Strange Objects

2021 ◽  
pp. 3-10
Author(s):  
Franklin M. Harold
Keyword(s):  
Building Blocks ◽  
Living Things ◽  
Cell Life ◽  
Inanimate Matter

An introductory chapter, intended to set the tone for the entire book. Living things are passing strange. They are bound by all the laws that govern inanimate matter, yet they flaunt capacities that vastly exceed those of rocks, clouds, and water. Their basic building blocks are cells, either one cell or many, each of them an organized and purposeful entity that invariably arises by the reproduction of a previous cell. Life has a long history, nearly as long as that of earth itself, most of it microbial. To understand life one must begin with microorganisms, for the higher organisms that receive most of our attention are all latecomers.

Metaphors and other slippery creatures

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 345-352
Author(s):  
James E. Strick
Keyword(s):  
Cell Biology ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
State University ◽  
Arizona State University ◽  
Living Things ◽  
History Of ◽  
Dialectical Relationship ◽  
Rich Material ◽  
And Function

What are cells? How are they related to each other and to the organism as a whole? These questions have exercised biology since Schleiden and Schwann (1838–1839) first proposed cells as the key units of structure and function of all living things. But how do we try to understand them? Through new technologies like the achromatic microscope and the electron microscope. But just as importantly, through the metaphors our culture has made available to biologists in different periods and places. These two new volumes provide interesting history and philosophy of the development of cell biology. Reynolds surveys the field's changing conceptual structure by examining the varied panoply of changing metaphors used to conceptualize and explain cells – from cells as empty boxes, as building blocks, to individual organisms, to chemical factories, and through many succeeding metaphors up to one with great currency today: cells as social creatures in communication with others in their community. There is some of this approach in the Visions edited collection as well. But this collection also includes rich material on the technologies used to visualize cells and their dialectical relationship with the epistemology of the emerging distinct discipline of cell biology. This volume centres on, but is not limited to, ‘reflections inspired by [E.V.] Cowdry's [1924 volume] General Cytology’; it benefits from a conference on the Cowdry volume as well as a 2011 Marine Biological Lab/Arizona State University workshop on the history of cell biology.

Biomimetic systems

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony J. Prescott
Keyword(s):  
Phylogenetic Tree ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Bilateral Symmetry ◽  
Biomimetic Systems ◽  
Vertebrate Brain ◽  
Living Things ◽  
Branching Points ◽  
History Of

So far in this volume we have considered the nature of living things and some of their key building blocks and capabilities. This has set the stage for the current section and the next where we will describe some exemplar integrated biomimetic and biohybrid systems—living machines. To place these contributions in some additional context this introduction briefly reviews the history of life and of its variety, noting some of the critical branching points in the phylogenetic tree, identifying some of the organisms that have been the focus of research on biomimetic systems, and exploring why they might be seen to be important or pivotal. We begin with the first replicators, then consider bacterial colonies, the emergence of multicellularity and of bilateral symmetry, and conclude with a brief discussion of biomimetics applied to vertebrate brain and body plans including those of humans.

Evolution of the Cell

2021 ◽  
pp. 64-81
Author(s):  
Franklin M. Harold
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Information ◽  
Metabolic Networks ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Eukaryotic Cells ◽  
Evolutionary Relationships ◽  
Last Universal Common Ancestor ◽  
Living Things ◽  
Universal Common Ancestor ◽  
A Cell ◽  
P Cells

Cells are life’s basic building blocks, and there is no more profound question than how they came to be. What made this murky subject accessible is the invention of methods to sequence nucleic acids and proteins, and to infer evolutionary relationships from those sequences. It seems that all living things share a common ancestry in LUCA (the Last Universal Common Ancestor), a shadowy entity thought to have lived nearly 4 billion years ago. LUCA’s nature has been much debated, but she appears to have been a cell of sorts endowed with membranes, metabolic networks, a usable energy source and the machinery to express and reproduce genetic information. The earliest known event in cell history was the divergence of Archaea from Bacteria, about 3.5 billion years ago. Eukaryotic cells, more closely allied with Archaea than with Bacteria, appear much later, some 2 billion years ago. Their origin remains one of life’s mysteries, but the evidence currently favors a fusion or merger of an early archaeon with a bacterium; the latter became the ancestor of mitochondria, and played a major role in cell evolution. Eukaryotic cells of the contemporary kind emerged over hundreds of million years. Prominent events included a second instance of intracellular symbiosis, this time with a cyanobacterium, that introduced photosynthesis into the eukaryotic universe and initiated the plant lineage. Eukaryotic cells are the building blocks of all higher organisms. Just what has given the eukaryotic order an edge is yet another of life’s stubborn mysteries.

To the Humanities and Beyond

2020 ◽  
pp. 3-6
Author(s):  
Kelly Smith ◽  
Carlos Mariscal
Keyword(s):  
Building Blocks ◽  
Empirical Science ◽  
Small Community ◽  
Early Adopters ◽  
Recent Success ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
The Many ◽  
Complex Chemistry ◽  
The Universe

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the exploration of astrobiology. While new, astrobiology's recent success has been nothing short of amazing. In just the past 25 years, scientists have learned that the building blocks of life are found basically everywhere in the universe; that getting these building blocks to engage in the kinds of complex chemistry people associate with life is far easier than people used to think; and that planets where life could potentially evolve are extremely common. Nevertheless, scientists from a variety of fields are just beginning to address the many questions raised by the real possibility of life on other planets. Relatively little research on the broader social and conceptual aspects of astrobiology has been undertaken by scholars outside the small community of space scientists. However, a fertile field awaits early adopters from other disciplines, with many profound and largely unexplored questions waiting to be addressed by relevant experts. Some of these research questions fall squarely within traditional humanities, while others span the boundary between empirical science and other fields.

The cell and tissues

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (8) ◽  
pp. 390-394
Author(s):  
Ian Peate
Keyword(s):  
Building Blocks ◽  
Previous Article ◽  
The Third ◽  
Living Things ◽  
Effective Care ◽  
Key Points ◽  
Homeostatic Mechanisms ◽  
Healthcare Assistant ◽  
Assistant Practitioner

This article, the third in the series, will focus on the cells and tissues. The previous article ( Peate, 2020 ) highlighted the need for the healthcare assistant and assistant practitioner (HCA and AP) to have an understating of homeostatic mechanisms, so as to offer people safe and effective care, but it is also important to understand cells and tissues. The cells are seen as the basic building blocks of all living things. The tissues are made from a group of cells that have a similar structure. In this article, the various components of the cells will be outlined and discussion concerning the tissues will also be provided. A glossary of terms is provided, along with a short quiz provided to help readers remember key points.

scholarly journals Combinatorial engineering of bulk-assembled monodisperse coacervate droplets towards logically integrated protocells

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qingchuan Li ◽  
Qingchun Song ◽  
Jing Wei ◽  
Yang Cao ◽  
Dairong Chen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
High Throughput Screening ◽  
Colloidal Particles ◽  
Extreme Environments ◽  
Lipid Vesicles ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Cellular Systems ◽  
Integrative Approach ◽  
Size Uniformity ◽  
Inanimate Matter ◽  
High Diversity

AbstractThe emergence of life requires the appropriate integration of protometabolisms, compartments, and protogenomes from an intricate interplay of non-living constituents. Unveiling the mechanism of how life-related building blocks are logically integrated towards life from a high diversity of inanimate matter is an ongoing challenging task of current science. Various compartments such as lipid vesicles and coacervates have been proposed as possible microcontainers to hold prebiotic genetic materials and metabolic reactions for the construction of integrated systems. However, the spontaneous assembly of these compartments allows no selective and logical integration from a high diversity of inanimate matter, thus making the appropriate integration of the inanimate towards membranous life more a coincident and low probability event. Herein, we show that the assembly of colloidal particles with coacervate-forming molecules provides a combinatorial approach for the regularization of matter of chaos towards protocells with cellular hallmarks of size uniformity, logical integration, and unilamellar membransation. Monodisperse coacervate droplets coated by colloidal particles are assembled through hydrodynamic forcing-promoted coalescence. Using these coacervates as platform, a combinatorially integrative approach is developed to engineer the complexity of coacervates, from coacervate entities with programmable spatial loading to diverse interconnected coacervate consortia with collective morphology evolution. A fluidic unilamellar membrane is assembled on coacervate via freeze-thaw treatment of coacervates coated by liposome particles, including liposome particles with heterogenous lamellarity, resulting in coacervate-supported monodisperse giant unilamellar vesicles with gated permeability to polar molecules and remarkable structural and functional stability at extreme environments. This work provides an integrative approach to process crude building blocks towards disciplined and integrated cellular systems, which might have mediated the transition from the inanimate to life. This approach is promisingly utilized for high throughput screening of possible integrated form of primitive life from a high diversity of inanimate matter as well as on demand bulk-generation of monodisperse hierarchical microdroplets with flexibly integrated functions.

scholarly journals Standards. The building blocks of complexity

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juli Peretó ◽  
Manuel Porcar
Keyword(s):  
Synthetic Biology ◽  
Mechanical Design ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Open Science ◽  
Research And Innovation ◽  
Living Things ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
Cellular Context ◽  
Cultural Standards ◽  
Biological World

Without standards, the world as we know it would not be possible. International and supra-cultural standards and norms have been a key factor in engineering, as well as in the development of industrial societies. Despite the obvious successes in electronic and mechanical design, other technological areas present difficulties for the application of standards. In the field of biotechnology and synthetic biology – which aims at studying living things from an engineering perspective – standards are desirable, but whether they can be widely adopted remains to be proved. This monograph reviews the sociological and scientific aspects of standardisation and delves into the more problematic facets of universal standardisation, especially in the biological field. Are standards possible in synthetic biology at all? What are the limitations to the universal use of modular and interchangeable parts in a cellular context? Could it be that the biological world resists standardisation, similarly to the field of software engineering, where these attempts have not progressed? And should some kind of standard be applicable in synthetic biology, what qualities might be required in an environment of open science and responsible research and innovation?

Foundations and Futures

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Fisher ◽  
Jeff King ◽  
Alison L Young
Keyword(s):  
Building Blocks ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Public Law ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
University Of Oxford ◽  
Distinguished Group

This introductory chapter provides an overview of a collection of essays exploring the foundations and future of UK and EU public law. The collection of chapters in this book is inspired by the work of Professor Paul Craig, University of Oxford. It explores six thematic building blocks of public law: theory, case law, legislation, institutions, process, and constitutions. This chapter provides an introduction to each of these foundations and comments on the questions and issues raised by the distinguished group of jurists gathered in the volume as they reflect on the nature and future directions of public law.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Philip Nord
Keyword(s):  
Building Blocks ◽  
Individual Autonomy ◽  
Emotional Needs ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Globalizing World ◽  
Brave New World ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
New Literature

This introductory chapter discusses how the globalizing world proved a tough environment for secularism but less so for border-hopping religions, which promised salvation in another life. The coming of this brave new world has prompted scholars to call into question once confident secularization narratives that predicted religion's inevitable demise. That questioning has taken a variety of tacks. The first and most profound makes the case that secularism itself is a variety of belief, one that posits its own triumph in the form of a self-fulfilling prophecy, a prophecy, however, that has now proven false. A second line of critique blames present-day religious conflict on a secularism all too militant, which has excluded religion from the public sphere, causing it in certain of its forms to radicalize. And a third bemoans the spiritless character of contemporary life in secular societies, which seem to lack the capacity to resonate to their citizens' deepest emotional needs. Yet, how is it that secularity, for all such obvious limitations, got as far as it did, projecting an image of inevitability that persuaded so many for so long? The new literature on secularism has an answer to this question as well. Reformed Christianity and the Enlightenment are often pointed to as the main culprits, promoting individual autonomy and a critical-minded rationalism, which were the building blocks of secularist thought. The book revisits these two issues: the origins and crisis of secular forms.

Nutrition and Darwin’s Entangled Bank

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen J. Simpson ◽  
David Raubenheimer
Keyword(s):  
Human Health ◽  
Geographic Distribution ◽  
Temporal Pattern ◽  
Primary Factor ◽  
Dietary Recommendations ◽  
Practical Applications ◽  
Living Things ◽  
Free Ranging ◽  
Nutritional Sciences

This introductory chapter expands on three important themes that form the backdrop of this book's study: nutrition touches and links all living things; nutrition is complex; and there have been benefits both from the highly specific and detailed approach of applied nutritional sciences and the simplified, general approaches adopted in the ecological sciences. At the most conspicuous level, nutrition is a primary factor defining the geographic distribution and temporal pattern of activity for many animals. Achieving nutritional homeostasis involves a complex interplay between multiple and changing nutrient needs and variable foods. The detailed studies of human and animal nutritionists have yielded a wealth of information for deriving dietary recommendations for human health, formulating animal feeds, designing dietary regimes for captive animals, supplementing the nutrition of free-ranging animals—and many other important practical applications.

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