Worm Brain Wisdom: Introducing C. Elegans
7 years ago in #steemstem by zyx066 (75)
$3.63
- Past Payouts $3.63
- - Author $2.86
- - Curators $0.78
442 votes
- helpiefanclub: $0.43
- helpie: $0.35
- steem-ua: $0.33
- bubke: $0.30
- ngc: $0.20
- diabolika: $0.18
- sbi4: $0.04
- crimsonclad: $0.03
- soundwavesphoton: $0.03
- paradigmprospect: $0.02
- eonwarped: $0.02
- cinelonga: $0.02
- isaideureka: $0.02
- pcma1425: $0.01
- mochi-mochi: $0.01
- sidwaterman: $0.01
- anyonecan: $0.01
- thecyclist: $0.01
- gyeryak: $0.01
- apzentral: $0.01
- and 422 more
You know I always wondered when the similarities are no longer present, I mean, you said it's basically an extremely dumbed down version of us, but where do we draw a line? When is the difference too much? I'm pretty sure that we share a common ancestor (we are like family lol) but is right there where we say "ok that's too much"? or do we go deeper? After all that common ancestor for sure has a common ancestor that connects them with fungi maybe and we could be asking the same question
That's such a good and such a difficult question @elfranz. My statement about the extremely dumbed down version of us is already very optimistic ;-) So as far as usefulness for studying the human brain, behavior and diseases goes, I think C. elegans is as far as we can go. And we can't translate findings on C. elegans one-on-one to humans, far from it. If we could, we would all live a couple of hundreds of years already.
Having said that, I'm sure of nothing. It's so difficult to draw definitive lines in nature; science doesn't even have a definitive definition of what "life" is, or what "consciousness" is. That's why biology, neurosciences and physics are the most interesting sciences these days, as they're really trying to answer the bigger questions humanity has had forever; who am I, why am I here, why is there anything at all, how did life originate, did everything have a beginning or was the universe always there...? According to evolution theory even those fungi and plants are relatives, but is a virus alive?
I know that wasn't a real answer :-) But thanks so much for asking it @elfranz; the questions are often much more interesting than answers ;-)
I know, I hope science could answer those question in my lifetime, it should be huge news, but those questions are not to be understimated lol
Thanks for sharing such a valuable information. A nematode similar to the human being is really unbelievable. Keep sharing such valuable information in the future as well.
Thanks so much for reading and commenting on my post @munu04, I really appreciate that! :-) And yes, I will keep writing regularly on science in general and the bigger questions in life, so I hope to see you back here in the future ;-)
Hi @zyx066!
Your post was upvoted by @steem-ua, new Steem dApp, using UserAuthority for algorithmic post curation!
Your UA account score is currently 3.378 which ranks you at #6910 across all Steem accounts.
Your rank has improved 122 places in the last three days (old rank 7032).
In our last Algorithmic Curation Round, consisting of 407 contributions, your post is ranked at #234.
Evaluation of your UA score:
Feel free to join our @steem-ua Discord server