Member-only story
Life and death…
Everything Dies, Sometimes on Purpose
If cells didn’t die, all multi-cellular organisms would look much strangers. Humans would have webbed hands and fur, even a tail if cells weren’t programed to die.
If cells are programmed to die, are we? You probably have never considered that. Though I’ve contemplated it before, it only came back to my mind today, thanks to a new science on how scientists have created multicellular life in the lab. As these structures take shape, some cells voluntarily die. How does it know? What is being communicated between cells. Is there a master cell that determines what cell will live or die? Is there an analog for individuals in a society?
Consider this. Atoms don’t expire on a human time scale. The structures inside the cells, like organelles, will continue to function as long as the cell environment maintains itself. You could artificially create that environment, and organelles would continue indefinitely, essentially little machines stamping out whatever they stamp.
So, why do cells die? They’re programmed to. Cells that don’t die and run amok, those are cancer cells.
All organisms, and all systems, come together to make more complex systems. In the…
