Speaker 0 00:00:00 <silence>
Speaker 1 00:00:05 Id the Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
Speaker 2 00:00:12 What does it take for life to exist? To hear some tell the story. Once a place in the universe has the right conditions, the right physics and chemistry life can readily arise. And those same favorable conditions of physics and chemistry will then more or less inevitably lead to a great diversity and variety of living organisms. Indeed, in our earthly environment. Life is so ubiquitous, we can easily take it for granted, and we might even be tempted to think it's easy to generate and maintain life, but what's really required for life to exist beyond the physics and the chemistry? Hello, I'm Eric Anderson, and joining us on the show today is Dr. Howard Glicksman to discuss what's actually required for life and some of the remarkable engineering challenges that have to be solved in order to maintain a living organisms such as ourselves. Dr. Glicksman practices palliative medicine and has been a long time contributor to the debate over evolution and intelligent design. He's also co-author of the wonderful recent book, your Designed Body, in addition to being, uh, just an all around great guy, I should add. So, welcome Howard. Are you? Thanks,
Speaker 3 00:01:11 Uh, Eric. It's great to be here with you today.
Speaker 2 00:01:13 So Howard, we often talk about the fine tuning of the cosmos to enable life as evidence for design. We talk about the fine tuning of our local environment, having a habitable planet in the habitable zone, and the myriad other conditions required to have a life permitted environment. And so some people, even design proponents might be tempted to think that once you've got all these carefully coordinated conditions in place, then the hard part's done that life can inevitably move forward based on this favorable mix of physics and chemistry. But as I understand you, you're saying not so fast, and I'm glad you were able to participate in our recent conference on engineering and living systems, which we held in Denton, Texas. And in your presentation, Howard at the conference, you mentioned that even these highly favorable conditions of the cosmos and a physics, even if they're designed, aren't gonna naturally lead toward life. In fact, just the opposite. What do you mean by that?
Speaker 3 00:02:05 Well, yeah, Eric, uh, my, my, my thesis basically was that, you know, uh, when bottom line of Darwinism, and even I think theistic evolution, people with the, with the front end loading of, of the, you know, physics and chemistry, is that they think that the laws of nature when left to their own devices can, uh, can cause life. But in reality, they actually cause death. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, unless life comes up, unless life comes up with some innovations to combat or leverage them. In other words, life has to solve the hard engineering problems that the laws of nature throw at it. And so that was what my talk was about. I'll just give three quick examples, uh, so that people can sort of understand where I'm coming from. One example would be the laws of nature. So you're talking about motion. We all know you need energy to move something against its inertia and friction.
Speaker 3 00:02:54 Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So for example, you have blood in your body and it, it has oxygen and all the nutrients you need, uh, for your cells. However, it, it has also has mass, so it needs something to move it. And of course, the innovation is your heart. Okay? The heart using energy, the heart pumps the blood throughout your body. So that's an innovation, just the heart. Where does the heart come from? A second example would be, let's talk about gravity. Obviously, uh, gravity pr, you know, makes everything fall to the ground. So when your heart pumps, uh, not only to get, move the, uh, blood, you know, down to your feet and, and living your lead, it also has to be strong enough to move up to your, up to your brain when you're standing up. So, you know, when you bend over and you, let's say you're working in the yard and you stand up and you feel a little dizzy, and that's, uh, that's a sign that basically the gravity is getting in the way of blood going to your brain.
Speaker 3 00:03:42 And you'll notice that within a second or two that usually goes away. And what's going on there is that your nervous system is detecting the blood pressure, that the blood pressure's reduced. And, and, and, uh, it, it sends out, uh, through the sympathetic nervous system, it sends out norepinephrine neuro hormones to make the heart pump harder and for the downstream arterials to tighten up, to elevate the blood pressure so that that dizziness goes away. So there's another innovation mm-hmm. <affirmative>. A third one would be, um, heat transfer. Probably a lot of people don't know that, uh, cellular respiration, uh, is only about 25 or 30% efficient. So most of the cellular respiration that's going on in your cells is releasing, uh, 70% of that energy is released as heat. And obviously it becomes worse when you're, when you're exercise. So because of heat transfer, your core temperature's gonna go up when you're active.
Speaker 3 00:04:32 And the problem that you got is that the enzyme systems, metabolic processes in your cells and the cell membrane work best in a normal, in a, in a temperature range between 97 and 99 degrees Fahrenheit. And if you start getting too high or too low, it doesn't work. Right. You get up a vast a hundred, 607 degrees Fahrenheit and your, your, your cells are gonna disintegrate, basically. So luckily we have a thermal regulation system in our body that, uh, not only can we sweat, but also blood vessels and the superficial blood vessels in the skin can dilate and allow the body to give off heat through radiation and conduction. So there's three examples of innovations in the human body that have to be there to work against the laws or the forces of nature. Yeah. So, and I would also, yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 2 00:05:20 Yeah, I was just gonna say, so let's talk about this first one for a minute, because I just wanna see if we can, uh, help our, our listeners get a grasp of this a little bit. So you mentioned friction. So let's talk about a car, because you've got energy and you've got friction, and you're talking about overcoming the friction. So the way that physics works is that we've got some friction between the car tires and the, uh, the road. And that's what allows us to move forward. That's what allows us to turn when we need to turn. And yet we have to push against that friction. We have to battle that on the, and respect to the resistance, move forward and accomplish what we're trying to accomplish with moving the car down from point A to point B. So there's this push and pull, if you will.
Speaker 2 00:06:03 Yes, the physics exists, they are what they are, the friction happens, the friction coefficient happens to be what it's, but we have to have a mechanism that's designed and built to handle that. And in some ways to, to a counteract that and both utilize it. I think both things happen at the same time in order to make this work, uh, the way that we wanna do. And if we just said, well, wouldn't it be great if we had no friction in the, in the universe? Well, <laugh>, yeah, you might be able to, to go somewhere with little energy, but you wouldn't be able to turn, you wouldn't be able to, uh, you know, stay on the road, do those kinds of things that you need to do in order to get from point A to point B. So both of those have to be there. And the friction isn't allowing us to drive. It's simply a, a, a factor that exists that we have to handle and we have to overcome and we have to deal with as we're trying to build something like a car. Does that, does that kind of example help at all in terms of understanding what you're talking about in terms of friction with the blood and the the heart pump?
Speaker 3 00:06:58 Yeah. Yeah. I, I think it does. But on top of that, then on, you've got another problem where, uh, friction can become a problem with all the moving parts in the car, right? So on top of that, you've got, you need to have oil, you need to have lubrication. Yes. Because, so there's several. So that's the whole point. There's several ways that, that the laws of nature or forces of nature, like friction are good. Where, like you said, uh, you have this innovation where we're able to use, you know, we're able to leverage friction by making the car with wheels, et cetera. But also we have to combat the friction by, by, by using energy, you know, through the, through the energy of the combustion, you know, for the using fuel in the combustion engine and also, uh, oil to, uh, lubricate the, the moving parts. So those are, those are examples and they don't just come on all, all on their own, basically. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:07:47 I like the way you described that because this, this really points out the fact that something that exists, like friction with physics doesn't in and of itself either lead to a car or not. It's just, it's just a factor that has to be overcome if we're trying to build a system that's gonna operate in this environment, and yes, we can leverage it for the driving, but, but we also have to counteract it in terms of the engine and the pistons moving and, uh, lots of other moving parts that need to be lubricated, as you mentioned. So it's something that the engineer has to take into account in terms of building the system, but the physics itself doesn't give you the car.
Speaker 3 00:08:25 Car. Yeah. And what I would say is that what's always, I, I found frustrating, which made me start writing about this, and also I think culminated in the book with Steve, 'cause getting the engineering perspective, is that if you look at the explanation from evolution, the Darwinian perspective, it's very simplistic and unit dimensional. It just talks about the parts and that they're existing. So you got a gene or gene regulatory network, but it doesn't really get into how everything works. Not only the cellular level, but the total body level, which is, you know, we deal with very quickly in the, in our book, uh, within the chapter of the cell, we do talk about that energy, a t p, et cetera, and the kinesin moving, you know, moving proteins or moving, moving things within the cell. But then we get into the body, and that's sort of what, that was the basis of that talk that I gave.
Speaker 3 00:09:08 And, and I would just add, you know, basically from my perspective, the bottom line to Dr. Jim tour's perspective is he's basically the saying the same thing. The, the laws of nature when left to their own devices cause death. They do not cause life. And what he's basically saying, he's the expert on origin of life. He's basically saying, from my, where I take my takeaway message is look at, I'm an organic chemist, I'm a specialist that I know what happens with chemical reactions when you leave them on your own. You don't have any intelligence doing something, changing things like the Miller experiment, et cetera. And basically he's saying, you can't even make carbohydrates, fats, proteins, or nucleic acids, nevermind a cell with a cell membrane, et cetera. And so what I talked about at cells was, I, I said, okay, let's let, we're gonna let you, it's a thought experiment.
Speaker 3 00:09:54 We're gonna let you have the cell, we're gonna move on to the next step, which is basically about water. And its souse because, you know, we hear when someone finds a drop of water anywhere in the, in the, uh, universe, they say, well, or in the, in the solar system. Well, you could have, you know, you could have life there. And that's true. I mean, you do need water. But we do know that any, any doctor will tell you that water can be good, but if you don't, if you don't have enough of it or you have too much of it, you can die. Right? We know that we need water, you know, you can get dehydrated, but also you can drown in water. So water by itself, it has to be in the right places. And same with the chemicals that are within it. So that's sort of what I talked about, uh, at cells.
Speaker 2 00:10:30 Right, right. Well, let's dive into that a little bit. So, yeah, you know, there's the big push by nasa, of course, uh, search for the water, which makes sense if you're gonna try to search for organic life. But yeah, I think you're right that there's sometimes a little bit of a simplistic view, at least, uh, popularly that, hey, if there's water, then inevitably we're gonna have life arise as a result of this. And Jim's work, as you showed in terms of the original origin of life, is that chemicals on their own, as he says, don't have any desired or or tendency to turn into living organism. It's just not true. <laugh>, in fact, they tend to be great. They tend to break down, they tend to go back to their, their basic constituents. And so let's go ahead and, and grant that we have a cell, you know, somehow on the, on the earth. Um, I think most of your work deals with multicellular organisms. So tell, tell us a little bit about some of this work with respect to a multicellular organism, like, like you and me, what, what's required for, say, cellular respiration, what kind of energy, those kinds of things. Talk to us a little bit about that.
Speaker 3 00:11:34 Well, actually for the, what we're gonna do today, I think that that sort of goes off on another tangent, really. But, but certainly you cell needs to have, has have cellular respiration for energy and, and the cell needs energy to do various things. But I want, I wanna deal with what, let's, let's say you've got a cell with a cell membrane and d n a and everything that's in, in there, and there's a whole question, can you, can that happen on its own? But this is the very first thing that you have to have, or the cell won't function. And so what I wanna comment about is water, and its solut, so water, sodium, potassium protein. So basically 60% of your body consists of water. Okay? And two thirds of that is in your cells, your 30 plus trillion cells, and one third of that water is outside your cells.
Speaker 3 00:12:17 It's called the, so the inside the cell is called the intracellular fluid. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, the water outside your cells is called the extracellular fluid. And of that fluid that's outside your cells, 80% of that is actually surrounding your cells. It's called the interstitial fluid, fancy word for saying the water between the cells, but 20% of that water is into your intravascular volume or in your blood, in your blood system. Okay. Arteries, veins, et cetera. And so that part is the part that is important for multicellular organisms, because, you know, you've gotta be able to pump blood everywhere, and you have to have enough water in the, in the intervascular system. But what we wanted to talk about first today is about what's going on. I'm gonna look at this at the cellular level and
Speaker 2 00:12:59 Sure. So, so, so just so everybody catches this again, so inside the cells is about two thirds of your water, right outside of your cells is the other third. And of that other third, you're saying 20% of that's in your bloodstream, essentially. We can think of it that way. Right? And the other 80% is surrounding the cells, uh, what's called the inter interstitial fluid, you're calling it
Speaker 3 00:13:20 Right. Interstitial fluid. Right. So, so it's, although it's not germane, and maybe to what we're gonna talk about today, it's important to understand that the interstitial fluid acts as a bridge between the cell intracellular fluid and the intravascular fluid. So basically, if you, you, you're breathing, the oxygen goes, you know, the oxygen jumps onto hemoglobin, the hemoglobin goes out into your capillaries, and it releases the oxygen, and then the oxygen goes by diffusion, it goes through the capillary into the interstitial fluid, and then from there into the cell. Right. Okay. And likewise, your cells are, are using up oxygen, making carbon dioxide. So the carbon dioxide goes out of the cell, can pass through the cell membrane, it goes through the interstitial fluid, and then from there into the, into the capillary, into your, into your blood. So just to get a, a concept of how, where water is in your body and how this all works is, uh, once again, that the interstitial fluid, the fluid surrounding all your cells acts as a bridge between the cell and the intervascular fluid.
Speaker 2 00:14:22 So that's, okay. So we've got cells that have a lot of water in them. We've got cells that are surrounded with water. How does the cell maintain its volume and its chemical content to, to
Speaker 3 00:14:30 Survive? So, so this is the key thing. So the first thing before we get into, just to mention that, is that the key thing that people need to understand is that the, the, the cell in order for it to survive, like you said, needs to maintain its volume, but it also needs to maintain, its, its chemical content. Here's the key thing. The chemical content inside your cell is the exact opposite of what it is in the, in the fluid outside the cell. So inside your cell, intercellular fluid has a high amount of potassium and a high amount of protein, but a very low amount of sodium. The fluid outside your cell has a high amount of sodium, low protein, and a low potassium. Okay? So in order for your cells to survive and work properly, especially nerve muscle cells, is because the, they have, they're excitable, and they have what's called a resting membrane potential where the inside of the cell is negative, negatively charged. And the outside, excuse me, inside the cell membrane is negatively charged. The outside is positively charged. And part of keeping that all working properly is making sure that, that they have the right amount of chemicals inside, inside the cell. So, okay.
Speaker 2 00:15:35 Alright. So the protein's easy to understand. We got proteins in the, in the, in the cell, right? Tons of proteins in the cell. Exactly.
Speaker 3 00:15:42 Uh,
Speaker 2 00:15:43 So the sodium and the potassium. Mention that one more time because this is gonna be critical as we go forward the rest of our discussion. So Sure. Where is the potassium high? Where is it low? Where's the sodium high? Where's it
Speaker 3 00:15:54 Low? Okay, so for a normal cell, your cells are high in potassium. Okay. And low in, low in sodium. Okay. If I was to give you the units, it's called milliequivalent, but basically the, the number for the potassium is 150. And for sodium it's only 10. Okay? But for the fluid outside your cells, the number for sodium is 140. And for potassium, it's only five. So you see the extreme difference. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> an extreme difference. It's not like it's like 80, 70, 90, 50, whatever, no. Right. High, high amount of potassium inside your cell, and extremely low amount of potassium outside your cell. And low amount, very low amount of sodium inside your cell, and very high amount of sodium outside your cell. So once you understand that, now we want to talk about the laws of nature because we're saying that the cell has to maintain its volume and chemical content, okay?
Speaker 3 00:16:45 And there's two laws of nature that affect, basically what you have here is two systems next to each other, two compartments of fluid. They're in, they're interfaced with each other by the cell membrane. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So we know. And so there's two chemical, excuse me, there's two laws of nature or forces of nature that are gonna be working here. One, one is called diffusion. Yep. And the other one is called osmosis. So let's talk about diffusion. Diffusion, basically is, is when you put two containers or two, two, uh, containers of fluid next to each other, and they're separated by what's called a permeable membrane, which means that the, that the, the, the solution, let's say it's a salt solution, 1% compared to 2%, you got two solutions, different concentrations. So we're trying to mimic what's going on in the, in the cell, in the body, and it's a permeable membrane, which means that the water can pass through and also the salt can pass through.
Speaker 3 00:17:39 Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, right? So diffusion says basically that when you, when you put these solutions, separate them by a permeable membrane because of Brownian movement, the high concentration, the salt is gonna naturally move from high concentration to low concentration to make it equal over time. What'll happen is, and if you, you do experiments, everyone, most people have done this when they're in medical school or they've done physiology class. So you see this happen. So it's the, there's a fusion thing is natural that, so what's gonna end up, if, if one side's, 1% and one side's 2%, after everything equilibrates, both sides are gonna be 1.5% in between. And here's the key thing. The the volume will not change mm-hmm. <affirmative>, because, because the saw you can go through. So let's look at that with respect at the cell. This is where life can, can leverage those laws of nature.
Speaker 3 00:18:28 We just, we just discussed that about oxygen and carbon dioxide. Oxygen and carbon dioxide can cross the cell membrane very easily. Okay? Now, the oxygen level outside your cell is always gonna be higher than it is inside the cell because the cells are always using up oxygen. So once we said the oxygen comes from your, you go through the lungs, it comes through your capillary, into your interstitial fluid, interstitial fluid, oxygen level will always be higher than inside the cell. Because as soon as it goes in there, you're doing cell respiration, you're using that, right? So you have this, what's called a concentration gradient. Yeah. You, you have a situation where oxygen's high outside the cell, lower inside the cell. So by diffusion it just naturally goes through, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative> don't have to have anything special. Great. You know, the, the laws of nature work great in this case, right?
Speaker 3 00:19:15 And then you have the opposite for carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide level in the cell is always gonna be higher than in the interstitial fluid, and particularly in the, in your blood, because your cells are making carbon dioxide. And so by diffusion it's a concentration gradient. It's higher in the cell, lower in the interstitial fluid, and inside the intravascular fluid. So carbon dioxide goes straight out. So that's a good thing. Now let's look at, now we're gonna look about diffusion and sodium potassium. Remember we said that in order for the cell to live properly, it has to maintain its volume and also chemical content. And we just talked about the sodium potassium and the cell membrane, the sodium and potassium can cross through as well. So the natural thing that diffusion is gonna make happen is that the sodium is gonna have a tendency to go into the cell. 'cause it's high on the outside, low on the inside, and it's gonna make potassium from the inside of the cell go outside the cell. And that's sort of not a good thing because ultimately over time, if left to its own devices, you're gonna have the same amount on both sides. And we've just said, without getting into all the details, but you know, the, the resting membrane potential, we just know physiology. Everyone knows that the cell has to maintain its chemical content to, to live and so does the fluid outside. Okay?
Speaker 2 00:20:29 Yeah. So, and we can talk about why that is in a minute, but just to sort of put a, a simple statement on that last part. If you ended up in a situation where everything on the inside and the outside of the cell membrane were the same, so that all the chemicals have diffused back and forth, you end up with essentially a situation where you've got a, a, uh, homogenous mixture. You have no life, okay? And one of the things that people think about, particularly in origin of life, and they think about is how do we get and maintain this distance from equilibrium? Life has to maintain itself outside of equilibrium, but in its own state. Homeostasis of course. But how do we get out of that equilibrium and maintain it in a way that we have the things that we need inside the cell, the things that we need outside the cell? Outside of the cell. So, yeah. So diffusion left to its own devices, I guess you're saying Howard would kill us, would kill the cell, right?
Speaker 3 00:21:22 And now we've also said like, when your body's in equilibrium, in equilibrium with the environment, you're dead. Yeah. But here, but here's an example. When the, when the cell and the, the fluid inside the cell and the fluid outside the cell are an equilibrium, your cell's dead and you're dead as well. So yeah, this, but you're right. I mean that's exactly your what point is very well taken, homeostasis. This is an example of trying to keep, and we're only talking at the cell though. We're not even talking at the body though. We're just talking to the cell.
Speaker 2 00:21:49 Yeah. So, so, so again, just one more, one more thing here before you move on to osmosis. So it sounds like what you're saying is that diffusion works for oxygen and carbon dioxide because they're moving in the direction that we want them to move for our system to function. Okay. Like back back to my car example, you know, if you're pumping out the exhaust exactly, and it, and it, and it naturally leaves the vehicle, great. That's where we want it to go. But then you're saying potassium and sodium need to have different concentrations on either side of the membrane, and they're not naturally gonna move where we want them to go. Is that right?
Speaker 3 00:22:24 Exactly. You, you got it perfectly. And I, and I love the way you put it because the thing is that it just, just so ha Now here's an example where someone could say, well, the laws of nature cause life because, you know, oxygen can diffuse and carbon oxygen diffuse. So life in this situation has sort of realize, hey, I don't need any special thing to make this happen. This is exactly what I wanna do. You know, and I, I liken this to, if you think about the, uh, with respect to this diffusion, or it's like when you look at the weather and they always say, you know, they can tell in a high pressure area to a low pressure area, that's where the winds are gonna go. You know, or water coming down, you know, gravity going down from high to low, it's the same mechanism going on. So this all works out great for life, life is smart and says, Hey, okay, convert carbon dioxide and oxygen is great, but what do we do about sodium and potassium? That that's not a, we got a problem there. Potential problem.
Speaker 2 00:23:12 Okay, we'll get to that in a second. But tell us about osmosis first.
Speaker 3 00:23:15 Okay, so now osmosis is another way that, and this gets a little more complicated, but let's, let's go back to that solution we just talked about where you have two solutions separated by a membrane. One is 1% salt, and the other one's 2% salt. But in this case it's called a semi-permeable membrane. What that means is the water can pass through, but the salt can't. Alright? So remember in diffusion it was permeable, which meant the water and the salt can go through. So you ended up with 1.5% and the volume didn't change. But in this situation, it's a situation where the salt can't pass through. So in this situation, once again, the, the, the solutions still have to equilibrate to 1.5% somehow, right? And the way that's done is because the salt can't pass through the water moves from an area of low concentration to high concentration.
Speaker 3 00:24:06 So as the water moves out from the 1%, that's gonna make it start moving up to 1.5%. And as that water moves over to the, the side that's concentrated with 2%, it's gonna dilute it. So it'll keep going over there until both sides are 1.5%. And that's great. But the, the difference here though is that the volumes have changed. So the water, we, so you've got two solutions now. They both have 1.5%, but the water has moved from one side to the other. And now the volume on the side that was higher concentration has more water than the one with lower concentrate.
Speaker 2 00:24:41 Okay? So hang, hang on, lemme picture this. So I've got my bucket here. It's got a membrane down the middle, it's semipermeable membrane. I've got the same amount of water on both sides, but I've got a different amount of solute right on the two sides. Okay? So what you're saying is gonna happen, Howard, is that if our membrane won't allow the solu to cross, which is what we talked about earlier, when the volume stays the same, the solut just cross the membrane and we end up with the same concentration. What you're saying in this case is that the semi permeability will prevent the solut from crossing from one side to the other. And, and, but that will actually draw water over to the side with higher solut. Correct? So that we end up with, you know, my two levels. One of them's gonna go down a little bit and one's gonna go up a little bit. Is that what you're saying? Exactly. And the volume, which we'll call the cell, the one that went up a little bit, and that gets bigger, the volume is forced higher. So again, that's, that's a law of nature if you wanna call it, or a law of how the physical chemistry work. And it might be useful in some situations, but why could that be a problem if the volume increases over here?
Speaker 3 00:25:41 So, so let me, I just wanna make one comment that I'm gonna show you how it applies to the cell, okay? Is that, remember this is osmosis, so mm-hmm. <affirmative> physiologists talk about this because the salt cannot pass through. Yeah. And so the higher concentration literally is sucking the water from the other side. This is actually seen as like, this makes it osmotically active osmotic power. When you hear osmotic power osmotic pool, it means that it's pulling water from somewhere else, okay? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, the fact that it cannot cross the membrane makes it osmotically active. So let's go to the cell. We talked about sodium, potassium going back and forth. Now we, now we get into the protein. The protein are big, big molecules, and the protein inside your cell cannot cross, cross the cell membrane. And that's sort of a good thing. I mean, here's your cell making all these important proteins for it to function.
Speaker 3 00:26:32 If they're gonna just leave the cell willy-nilly, you got problems, okay? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So proteins are big, big molecules and they can't cross the cell membrane, but the fluid right outside the door of the cell membrane has little or no protein, right? Yeah. So here's the problem. When the sodium, as the sodium potassium are starting to equilibrate back and forth, right? The, the chemical concentration, the total chemical concentration inside the cell starts to go up because the protein is not able to cross. Yeah. And this, this, so that, what happens in this situation is a sodium comes in and potassium comes out, water comes in with sodium. So you got a problem. So as, as the sodium comes in and water comes in, then as the water comes into the cell, eventually the cell will die from explosion. So long before the sodium and potassium levels become equal on both sides, the cell will die from explosion. Why? Because the cell membrane, remember, it's, it has a physical nature, it has a limit. It's like a tire. There's only so much you can blow up a tire before it's gonna blow on you, right? So the cell membrane that explodes, uh, because there's too much water going into the cell. Alright?
Speaker 2 00:27:41 So I've got this cell with lots of, lots of proteins in here. I've got the interstitial fluid around it, uh, drawing water in the cell is slowly expanding and getting bigger and bigger. And you're saying eventually that membrane's gonna fail. Exactly.
Speaker 3 00:27:54 Okay.
Speaker 2 00:27:54 Yep.
Speaker 3 00:27:55 And in fact, that's probably how cell death occurs when, you know, well, we'll get into why that will happen, but, so you got a dilemma here. The dilemma is, okay, so we're gonna jump through what Jim tour says. You got, you gotta cell and you gotta cell membrane. You got everything in the cell. But the very first problem you've got right now is you've got intracellular fluid with high potassium, low sodium, high protein, extracellular fluid, interstitial fluid, right outside the door of the cell membrane, high sodium, low potassium, low protein. And you've got the, this is the forces, this is what happens with the laws of nature. This is what we're talking about. Yeah. They're, they're working there, okay. They've got, they've got diffusion and osmosis working because that's what happens. We know that's what happens when you get two different solutions separated by a, uh, in this case a permeable membrane for the sodium potassium, but semi-permeable for the protein. So this is what's gonna happen. So you need a solution, you need to solve this problem.
Speaker 2 00:28:53 Yeah. No pun intended with the word solution there. Yeah. <laugh>, we got two solutions already. We don't need another solution. Yeah. So, okay. So lemme restate this though, because something, you know, this, probably you've thought of this for a long time, but it just sort of popped into my mind here as you were talking. We've got these two systems. We've got the interstitial fluid in the cell. A fully permeable membrane doesn't work for the reasons we talked about it. A fully permeable membrane won't work, right? What do you mean
Speaker 3 00:29:20 It won't work?
Speaker 2 00:29:20 Well, we can't have a membrane that's permeable to everything, of course. Or diffusion. Okay? So a fully permeable doesn't work A nonpermeable membrane where nothing gets in and out, won't work. And, and a semi-permeable membrane can work for some stuff, but it's gonna cause problems for other stuff. So we got exactly, we've got no solution, sorry to use that word again. We've got <laugh>, we have to use that word. I guess we've got no solution to this problem simply based on the type of membrane we have to have something else. In addition, we've gotta select the right type of membrane pre it's gonna be semi-permeable, right? But we also have to have some other engineering prowess that we bring to the table that says, how are we gonna deal with the fact that some, uh, elements or some molecules come in, others don't through this semi-permeable membrane. So, so go ahead. That just kind of jumped outta me.
Speaker 3 00:30:08 Okay. So, so, so not, not to put you on the spot, but I've done this a couple times when I've been, when I've had a talk. So, so let's, so basically you're in a sim situation. Like, let's say you're sitting in your boat, let's say you got this big yacht, okay? Yeah. And water is leaking in, okay? Because that's basically what's happening here. Okay? The cell, besides the sodium potassium, the key thing that's gonna kill the cell is too much water coming into the cell. It's gonna basically, right? So you got a boat and you've got some leaks somewhere in the water's coming into your, into your boat. What are you gonna do? Well, how, how do you, how do you solve that problem?
Speaker 2 00:30:38 Yeah, you gotta try pumping it out.
Speaker 3 00:30:41 Ah, yeah. So you can either bail it out or you can have automatic pumps. I think a lot of yachts have those things, right? I mean, you have to have, you have to have an automatic pump Yeah. To, to get the water out. Okay? So, so the solution to this problem is something called the sodium potassium pump. So you have something called the sodium potassium pump. It's a molecular machine that's in your cell membrane. You got about a million of these. And what it does,
Speaker 2 00:31:06 A million. A million where? In, in your body or
Speaker 3 00:31:08 In, in the cell membrane. E each
Speaker 2 00:31:10 Cell's got a million of these, you're saying? Yeah,
Speaker 3 00:31:11 From my, whatever I looked up, it's several hundred thousand, maybe up to a million.
Speaker 2 00:31:15 Okay. So we're talking, we're talking vast numbers of these things.
Speaker 3 00:31:19 Yes. This is how important this is. You have something called the sodium potassium pump. You have the sodium potassium pumps in your cell membrane. They're molecular machines and they use a t p. So I, I liken it to, you know, you know how those, uh, it's technically called a sodium potassium at TPAs, like, like an enzyme for at tp, so mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you, you know how people have those lights with the, with the solar panels on 'em and in their gardens and, you know, like, or along their, yep. Along their sidewalks at night. Yeah. So think of this, the, at TPAs as like a solar panel sitting on this molecular machine, this pump, and it needs energy because what it's gonna do, what it does, it, it's, it, it, it's always pumping sodium out of the cell and pumping potassium back in. So what it actually does is it pumps three ions of sodium out of the cell mm-hmm.
Speaker 3 00:32:06 <affirmative>, and then it pumps two ions of potassium back in. And that requires a lot of energy because it's like moving the sodium against a, a hard driving wind. I, I come from Toronto, Canada grew up there. So, you know, if you're walking in the, in, in the middle of the winter and you've got that hard, that cold wind against, you know, it's hard to walk against it. So you've got this concentration gradient, the sodium is itching to get into the cell. I mean, 'cause it's, you know, it's 140 on the out way outside and it's only 10 inside. So it's just pushing its way in there, right? Mm-hmm. And the pump has to send the sodium back against this gradient. And likewise, the opposite. The potassium is 150 inside only five outside. So it's, the cell is just pushing that the potassium wants to get out there.
Speaker 3 00:32:48 And so it requires a lot of energy to push the sodium against the concentration gradient. Now, two things. Number one is that when you're at rest, sleeping, one quarter of all the energy your body uses is doing this in all your cells. So several hundred thousand, maybe million sodium potassium pumps in your 30 plus trillion cells use up one quarter of all your energy, right. When you're at total rest. But here's the second thing, because the sodium is pushed out, what happens? The water doesn't come in. Okay. So as the sodium comes in the water, because the sodium's being pushed out, the water stays out into the extracellular fluid, and this is how the cell maintains its volume and concentration gradients, its chemical contents.
Speaker 2 00:33:33 Right? Okay. So you're saying at rest, I guess it'd be a little bit less during the active day, but at rest you're saying as much as a quarter of all the energy that the body is using is simply, I say simply, but simply used to maintain the cells with their correct volume and their correct chemical constituents so they can keep working. I mean, that's just, that's just pure maintenance. That's not running, jumping, flying, uh, you know, diving all Exactly. Things like that, that's just purely maintaining this disequilibrium that we talked about earlier between the cell and the environment. That's a lot of energy.
Speaker 3 00:34:08 Right? Well, and, and, and the thing is is, and my understanding is that for nerve cells, it may be 40 or 50% of what the, you know, for, for nerve cells, and this is talking a quarter for the whole body mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Now the question of course is to have the sodium potassium pump, you gotta ask yourself, well, where did it come from, obviously Yeah. If you look it up online, it just basically said, they basically says it evolved. Okay, sure. <laugh>, uh, what, what, what could also say maybe the other line would be that, uh, selective pressure let it emerge and then it was conserved <laugh>, you know, but, but anyway,
Speaker 2 00:34:38 This into, into comedy hour here.
Speaker 3 00:34:40 Yeah. The thing is that I looked it up and basically there's two parts to the, this molecular machine, and one part has like 1100 amino acids, this May 11 amino, and the second part is a hundred amino acids. So you need foresight to know in advance, as, as Marcus Eberly has reminded us, that you have to know about diffusion and osmosis ahead of time, that you're gonna have to stick this, uh, sodium potassium pump. And not only the sodium pump, but how many you're putting in. Like if you've got a yacht, right? And you've got a bailing pump, you got pumps there mm-hmm. <affirmative>, well, maybe you gotta have 15 or 20 of 'em and you know, maybe one or two, you know, depends on the capacity, you know, you gotta know what you need. Right? So all of those, that's, that's sort of where, where we're talking about, you know, to come to it's come to the end here, basically, is that here's, this is an innovation because this is when you leave. So diffusion an osmosis to their own devices, it's gonna cause a cell to die.
Speaker 2 00:35:32 Yeah. Well that's pretty re that's pretty remarkable. And certainly it does speak to foresight, some real significant engineering brows to understand what's gonna diffuse, how much it's gonna diffuse, how much we need to counteract that, how we're gonna counteract that with this system. And we haven't, we haven't even talked about, of course, how you get atp, which is a whole separate conversation, right? To run this pump. But having this, uh, sodium potassium pump is really remarkable. And thank goodness we have that, so that we can maintain our disequilibrium from the environment, Howard, and continue to have this wonderful conversation we've had today.
Speaker 3 00:36:06 Yeah. I, I just added a bit of an anecdote. One of the things I, I, one of the lines I like from Steve Lman is my co-author, is that the, the Darwin's theory is basically a thought experiment. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and he compares it to Einstein's thought experiment. But now over many years, most or probably all of what Einstein predicted in his thought experiment has been found to be true. Whereas what, what we're seeing with Darwin, most of its probably false now that we actually know how life works. Here's an example because the idea that, you know, the laws of nature can bring on life on its own. And, and a little anecdote, I I I, I encountered a, a gentleman several years ago who was, you know, strict atheist. He said he believed in Darwin's theory, but he, he admitted he didn't know a lot about biology.
Speaker 3 00:36:47 And I remember commenting, saying, well, here I'm a physician, I pretty well know a lot about how the body works. And, and I, I disagree with you, but I said, let's say if you're talking about a thought experiment, you know, with respect to engineering and, and physiology or medicine, if your thought experiment is not working, that that's like either the machine dies or the body dies. Okay. Right. The darwinists never have, never have to deal with that. They, you know, they just say, well, it's there, it evolved. And they never talk about death or how does something stay alive? Yeah. So I asked him, you know, how do you die? And he said, well, you know, when your heart and your breathing stop, I said, okay, but why do you die? And he said, well, you know, it's probably 'cause you don't have new oxygen, not enough new oxygen going to the brain.
Speaker 3 00:37:23 I said, well, yeah, that's right. But, but why does the brain die? And I said, you know, why do you die then? I said, and he didn't really have an answer. So I explained, well, when the brain cells die, especially the, the cells in the respiratory center that tells you to breathe, once those cells die, then you don't have, you don't have anything in your brain to tell you to breathe. So it's pretty well game over. But I said, one more question. Why do those brain cells die? You had no answer. Well, here's your answer right here. Okay. We just said that 40 or 50% of the nerve cells in your brain need oxygen. They're using it all the time for your sodium potassium pump. When you don't have oxygen, the sodium potassium pumps fail and diffusion osmosis do their thing and the cells explode. That's basically how you die. Yeah. So this is an important point to understand why, how important this is, you know,
Speaker 2 00:38:12 And you equate with the environment and <laugh>, that's the end of the story. Alright, well Howard, thank you so much for being here to help us understand some of the deep challenges that have to be overcome in order to produce and maintain living organisms. I'd love to have you back to continue our discussion, if that's all right.
Speaker 3 00:38:29 That would be great.
Speaker 2 00:38:30 Thank you for listening to this episode of I Do the Future. To learn more about the remarkable engineering of life, join us s
[email protected] or on your favorite podcast app and please consider sharing a link with the brand. For ID the Future, I'm Eric Anderson. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1 00:38:47 Visit
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