The Stories Life Depends On

Cells are sometimes called the basic unit of biological life. When working properly, they’re composed of a community of interdependent structures functioning as a coherent whole. Although the individual parts within a cell perform different tasks, they’re also interdependently connected to each other by way of a shared and unified purpose toward nourishing and or defending the whole cellular system as a coherent community.

This principle of coherent structures that involves differentiated tasks connected by way of a shared purpose for nourishment and defense in the context of a larger community does not stop at the boundary of individual cells. Organs and systems such as the immune system are also arranged as coherent entities with specialized capabilities that are connected by way of a mutually dependent unified purpose. We also see this same community principle in the shared relationships between many other biological life forms such as bacteria, plants and the environment as a whole body of life. Without this web of relationships, our biological form breaks down.

Like any social network, the cooperative bonds that form a coherent biological society rely on this story of differentiated roles bound together by mutual dependence – a story that is retold over and over on many levels. The stories involve the sacrificial heroes in that nobly put the needs of the community above their individual needs. Along with these “brave defenders” we also see inventors, and a host of other roles that might be considered more mundane, but are no less vital to the continuing coherence of the community at large.

Here is a closeup of one of these many stories; the story of a sacrificial hero, that works together with one of the more mundane players. The hero, a soldier called a neutrophil that works together sanitation engineer called a macrophage – each needing to play their vital roles in the context of the larger community to maintain the integrity of the biological system we depend on for life.

Nature Echoes Nourish and Defend Behaviors on Many Scales

When our immune system sees a pathogen, something it perceives as harmful, it establishes ways to effectively neutralize or destroy that destructive agent. In doing this, it uses weapons (destructive agents), and vectors (vehicles) to carry the weapons it uses in defend to their appropriate location.

On a broader scale, this same defense of integrity through an “immune response strategy” may be what is going on at a larger scale in biological ecosystems. Since nature establishes defenses (things which destroy perceived pathogens) by establishing defensive weapons and looking for vectors to carry these destructive agents to their appropriate location in order to effect the “immune response”, why would we not expect to see this happening on different scales, from cell to body, to larger bodies of life?

The only difference in this relational dynamic that happens in a cell or single multicellular organisms that also may be happening in ecosystems may be the scale. This “immune response” may be also happening between larger bodies of life – bodies of life which transcend single organisms, and are constructed of networked metabolic structures that are stitched together through a vast array of species and subsystems within species – bodies of life that, although composed of many kinds of organisms, have a need to nourish itself, as well as protective skins and other defenses to protect itself, in addition to porous biological boundaries, the same way an individual cell or a larger organism does.

These larger bodies of life, which sometimes clash as a result of the existential debt nature demands for any coherent biological body – to nourish and protect itself, and to mount defenses against antagonists to that coherency. This may be the legend of the map that defines relationship landscape we see in biological ecosystems. It may also explain why, when there is less need for these defensive weapons to be carried to and fro to perceived pathogens in these larger bodies of life, that we also see these vectors less populated with these transgenic weapons, as we see in the case of mosquitoes in the rain forest, which tend to be less populated with the weapons of defense. Just a thought…

Disease-carrying mosquitoes rare in undisturbed tropical forests

From the article: “We found that fewer mosquito species known to carry disease-causing pathogens live in forested areas compared to disturbed ones… Mosquito species from altered forest sites are more likely to transmit disease than mosquitoes native to an area of mature tropical forest.”

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-08-disease-carrying-mosquitoes-rare-undisturbed-tropical.html

A Small Glimpse at the Memory Pathway in Our Immune System

Our immune system has to detect and effectively deal with a wide variety of destructive agents, known as pathogens. Many of these come in the form of invasive viruses and parasitic organisms. It must be able to tell the difference between pathogens and healthy tissue and this is sometimes be difficult. It must learn to effectively differentiate friend from foe.

Immune systems learn. Like human beings, immune systems have critical periods where they are particularly sensitive to learning. If they are not exposed to the typical environmental pathogens at these critical periods the immune system may not respond properly.

Asthma is less prominent among farm children because they are exposed to native pathogens during this critical period. Children brought up without exposure to these things can develop an overreaction. In addition to this supercharged learning capacity that lasts a short time, the immune system also has a less powerful, ongoing learning capacity to combat novel pathogens. This learning process involves what are called B Cells. These are a type of blood cell, part of the immune system, and secrete antibodies in response to perceived pathogens. These antibodies are in effect tattletales. They mark the invader as an enemy so that T-cells (Another type of immune cell) can deal with them. Thanks to way b cells can learn and remember, our body then gets a head start fighting repeat offender pathogens. This memory process is what makes vaccinations work.

This article in this link explains how “naive” immune cells transition into memory cells. Click Here

Here is a brief overview of both the innate and adaptive immune system: