Re: Transactions: good or bad?

"Alfredo Novoa" <alfredo_at_ncs.es> wrote in message news:e4330f45.0306180036.55e0cc72_at_posting.google.com...
> "Bob Badour" <bbadour_at_golden.net> wrote in message
news:<QiKHa.66$bz7.11947063_at_mantis.golden.net>...
>
> > > http://ic.ucsc.edu/~bruceb/psyc123/neuron.html
> >
> > I have to disagree with you on this one. Biological systems are just a
lot
> > more complex than that
>
> And what is known about neurons is more complex too, it was only a
> little example.
>
> >, and we are only just beginning to develop the tools
> > necessary to examine how they work on a molecular level.
>
> The actual tools are rather powerful

Actually, the tools are not powerful at all, but the power of the available tools is growing exponentially. Before too long (a decade or two?), the tools will be very powerful indeed.

>, but the real problem is not the
> behaviour of a single neuron, which is not extremely complex

The simplest of cells is extremely complex. At a molecular level, the complexity of the interactions far exceed our current ability to understand by many orders of magnitude. Ask anyone involved with biology and particularly with molecular biology if you doubt me.

The human genome has tens of thousands of active genes--perhaps even hundreds of thousands of active genes given that the researchers keep increasing the estimates--the proteins these genes code for interact with one another in surprising ways. The number of interactions is potentially the number of possible combinations of all of those proteins in any number. When one considers that some of those proteins act to transport exogenous substances into cells, the number of potential interactions is staggering. Finite yet for all practical purposes infinite.

As I said previously, biological systems are just a lot more complex than that. Received on Wed Jun 18 2003 - 21:29:30 CEST