I found this essay of how our cellular nation works, quite interesting. It gave me a broader understanding, in a very easy to read concept. My conclusion that I drew from the article was that it made me realize that I am the God of my own universe, and I have failed to supply appropriate life giving sources, to run my universe properly. Can I blame the other gods that are running their own universes, around me, being that we are all so intricately connected? Yes and no. Yes, because I have been cellularly bombarded by the many devastating effects of environmental invasions, for the almighty dollar, but no, because I stood back and let it happen around me.
Here's a bit from the article, so as to peak your desire to read it, as it is a bit lengthy.
For any given cell, as for any given animal, an inappropriate response to an event or stimulus within its immediate environment can spell disaster. An animal that fails to fight or take flight from a predator, to pay appropriate homage to a higher social animal or to take advantage of foraging opportunities will almost certainly fail within a competitive environment. In much the same way, a cell will fail and die if it does not respond quickly and appropriately to an infection, to positional cues within in a bustling and congested cellular society, or to fluctuations in the supply of nutrients and hormones that portend greater changes in the whole. Clearly receptor signals had to evolve to be sufficiently fast to enable us to respond rapidly to changes in our environment. For instance, those receptors which are present upon nerve cells and at the junction between nerve and skeletal muscle cells transfer the signal from an incoming nerve cell, or neuron within a few thousandths of a second. Such signals are, however, as short-lived as they rapid, requiring a highly specialised receptor design that is in sharp contrast to that of a second class of receptor which communicates trends rather than instantaneous decisions to the cell. This second class is typified by receptors that convey the responses of cardiac muscle cells to noradrenaline released from the sympathetic nerves which supply the heart, and by those receptors which are found upon the surface of olfactory receptor neurons and confer our sense of smell. Noradrenaline augments the rate and output of the heart by enhancing the entry of calcium ions into the muscle cells that power the ventricles of the heart. In isolation cardiac muscle cells take many seconds to respond to noradrenaline, requiring more than ten minutes to reach the peak of their response to the hormone. Responses to this class of receptor are generally long lasting, and require many minutes to return to their original levels after the removal of noradrenaline. There is however also a third class of receptor, employed by those hormones that we collectively refer to as growth factors. Receptor responses to growth factors are usually slow in onset and prolonged in action, mirroring those changes in cell function that they regulate. Growth factor receptors govern the survival, growth, division and specialisation of cells, and part of their action involves activating programmes that lie latent within the genes, thereby altering the release of information into the cell.
For us to understand the mechanisms by which information is transferred across the membrane and into the cell, one more of its essential properties must be appreciated. The development and acquisition of a fatty cell membrane was essential not only for the generation of biosynthetic compartments optimised to support growth and metabolism within the cell, but as importantly the cell membrane functions as a capacitor that can store electrical charge, and with the right conductive elements inserted, as a battery. A capacitor is essentially a layer of insulating material that separates two conducting regions, which is, in effect, exactly what the cell membrane is. Moreover, the thinner the insulating layer, the greater the charge that can be stored across it, making the cell membrane ideally suited to the task of storing electrical charge, or potential. The Californian drive towards clean transport technology has spurred a race for new battery technologies. Nature however has beaten man to the task by many hundreds of millions of years by designing a battery that is capable of storing a very considerable electrical charge without the great impediment of weight. The lead-acid batteries of an electric car may weigh some five hundred pounds, yet give the electric car a range of only some fifty miles in-between lengthy recharging. Species of electric fish such as the California ray (Torpedo californica) or the electric eel (Electrophorus electricus) possess an electric organ that is capable of repetitively discharging some seven hundred and fifty Volts for the price of a mere few pounds in weight. It may well be the case that we can adapt such natural technology towards the practical application of such "self-renewing" biological batteries that are composed of assemblies of living cells rather than the bulky and inefficient nickel-cadmium and lead-acid batteries that serve us now. Electric organs are made up from many thousands of electroplax cells all connected in series to combine their output, like many one-and-a-half Volt batteries lined up in sequence to power a toy or music centre. Consequently the large voltages produced by the electroplax organ of these fish arises from the synchronous discharge of many thousands of such tiny electroplax cells, each contributing a small, but synchronous discharge of voltage.
A further understanding of the molecular world of the membrane is required before we can appreciate how charge is stored across the membrane capacitor, and just as importantly, how this stored charge is dissipated. Perhaps the first surprise of this enquiry is that we can begin to grasp the importance of maintaining the mineral balance within our body fluids. The salty solutions that bathe either side of the cell membrane are rich in oxygen, nutrients and mineral salts, but the mineral composition of these two solutions are very different. Potassium, sodium, calcium and magnesium are metallic ions that are essential for life, present in vast quantities within the mineral salts that make up the soils, bedrocks and seas of our planet, and these mineral ions are required in substantial quantities by the body, whereas other metallic ions such as zinc and manganese are needed in trace quantities only to maintain vitality. Ions are charged atoms, that have either gained or been stripped of electrons, conferring upon them a defining charge. Atoms seek stability through chemistry, and metals are as-called because they tend to become chemically more stable when they lose an electron or two, whereas their non-lustrous counterparts, the unimaginatively named family of non-metals which includes sulphur, oxygen, phosphorous and chlorine must gain electrons to fill in the holes in their outer orbit in order to maximise their stability. The greater this inherent drive to gain or lose an electron, the more reactive the atomic form of an element is said to be, creating a spectrum of reactivity spanning from the relatively inert gold or semi-metal silicon to the explosively reactive fluorine gas and caesium metal. Metal and non-metal ions react together readily to find a mutual solution to their appetite for stability, and once metal atoms have reacted to form positively charged ions they readily form salts with their negatively charged non-metal counterparts which are often very soluble in water. Salts of metals and non-metals, such as sodium chloride or potassium phosphate, dissolve in water to release the individual ions that were previously held together by electrostatic interactions, and it is the role of the cell membrane to partition these various ions together with their associated charge, and this segregation forms the basis for the electrical excitability that enabled complex multicellular organisms to evolve.
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www.cellscience.com]
Richard
Anyway, I am have just finishing reading a complex book published by SPRINGHOUSE entitled Fluids and Electrolytes, it is a text for Medical and Graduate Students invovled in balancing IV FLUIDS and maintaining homostasis in the serum and plasma. I think you may find it very beneficial. I'll post more later. I have jazz rehearsal tonight...