We-are-all-paranoid - Microbe Nerd Alert

a photo of a rhondrophyta tetrasporophyte under a microscope from my botany class <3

Slime Molds and Intelligence

Okay, despite going into a biology related field, I only just learned about slime molds, and hang on, because it gets WILD.

This guy in the picture is called Physarum polycephalum, one of the more commonly studied types of slime mold. It was originally thought to be a fungus, though we now know it to actually be a type of protist (a sort of catch-all group for any eukaryotic organism that isn't a plant, animal, or a fungus). As protists go, it's pretty smart. It is very good at finding the most efficient way to get to a food source, or multiple food sources. In fact, placing a slime mold on a map with food sources at all of the major cities can give a pretty good idea of an efficient transportation system. Here is a slime mold growing over a map of Tokyo compared to the actual Tokyo railway system:

Pretty good, right? Though they don't have eyes, ears, or noses, the slime molds are able to sense objects at a distance kind of like a spider using tiny differences in tension and vibrations to sense a fly caught in its web. Instead of a spiderweb, though, this organism relies on proteins called TRP channels. The slime mold can then make decisions about where it wants to grow. In one experiment, a slime mold was put in a petri dish with one glass disk on one side and 3 glass disks on the other side. Even though the disks weren't a food source, the slime mold chose to grow towards and investigate the side with 3 disks over 70% of the time.

Even more impressive is that these organisms have some sense of time. If you blow cold air on them every hour on the hour, they'll start to shrink away in anticipation when before the air hits after only 3 hours.

Now, I hear you say, this is cool and all, but like, I can do all those things too. The slime mold isn't special...

To which I would like to point out that you have a significant advantage over the slime mold, seeing as you have a brain.

Yeah, these protists can accomplish all of the things I just talked about, and they just... don't have any sort of neural architecture whatsoever? They don't even have brain cells, let alone the structures that should allow them to process sensory information and make decisions because of it. Nothing that should give them a sense of time. Scientists literally have no idea how this thing is able to "think'. But however it does, it is sure to be a form of cognition that is completely and utterly different from anything that we're familiar with.

biologists will be like this is a very simplified diagram of a mammalian cell

chemists will be like this is a molecule

is there a name for this

The Good Place (2016-2020)

Journey to the Microcosmos- Flatworms: Simple Wiggly Tubes

Images Originally Captured by Jam’s Germs

Quote Voiced by Jam’s Germs

‘aBiogenesis’ Reimagines the Primordial Soup Theory in a Mesmerizing Animation by Markos Kay

The public paid for "Moderna's" vaccine, and now we're going to pay again (and again and again)

Moderna is quadrupling the cost of covid vaccines, from $26/dose to $110–130. Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel calls the price hike “consistent with the value” of the mRNA vaccines. Moderna’s manufacturing costs are $2.85/dose, for a 4,460% markup on every dose:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/01/moderna-may-match-pfizers-400-price-hike-on-covid-vaccines-report-says/

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/24/nationalize-moderna/#herd-immunity

Keep reading

Antibodies are the secreted form of B-lymphocyte receptors and are a part of adaptive immunity, but how are these proteins formed?

Above is a diagram illustrating Paul Ehlrich’s Side Chain Theory of Antibody Formation. Ehlrich proposed that immunoglobulin molecules, a fundamental component of adaptive immunity, served as membrane bound proteins that bound to particular threats, similarly to the former “key in lock” view of enzymes in catalyzing biological reactions. Ehrlich also suggested that the action of binding a pathogenic molecule to the receptor would generate a signal to stimulate the production of more receptors of the same specificity. These “side chains” that were added on would then break off from the cell surface and become what we call antibodies.

 We now know, however, that soluble immunoglobulin receptors are specially manufactured to be secreted as antibody, rather than just “breaking off” of the lymphocyte, even though they have the same specificity as their membrane-bound counterparts.