Yesterday was ied fitr. Family members asked about how was work etc etc. Conversation about "Passion" and "Job" for me to some extent needs to be distiuingishable. It's hard to tell whether someone particularly "Liked" their line of work out of passion or out of the need for money, I'm not talking about just mere "Job Satisfaction", I'm talking closer to asking you "What is it that you are really passionate about?"
I told my cousin, I think my line of work is consulting but that's just because I kind of like it, I find it interesting, the work and all, but that is not the most intersting thing I know or the line of work that I like the most.
"You know recently there's this research that I found to be very interesting. It starts with this,you know Planarians?"
"Well planarian is a living being, but its immortal"
No one believes in an immortal living being.
"No like, it's immortal because it escapes the aging process, it does not age at all, it is functionally immortal."
"Like ok so if you see your hand here, the gaps between your fingers here, there used to be a cell there, but it has killed itself, it's called apoptosis, programmed cell death, they need to die so you can have five functioning fingers on your hand here."
"So cells not only need to know to duplicate, but it also need to know when to kill itself. It needs to grow and stop at the right place and at the right time."
"Ok you certainly know the Axolotl right? If its limbs get cut off, it can grow its own limb, so what you see there the cells there needs to know which becomes the muscle cells, the skeletal cells, and the nerve cells, they need to grow to reach the right amount and stop at the right amount, no fingers over extending, no palms too big."
"The amazing thing is that recently there's this researcher who find out that the way these cells communicate and form certain body parts, its not actually set in stone in the DNA like we were to believe, the DNA is what to make but not necesarily the ground up communication on where and when to make it. It's actually more of a physics and chemistry based approach, the cells in a way communicate using these ion pumps and when they find out the right combination/treatment of those ion pumps, they can pull a planaria head, eyes, or tails, wherever they want to make it."
Mike Levin on electrifying insights into how bodies form, Harvard Edu
Planaria are the champions of regeneration: chop a worm into multiple pieces, and each fragment will regrow exactly the parts it needs to transform into a perfect tiny worm: no more, no less. How do the cells in each worm fragment know what’s missing, how to rebuild the organs it needs, and when to stop growing? Levin’s group is trying to answer these questions, because he believes that doing so is the key to future advances in regenerative medicine and synthetic bioengineering.