How is a cell able to manufacture proteins? It's hard to imagine molecular-scale machinery that's able to separate elements then recombine them based on instructions from DNA.
How is a cell able to manufacture proteins...
Brody Rodriguez
James Morris
>How do cells manufacture proteins
very carefully
Aiden Wright
>It's hard to imagine molecular-scale machinery that's able to separate elements then recombine them based on instructions from DNA.
And this is exactly what is happening right now in every cells of your body
Robert Nguyen
you should have paid attention in bio class. Don't you remember how ribosomes work?
Liam Sullivan
that's dna dumbass
Jace Jackson
Henry Jenkins
DNA and protein synthesis are similar
Austin Martinez
Actually, I'm researching nanotechnology.
I'm wondering how nature can translate instructions into actions, and actions into chemicals while operating with very restrictive molecular-scale physics.
I've been toying with the idea of nanobots that are smaller than even viruses, but due to the limitations of realistic nanobots would not function as an all-consuming liquid and instead serve a unique ecological niche.
The species of nanobots that develop and the dynamics of colonies would depend on their method of breaking down and reconstructing matter.
Nanobots could possibly even develop a symbiotic relationship with cells and bacteria: Nanobots have an incentive to keep their host alive, since being inside a membrane gives them protection from various things (it takes very little to destroy what is basically a very intricate molecule) and if the host is living they have more options for powering themselves: For example, producing chemicals that trigger the host cell into producing nanobot-feeding chemicals, or just using ATP.
Since extremely-small-scale life can evolve on a small timescale, there is the problem that eventually selfish nanobots that exploit the host cell to death could spread throughout the body, but a nanobots that could react to selfish nanobots would thus eventually evolve.
Examples of how nanobots could assist a cell include:
>absurdly fast chemical synthesis (only one ribosome can operate on a length of DNA at a time)
>synthesising chemicals that cells can't (if nanobots use different chemical synthesis methods)
>learning to react to a wide range of chemicals and conditions, as they could hop between species and thus may evolve to cure poison to help one species then evolve to produce antifreeze to help another
>destruction of cancerous cells (even if a cell is mutant, the nanobots inside aren't, and it's probably easier for a nanobot in a cell to identify cancer than it is for our cells to identify cancer)
Nicholas Hughes
I don't even know where to start here. Pic related is the only self replicating nanorobot design worth mentioning and it most certainly isn't smaller than a virus. molecularassembler.com
It's not viable either. Replication instructions are provided externally.
Of course this requires some technology we don't have to make, so it's sort of ridiculous right now. However, the people who proposed it did some basic design and analysis of it. You've not done anything close to that.
Logan Barnes
>absurdly fast chemical synthesis
If you’re referring to protein translation, you’d have to figure out a way to avoid inclusion bodies considering the increased rate due to all the ribosomes on the same mRNA strand (polysome) would most likely lead to insane protein aggregation.
Nathan Anderson
when i was young, i watched this japanese/french animation english dubbed childrens cartoon about the human body (26 episodes) each episode was on a specific system or body function and all the cells in the body were anthropomorphized. Very jazzy soundtrack, really good explanations with words that went over my head as a 3-10 year old. The visuals make the function of the human body incredibly easy to understand
The cartoon is called "once upon a time... life" has anyone else seen this?
the machines that the enzymes use to assemble and replicate DNA from floating paired nucleotides looks an incredible amount like this one
Ethan Harris
remember the name of the show?
Caleb James
"once upon a time... life"
it's on youtube in parts of 3
Grayson Cooper
And this is just one of the many reasons bio is so fucking cool
Jack Richardson
No one has any idea how it is accomplished.
Oliver Jenkins
here is another picture from the animation, i'm still impressed how well it explains such small complex biological systems
Christian King
not in the slightest.
Jason Moore
>when i was young, i watched this japanese/french animation english dubbed childrens cartoon about the human body
Michael Wood
I'd say they're complementary systems, but user is right
Bentley Stewart
It's french and it's " il était une fois la vie "
Aiden Peterson
the english overdub is called "once upon a time... life"
its on youtube
Jacob Bennett
Shit, is that a fucking stand on the cover of cell?
Nathaniel Morales
Yes
Luis Butler
You can literally read how if you want. I had to memorize 31 fucking steps of it last semester so I could regurgitate the entire thing but it would be boring and dry. Basically DNA sends RNA to Ribosomes which tells it what to put in what order.
Nicholas Turner
>absurdly fast chemical synthesis (only one ribosome can operate on a length of DNA at a time)
>Ribosome acting on DNA
>unaware that multiple ribosomes can act on an mRNA at one time
I know this is primarily a math and engineering board, but seriously, the central dogma and polyribosomes have been a thing for awhile now and are taught in high school.
Nolan King
>(only one ribosome can operate on a length of DNA at a time)
Jonathan Jones
I am never going to look at visual abstracts the same again
Chase Bennett
In 2016 the Nobel prize in chemistry was given to two scientist creating 'molecular machines'. Engineered proteins capable of doing a specific task
Juan Gonzalez
What the fuck did you just say kid? Did you say that the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was given to some shitty biologists? The 2016 nobel prizes was for SYNTHETIC molecular machines. These were NOT PROTEINS. In fact none of the machines the laureates made contained a single peptide.
Owen Rodriguez
Here's a problem with nanomachines: Even if you found a design that worked, how would you create it?
Matthew Taylor
Well the parts that do the dirty work and the actual things that use them are of different size eg liver enzymes and your liver. With increased functionality comes increase in size. Enzymes only exist as part of your body. Supposedly the govt already has reproducing helicopter abominations but those are like a half an inch or bigger.
Jacob Williams
life > machines
Parker Hall
Because it's had a billion years of free for all fightclub training, indeed it's cool as heck
Ayden Evans
it's called having unprotected sex user
Tyler Williams
Cells are micromachines, not nanomachines.