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AI helps us see previously unknown cell components

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There are a lot of them:

By combining microscopy, biochemistry techniques and artificial intelligence, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and collaborators have taken what they think may turn out to be a significant leap forward in the understanding of human cells.

The technique, known as Multi-Scale Integrated Cell (MuSIC), is described on November 24, 2021, in Nature…

In the pilot study, MuSIC revealed approximately 70 components contained within a human kidney cell line, half of which had never been seen before. In one example, the researchers spotted a group of proteins forming an unfamiliar structure. Working with UC San Diego colleague Gene Yeo, PhD, they eventually determined the structure to be a new complex of proteins that binds RNA. The complex is likely involved in splicing, an important cellular event that enables the translation of genes to proteins, and helps determine which genes are activated at which times.

U Cal San Diego, “AI Reveals Previously Unknown Biology – We Might Not Know Half of What’s in Our Cells” at SciTechDaily (November 25, 2021) The paper is closed access.

The friend who forwarded this story notes, “Even though we didn’t know maybe half of what’s in our cells, we somehow knew that most of the genome is junk?” Darwinism did that, of course. It was the Darwinians who needed the idea that most of the genome is junk.

Comments
Darwin's reductionism was not automatically justified by common knowledge at the time. Emerson in 1840: "The world globes itself in a drop of dew. The microscope cannot find the animalcule which is less perfect for being little. Eyes, ears, taste, smell, motion, resistance, appetite, and organs of reproduction that take hold on eternity -- all find room to consist in the smallest creature. So do we put all our life into every act. The true doctrine of omnipresence is, that God reappears with all his parts in every moss and cobweb. The value of the universe contrives to throw itself into every point. " It has taken 150 years to PARTLY recover from Darwin's erasure of complexity.polistra
November 27, 2021
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This finding shows how reductionist hubris works: biologists find a few facts about cells or DNA/RNA and they think they can explain everything. If there are so many aspects of a single cell that we don't even know about, much less understand, how can we claim to know how cells work, much less how multicellular organisms function, much less how life developed, and even less, how to create life from scratch? A little knowledge can be dangerous, especially when it pretends to be more than it really is. Question: what percentage of cellular function does science actually understand? 10%, 20%, 50%? Any estimates out there?Fasteddious
November 27, 2021
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So... I was watching an X Files rerun last night, and the episode I saw had Scully, in some really awful dialogue, blah blah blah about a speculation that Mulder had, in which she implied it (the speculation) couldn't be true because it was "unDarwinian". Suddenly, a show that I had liked just seemed really, really dumb. Andrewasauber
November 27, 2021
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