Got a burning science question? Send it to Ask@DiscoverMagazine.com and we’ll try to answer it here or in a future issue of the magazine.
If you haven’t noticed, us Discover Magazine bloggers have weaseled our way into the print version through a new monthly feature called Ask Discover. You ask, we answer. Last month Neuroskeptic took on dreaming, but this month, it’s all about intercellular chatter:
Ask Discover Cell Communication
Damn, Paul! That’s a big question. Here is my magazine response:
Cells communicate through their own language of chemical signals. Different compounds, such as hormones and neurotransmitters, act like words and phrases, telling a cell about the environment around it or communicating messages. When the pancreas detects a person has just eaten, for example, it releases the hormone insulin to tell other cells in the body to remove glucose from the blood. Just as a person needs ears as much as a mouth to have a conversation, cells use receptor proteins either on the outer cell wall or inside the cell itself to “hear” different signals. Once the signal chemical binds to a receptor, that protein turns on a signaling cascade in the cell that ultimately leads to the cell’s response. Every cell has receptors that can detect a lot of different signals, so they are constantly bombarded with biological conversation. Imagine being in a room and having everyone talking at you at once! So how does a plant use cellular communication to grow toward sunlight? The growing tips of plants produce auxin — a hormone that tells cells to grow and divide — which is then sent to the rest of the plant. The shady parts of a plant receive more auxin, which causes those cells to elongate while the sunny-side cells don’t. When one side lengthens while the other side stays the same, the plant will bend.
I wanted to note, though, that this is the super-short, incredibly oversimplified response. Cellular communication is inexplicably complicated. For example, these are the pathways associated with a single receptor, the B cell antigen receptor:
'The tangled web of B cell interactions, from
