[HN Gopher] Proteins let cells remember how well their last divi...
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       Proteins let cells remember how well their last division went
        
       Author : donatzsky
       Score  : 101 points
       Date   : 2024-03-30 11:42 UTC (11 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
        
       | The28thDuck wrote:
       | I recall reading an article about how E. coli or elegans or
       | something has the ability to amplify signals 1000x through
       | nothing than a clever biological configuration. The fact that
       | proteins have "memory" blows my mind. It's interesting how the
       | macro scale emulates the micro scale.
        
         | echelon wrote:
         | > I recall reading an article about how E. coli or elegans or
         | something has the ability to amplify signals 1000x through
         | nothing than a clever biological configuration.
         | 
         | Signal transduction pathways do that! This is happening in you
         | right now at massive scale. This is how your senses work. This
         | is how everything works.
         | 
         | > The fact that proteins have "memory" blows my mind. It's
         | interesting how the macro scale emulates the micro scale.
         | 
         | Your DNA has memories at all sorts of temporal resolutions.
         | Generational, cell lineage, temporary, etc. Almost every little
         | biochemical system has equations of state, amplification,
         | memory.
         | 
         | Biochemistry is a world of computation.
        
         | nsm wrote:
         | This is a fantastic lay person explanation of how it works.
         | https://jsomers.net/e-coli-chemotaxis/
        
       | sfryxell wrote:
       | for me this is an example of informative back pressure. the
       | protiens make sure the cells pay attention to what just happened
       | to allow for changes that could improve things in the future. If
       | you like the sound of big V8's what's appealing is the
       | backpressure signaling that the engine is healthy and capable.
       | 
       | There was this article on backpressure on here and it's been
       | siting with me. I've been applying it to other articles about
       | data flow.
       | 
       | https://medium.com/@jayphelps/backpressure-explained-the-flo...
        
       | anthk wrote:
       | Now cells have a carry flag?
        
       | t_serpico wrote:
       | To call this memory seems like a stretch. By the logic of the
       | article, every daughter cell has 'memory' of the parent cell
       | because some proteins from the parent cell are present in the
       | daughter cell. I would be curious to see p53 complex
       | concentration as a function of cell generation/mitosis time to
       | show how durable this 'memory' actually is.
        
         | sunk1st wrote:
         | Why those things specifically?
        
         | aatd86 wrote:
         | If those proteins are mutable and have an impact on child cell
         | function, I'd call that memory :)
        
       | philsnow wrote:
       | > Consistent with this idea, all three of the proteins in the
       | complex are tumor suppressors, meaning that mutations in them
       | make tumor formation more likely. The researchers confirmed that
       | the mitotic stopwatch was frequently defective in tumor samples.
       | 
       | It seems possible that this is not the only 'stopwatch'
       | mechanism, if some/most tumor samples don't have a defective
       | version of it. If there were two or more for redundancy, then all
       | of them being defective would make tumors more likely.
        
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       (page generated 2024-03-30 23:01 UTC)