A Cell's Postal Code Ensures Delivery
The body’s bone marrow creates a variety of cells which enter the blood stream for delivery to our many organs. As these cells travel through our veins and arteries, they carry their own three letter postal code which ensures delivery to the target organ. For example, when cancer cells spread from the prostate, they always migrate to the bone.
Scientists are now making significant progress in their efforts to find these zip or postal codes which ensure that cells get delivered to the appropriate destination. It’s been found that a particular type of cell (say, a prostate, fat or skin cell), attaches itself to a matching blood vessel receptor on the appropriate organ. Cells with codes that don’t match continue on in the blood stream, until they find the organ that matches their code.
The postal codes are short strings of some of the amino acid units which make up the body’s proteins. The letters stand for three of the twenty types of amino acid building blocks. The three letter sequence must find matching receptors on the blood vessel walls of the corresponding organ.
Eventually researchers hope to compile a library of codes for every organ. Then they can use this information to direct drugs to the organs that need them.
So next time you address a letter, remember that cells used postal or zip codes long before the post office.
I don’t know whether you have ever had the experience of misdirected mail. At our house, we sometimes receive mail which belongs to another family in our neighbourhood with the same surname. The address and postal code are different, but the postal delivery person inadvertently makes mistakes from time to time.
Perhaps you’ve also experienced a similar situation with email as someone sends you a note which was obviously meant for someone else in their address book. In this case, the delivery was competent but the address information was erroneous.
Adequate communication requires that the right message be delivered to the right person. The letter needs to reach its intended recipient, the e-mail its virtual box.
However, unless the message can be understood by the recipient, there is little value in the undertaking. We’ve all had the experience of having someone talk over our heads, using language and concepts that are beyond our present understanding. Likewise, we’ve encountered situations where the information has been too simplistic for our tastes or needs. We are frustrated by the former and insulted by the latter.
That is one reason that feedback proves valuable. It helps us to know how effective our communication is. Is the content of the message appropriate? Is it understandable to the reader or the listener? Please take a moment today to drop us a note at scienceshorts.com with your feedback on our site. Thanks.
Here at Science Shorts, we try to communicate information about science, and offer opportunity for reflection on the nature of the relationship between faith and science. In the last two centuries, traditional religion has been pitted against science. The former is categorized as value or belief or opinion, whereas the latter has been extolled as knowledge - a factual account of the way things are.
The two realms are not necessarily incompatible. They can actually be complementary. Science tends to ask different questions of its subject than does religion. Science asks ‘how’; religion ‘why’. Science describes relationships; religion purpose, goals and meaning. Science provides explanations within the realm of nature. Religion begins with God as creating and working through the realm of nature.
Admittedly, there are areas of tensions. Surprisingly though, as scientists discover more about nature, they are being faced with the implication that there is indeed an Intelligent Designer behind it all.
David Humphreys and Debbie Hughes
© August 2004
