Adult Stem Cells vs Embryonic Stem Cells.

[happyjack27]

Just as the relationship between the docking ring on the Russian Soyuz capsule just coincidentally matched the docking port on the US Apollo craft, we may conclude that multiple things will always fit together without some sort of a design influence.


What I'm getting at, (If i'm not being too cute to be understood) is that the properties and dynamic relationships among multiple things are part of the design of the system. In other words, the blueprint expects these other factors to play a role, and the role they play is part of the design.

Ingenius!

not really. any arbitrary system is going to exhibit dynamical modes and attractors and so forth. you put a bunch of them together in the right conditions for enough time, and you will get complex adaptive dissapative structures of every order as suredly as water freezes when it gets cold. really just about any thing will do. morphogenesis, dissapation, negentropy, etc. all these things are all mathematically gauranteed as soon as you have a continuous multi-dimensional space that permits positive and negative lyapunov exponents. i.e. define a universe -- any universe -- and you will get life. you don't need to be a rocket scientist. in fact you'd have to be insanely clever to NOT get life. if you just pick a possible set of spaces and physical laws at random, the probability of picking one that does not contain the neccessary conditions for life are infinitesimal.

EDIT: neccssary and _sufficent_ conditions, that is.

[Diogenes]

Yes, the file format is Life.bin, and all we have to do is compile and link it into a Life.exe and then run it in matter.

To be fair, we've already done something like this with Viruses. The 1918 Deadly Spanish influenza virus was recreated using technology somewhat like this.

[Diogenes]

and that we have to make "considerable progress" in order to transform a mundane cell into an embryo

The process is called cloning and has been done on animals. It has not been done on humans, because it is not allowed. Technically this has already been possible for a long time though, even long before Dolly was created.

I'm thinking that we aren't connecting on this point. I am saying that a skin cell is NOT a Zygote. You are saying that it can be turned in to one. I am saying that's not the same thing.

If you want to talk about performing embryonic stem cell research on skin cells which have been turned into zygotes, then I can't say I have an issue with it.

What you are saying is that because a skin cell can be turned into a zygote, a zygote is no more significant than a skin cell.

This is like saying a pile of meat is no different from a person. They are not the same thing. One is special, the other is not.


But like I said. Perform all your embryonic stem cell research on converted skin cells and many of the objections would cease.

[happyjack27]

and that we have to make "considerable progress" in order to transform a mundane cell into an embryo

The process is called cloning and has been done on animals. It has not been done on humans, because it is not allowed. Technically this has already been possible for a long time though, even long before Dolly was created.

I'm thinking that we aren't connecting on this point. I am saying that a skin cell is NOT a Zygote. You are saying that it can be turned in to one. I am saying that's not the same thing.

If you want to talk about performing embryonic stem cell research on skin cells which have been turned into zygotes, then I can't say I have an issue with it.

What you are saying is that because a skin cell can be turned into a zygote, a zygote is no more significant than a skin cell.

This is like saying a pile of meat is no different from a person. They are not the same thing. One is special, the other is not.


But like I said. Perform all your embryonic stem cell research on converted skin cells and many of the objections would cease.

i believe the point is so would the difference. at that point it would be physically identical to an embroynic stem cell complete w/a full set of dna. it _would be_ an embroynic stem cell complete w/a full set of dna. and with proper incubation and what not, you could grow humans out of it just like you could with the original.

because the cell can do that. that's why it's so valuable because from it you can create any other type of cell. if this were not the case it couldn't do that.

[Diogenes]

i gave this some thought as i did my christmas shopping. if i were to make a computer analogy i'd say the dna is the _output_ of a metaheuristic algorithm. (or more properly a small portion of the solution vector at a given point). however, among other things, the time is not discrete, so you open up an infinitely larger set / group for periodicities and the like. e.g. the different between the set of integers and irrational numbers, or in this computable and uncomputable. but any case, the output of a metahueristic algorithm whose search space gradient is continuously and unpredictably changing.

But it has been running for over a billion years, so it's output has been pretty well refined at this point. It is also recursive.

mind you it's a very efficient optimization algorithm (low time complexity class), still, that's not very long if you put it on the appropriate time scale, esp. when you consider that it's chasing a moving target. (namely, its tail.)

And if we let it run long enough, Nietzsche's Übermensch might show up!

[Diogenes]

I see the distinction as between having a file in a folder... or running an application. One is a sequence of instructions. The other is instructions being carried out.

well see then, it's just a matter of transplanting the dna from one cell to another. say, from a skin cell to a stem cell.

really there are still more things you have to do to stimulate the right phase transition in the cell's state ("execute the program" as you'd call it in your analogy). and i don't know what the state of research is in that area but i imagine we still have quite a ways to go there.

but point being you can just transplant the dna into the cell. it's fairly easy to grow cells. and we've perfected dna transplanting long ago. then you can take the dna from anywhere in the body and transplant it and get the same result.

which brings up an important point. the dna is really unimportant in all of this, save for the role it plays in cell duplication. you're really just growing cells. if you could track down just the active gene sequences here i suppose you could use just them. you could make it from scratch and just inject it into the cell. with a little savy you could probably have them divide indefinitely too - turn off the chemical signalling that would otherwise tell them to start differentiating (after all you've already removed that code, or in the synthetic version simply didn't put it in in the first place). then i'd guess you'd have to put some real dna back in when you want to actually start growing some tissues.

I recall seeing that they are already making chemical synthesizing machines. Apparently they can custom manufacture chemical sequences in whatever configuration anyone could want. Pretty soon we'll be living GATTACA for real.

[Diogenes]

negentropy

there's also information entropy and the "free energy" version of entropy. all strongly related. (also see "dissapative structures"). problem which thermo entropy - well there are many problems with it - is it discussing the situation of an adiabatic closed hamiltonian system. such a thing simply does not exist.

Yup, and i've seen that argued as proof of God's existence.

Of course Entropy theory does not disallow the existence of negentropy, it just opines that the overall system will always show an increase in entropy.


However, there was just recently (Last 6 months or so) a demonstration of a seemingly macrocosmic violation using beads.

Found it.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic ... it_Feynman

oh geez, fusion/fission and radioactive decay are trivial examples of macroscopic violations. they convert kinetic energy (read: "heat") into mass and vice-versa. and gravity gaurantees that mass will always accrete somewhere and turn into a star. and radioactive decay is ever-present.

so macroscopic violation is collectively gauranteed by the basic laws of physics!

not to mention that _any_ attractor of chaotic order _or higher_ is _by definition_ a source of anti-entropy!

_any_ process with even a single positive lyaponuv exponent is by definition a source of anti-entropy.


trivial. utterly trivial.

And you don't find it amusing?

[Diogenes]

Didn't I hear somewhere the phrase "Render unto Caesar those things which are Caesar's and Render unto God those things which are God's."?

That was in respect to the question "should we pay taxes to Caesar?" Which Jesus responded, in translated terms "yes".

That's correct. If I recall properly, the Pharasees intended to pit his teachings about a Heavenly father against the rule of the secular authority. It was intended as a trap. If he held that God was Supreme, he would be accused of challenging the Secular Authorities (Caesar), but if He held that the Secular Authority were supreme, he would be refuting his own teachings.

By answering in effect, that each had it's proper place, he harmlessly diffused the trap. My point was that it is an example of the Teachings of Christ refuting the notion of a Christian Theocracy of which so many people claim to be petrified.

[Skipjack]

Pretty soon we'll be living GATTACA for real.

And there we are at the aforementioned demonizing of science again, if it does not coincide with a certain ideology.
Gattaca was a stupid movie with a stupid premise made by stupid people with an ideologically influenced agenda.

[Diogenes]

If it IS exclusively chemical signaling, then it seems likely that the chemicals being exchanged between cells are not simple compounds, else the behavior would likely have been replicated before now.

not neccessarily, though it might be that it has. i don't know. identifying the chemicals is one thing, understanding the reaction-diffusion dynamics is another.

and morphogenetic equations are, well, you can imagine... not easy.

I postulated a long time ago (15 years or so) that MRI machines would eventually be able to "see" on the molecular level, (Which I think is actually happening now) and as a result, it could with the help of a sufficiently advanced computer, be able to discern such chemical combination's (at least the hydrogen component of them) as it took to make up viruses and bacteria, and that with the properly phased/focused application of radio waves, could break enough bonds inside these pathogens to kill them or render them inert. By Scanning the whole body one section at a time, it might be possible to eliminate them throughout the entire system.

In effect, a sufficiently advanced MRI would be able to "cure" someone of any disease caused by pathogens. (HIV, Hepatitis, Yersinia Pestis, etc.)

But as a corollary, It MIGHT be possible for such a machine to "map" out reactions that we currently cannot see such as the dynamic chemical reactions in a dividing cell. I suspect that these might occur too quickly to be seen with MRI technology, but I think something similar might do the trick.

[djolds1]

My argument regarding Christianity being a major influence on the Development of Science started out as a post hoc ergo propter hoc sort of thing, but over time, there has been some supporting evidence discovered.

James Burk of "Connections" fame, opined that literate monks were invaluable in promoting the rise of science.

The God of Catholic Christendom (Protestants inclusive) & Augustinian theology demands a lawful universe. God being loving, he will not change those laws; they are part and parcel of his eternal and ever-correct design. In contrast, Allah is entirely capricious, and the laws of reality can change at Allah's whim, regardless of the impact of those changes on the things that exist in Allah's creation (i.e., us). An assumption of a lawful and consistent universe is a necessary precondition for science.

[Diogenes]

Just as the relationship between the docking ring on the Russian Soyuz capsule just coincidentally matched the docking port on the US Apollo craft, we may conclude that multiple things will always fit together without some sort of a design influence.


What I'm getting at, (If i'm not being too cute to be understood) is that the properties and dynamic relationships among multiple things are part of the design of the system. In other words, the blueprint expects these other factors to play a role, and the role they play is part of the design.

Ingenius!

not really. any arbitrary system is going to exhibit dynamical modes and attractors and so forth. you put a bunch of them together in the right conditions for enough time, and you will get complex adaptive dissapative structures of every order as suredly as water freezes when it gets cold. really just about any thing will do. morphogenesis, dissapation, negentropy, etc. all these things are all mathematically gauranteed as soon as you have a continuous multi-dimensional space that permits positive and negative lyapunov exponents. i.e. define a universe -- any universe -- and you will get life. you don't need to be a rocket scientist. in fact you'd have to be insanely clever to NOT get life. if you just pick a possible set of spaces and physical laws at random, the probability of picking one that does not contain the neccessary conditions for life are infinitesimal.

EDIT: neccssary and _sufficent_ conditions, that is.

You certainly have a lot more faith in this belief than many scientists. From my reading, it seems a major bone of contention is the concept of an Anthropic Universe. (Which you seem to be saying is virtually '"Universal." ) The various flavors of Quantum Mechanics theorists seem to be of the opinion that there must be many varieties of Universes that don't, cannot, and won't support life. As a matter of fact, many scientists comment how it is extraordinary provincial that the various factors occur in this universe that makes it possible to support life. If the fine structure constant was just a wee bit different, Life would have been impossible.

We are apparently all lottery winners!

[happyjack27]

... with the help of a sufficiently advanced....

i remember seeing a joke somewhre about the use of the word "sufficently" in contexts such as those. "..given a sufficently large..." "given sufficiently advanced technology...." "if you let it sit for a sufficent amount of time...."

i regret that my memory does not serve me well enough here to remember the joke.

[happyjack27]

Just as the relationship between the docking ring on the Russian Soyuz capsule just coincidentally matched the docking port on the US Apollo craft, we may conclude that multiple things will always fit together without some sort of a design influence.


What I'm getting at, (If i'm not being too cute to be understood) is that the properties and dynamic relationships among multiple things are part of the design of the system. In other words, the blueprint expects these other factors to play a role, and the role they play is part of the design.

Ingenius!

not really. any arbitrary system is going to exhibit dynamical modes and attractors and so forth. you put a bunch of them together in the right conditions for enough time, and you will get complex adaptive dissapative structures of every order as suredly as water freezes when it gets cold. really just about any thing will do. morphogenesis, dissapation, negentropy, etc. all these things are all mathematically gauranteed as soon as you have a continuous multi-dimensional space that permits positive and negative lyapunov exponents. i.e. define a universe -- any universe -- and you will get life. you don't need to be a rocket scientist. in fact you'd have to be insanely clever to NOT get life. if you just pick a possible set of spaces and physical laws at random, the probability of picking one that does not contain the neccessary conditions for life are infinitesimal.

EDIT: neccssary and _sufficent_ conditions, that is.

You certainly have a lot more faith in this belief than many scientists. From my reading, it seems a major bone of contention is the concept of an Anthropic Universe. (Which you seem to be saying is virtually '"Universal." ) The various flavors of Quantum Mechanics theorists seem to be of the opinion that there must be many varieties of Universes that don't, cannot, and won't support life. As a matter of fact, many scientists comment how it is extraordinary provincial that the various factors occur in this universe that makes it possible to support life. If the fine structure constant was just a wee bit different, Life would have been impossible.

We are apparently all lottery winners!

perhaps _we_ would have been impossible, but that is quite far from saying life of any form would be!

it is not basic algebra nor is the argument spatially striaghtforward, so i can certainly see how there'd be debate skepticism.

and yes there are infinitely many universes that don't work, but for each one of those there are infinite number that do. and the sufficient conditions are really a lot fewer than many people presume. a lot of the ones people have in mind can be derived from a smaller, more basic, and more abstract (general) set.

it's kind of like there are billions of ways to build a computer. all you really need to do is satisfy a very small number of rules. but once you do, just give it an infinite number of random bits and now you've just written every single computer program possible.



another argument one could make is: should we be surprised to find ourselves in a universe capable of life? well, being living creatures such as we are, i should think it should be the other way around

i would certainly be surprsie if one day i discovered myself to be impossible. not highly improbable, but absolutely logically impossible. that would just be a contradiction outright.

point is, the probability of it really doesn't matter, so long as it is not provably neccessarily zero, it is absoutely neccessary.

[Skipjack]

I postulated a long time ago (15 years or so) that MRI machines would eventually be able to "see" on the molecular level, (Which I think is actually happening now)

Actually MRIs have a rather low resolution. You probably mean CT scanners. Those can now resolve down to the nanometer level.