four types of very large molecules: - polysaccharides (complex sugars), -lipids (fats), - nucleic acids (DNA/RNA), - proteins.

Question 17

What do you know about the Proteins as component?

Answer 17

Proteins are the most important single component for living organisms. Our cells are, in the main, an assembly of protein-building blocks. Our trillion-celled bodies are protein machines.It takes over 100,000 different types of proteins to run our bodies.Each protein is a linear string of linked amino acid molecules.The flexible links (peptide bonds) between amino acids in a protein backbone enable each protein to adopt a variety of shapes.There are two primary factors that determine the contour of a protein’s backbone and therefore its shape:- One factor is the physical pattern defined by the sequence of differently shaped amino acids.- The second factor concerns the interaction of electromagnetic charges among the linked amino acids.

Question 18

How do Proteins Create Life?

Answer 18

The final shape, or conformation, of a protein molecule reflects a balanced state among its electromagnetic charges. If the protein’s positive and negative charges are altered, the protein backbone will dynamically twist and adjust itself to accommodate the new distribution of charges.The shape-shifting proteins exemplify an even more impressive engineering feat because their precise, three-dimensional shapes also give them the ability to link up with other proteins. When a protein encounters a molecule that is a physical and energetic complement, the two bind together.Cytoplasmic proteins that cooperate in creating specific physiologic functions are grouped into specific assemblies known as pathways.Cells exploit the movements of these protein assembly machines to empower specific metabolic and behavioral functions. The constant, shape-shifting movements of proteins—which can occur thousands of times in a single second—are the movements that propel life.

Question 19

Name some protein assemblies identified by functions.

Answer 19

Respiration pathways, digestion pathways, muscle contraction pathways…

Question 20

What is the function of the cells, of my body?

Answer 20

The function of cells is to provide senses. The sense of smell and touch and taste and vision and pain and hot and cold—just all these kinds of senses that we have. The senses are the translation of the environment through the cells, and they then convert that information into the electromagnetic vibrations that emanate from the brain.

Question 21

What controls the cell?

Answer 21

The environment controls the cells.The genes are actually controlled by the organism’s perception or response to the environment. So as an organism changes its environment, it changes its genetic activity to accommodate the conditions of the environment.

Question 22

Where is the hereditary information found?

Answer 22

The hereditary elements were essentially comprised of only two kinds of molecules, protein and DNA.The hereditary information passed on generation after generation is contained in chromosomes.

Question 23

What are chromosomes?

Answer 23

Chromosomes are thread-like structures that become visible in the cell just before it divides into two “daughter” cells. Chromosomes are incorporated into the daughter cell’s largest organelle, the nucleus.

Question 24

Explain the DNA.

Answer 24

DNA molecules are long and threadlike. They are made from four nitrogen-containing chemicals called bases (adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine, or A, T, C, and G). The sequence of the A, T, C, and G bases in DNA spells out the sequence of amino acids along a protein’s backbone. Those long strings of DNA molecules can be subdivided into single genes, segments that provide the blueprint for specific proteins.Each DNA strand is normally intertwined with a second strand of DNA, a loosely wrapped configuration known as the “double helix.” The sequences of DNA bases on both strands are mirror images of each other.Each single strand contains the information to make an exact, complementary copy of itself. So through a process of separating the strands of a double helix, DNA molecules become self-replicating.

Question 25

What is “the Primacy of DNA?”

Answer 25

It is biology’s Central Dogma, created from Francis Crick, the belief that DNA rules. It is a fixture of every scientific text.The Central Dogma defines the flow of information in biological organisms. The flow is only in one direction, from DNA to RNA and then to protein. The DNA represents the cell’s long-term memory, passed from generation to generation. RNA, an unstable copy of the DNA molecule, is the active memory that is used by the cell as a physical template in synthesizing proteins. Proteins are the molecular building blocks that provide for the cell’s structure and behavior. DNA is implicated as the “source” that controls the character of the cell’s proteins, hence the concept of DNA’s primacy that literally means “first cause.”

Question 26

What is the Human Genome Project?

Answer 26

The Human Genome Project, a global, scientific effort begun in the late 1980s to create a catalog of all the genes present in humans.Scientists concluded that the human genome would contain a minimum of 120,000 genes located within the twenty-three pairs of human chromosomes.Contrary to their expectations they found that the entire human genome consists of approximately 25,000 genes. More than eighty percent of the presumed and required DNA does not exist!

Question 27

How many genes have the microscopic nematode roundworm known as Caenorhabditis elegans, the fruit fly, and the laboratory mouse?

Answer 27

The primitive Caenorhabditis worm a rapidly growing and reproducing organism has a precisely patterned body comprised of exactly 969 cells and a simple brain of about 302 cells. The aenorhabditis genome consists of approximately 24,000 genes. The human body, comprised of over fifty trillion cells, contains only 1,500 more genes than the lowly, spineless, thousand-celled microscopic worm.The fruit fly has 15,000 genes. So the profoundly more complicated fruit fly has 9,000 fewer genes than the more primitive Caenorhabditis worm. Mice and humans have roughly the same number of genes.

Question 28

What has epigenetic research established?

Answer 28

Epigenetic research has established that DNA blueprints passed down through genes are not set in concrete at birth. Environmental influences, including nutrition, stress, and emotions, can modify those genes without changing their basic blueprint.And those modifications can be passed on to future generations as surely as DNA blueprints are passed on via the double helix.Epigeneticists are studying the chromosome’s proteins, and those proteins are turning out to play as crucial a role in heredity as DNA.

Question 29

What does the new science reveal?

Answer 29

The new science reveals that environmental signals control the binding of regulatory proteins to the DNA. Regulatory proteins direct the activity of genes. The DNA, RNA, and protein functions are the same as described in the Primacy of DNA, but the flow of information is no longer unidirectional. The new, more sophisticated flow of information in biology starts with an environmental signal, then goes to a regulatory protein and only then goes to DNA, RNA, and the end result, a protein.There are two mechanisms by which organisms pass on hereditary information. Those two mechanisms provide a way for scientists to study both the contribution of nature (genes) and the contribution of nurture (epigenetic mechanisms) in human behaviour.