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From page 1... ...
resembles an olive-colored golf ball, stamped with a handful of dark green spots. At higher magnifications, its dappled "skin" resolves into a mosaic of cells, embedded in a sphere of translucent jelly, the spots into clusters of daughter cells clinging like soap bubbles to the inner wall of the sphere.
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At maturity these germ cells abandon the soonto-die somatic cells and mate, giving rise to a resilient zygote able to weather summer's heat and winter's drought by taking refuge in the silt at the bottom of the pond, where it lies dormant until next year's spring rains. Gonium is a coalition.
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From page 3... ...
, even if every last somatic cell dies. In more advanced multicellular organisms, like humans, an even greater degree of specialization and organization coordinates the action of millions of cells to form the cellular equivalent of states -- highly stratified, complex societies that have not only adapted to the challenges of environments as diverse as the rain forest and the desert, the open sea, and a backyard pond but have also helped shape those environments.
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From page 4... ...
Similarly, diffusible chemical signals, relayed from sender to recipient via the bloodstream or directed over long distances by cellular structures that are the equivalent of telecommunications networks, permit even distant cells to share information, so that a biological society, regardless of its size or complexity, can coordinate the activities and regulate the social behavior of its many members. Just as many social scientists consider language to be one of the seminal accomplishments of human society, biologists rank chemical communication as one of the most important advances in cellular societies, a skill essential to the evolution of the multicellular lifestyle.
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By the end of the nineteenth century, cell biologists had discovered dyes and staining techniques that revealed new aspects of the cell's internal structure; within a few more decades, theyd learned how to deconstruct cells and separate ' their constituent components by spinning the slurry in a centrifuge. By the end of the twentieth century, the electron microscope, advances in protein chemistry, radioactive tracers and fluorescent markers, and the techniques of molecular biology had described the structure, physiology, and genetic makeup of cells with exquisite detail.
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From page 6... ...
Too much or too little of a signaling molecule, a gene mutation that compromises a cell's hearing, a defect that blocks the free flow of information within the cell, outside interference from foreign chemicals can all lead to confusion instead of communication. Cellular language researchers now know that such pathological misunderstandings lie at the heart of some of our most intractable diseases: cancer, diabetes, obesity, addiction, autoimmune disorders.
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From page 7... ...
Because a working knowledge of cellular signaling mechanisms "is essential to our understanding of the control of virtually all biological processes," according to the editors of the journal Science, cell communication has become one of the hottest topics in biomedical research. Over the past several decades, the number of scientific papers published on cellular communication has skyrocketed, not only in journals read by cell biologists but also in those devoted to neuroscience, immunology, pharmacology, physiology, developmental biology, infectious diseases, and molecular biology as well as clinical research journals.
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