The electrical blueprints that orchestrate life | Michael Le

Post Reply New Topic

This is really fascinating. I'm about 2/3 of the way through, the bit about the two-headed flat worms that can be cut into several pieces and regenerate as two-headed is really catching my interest. The overall idea of what's being presented here - cell differentiation is guided by the kind of bioelectric template that's often described by tadpoles but the idea is that it's the ion channels of the cells that get the whole network talking on a level that's more 'meta' than neurons (it would have to be the case to tell neurons to be neurons and have a language for that) and that cell differentiation in various steps between zygote, embryo, fetus, etc. is mostly guided by that electrical software layer.

What's pretty radical about this - instead of it just being the hardware unpacking itself to code, or even some of the things I remember Robert Sapolsky talking about where fractal bifurcation is coded for without exact specifics, this a whole other governance (software) layer managing the process.

Sounds interesting. Saved on YT to watch/listen to when my brain is more up to taking things in.