Cell Lessons

 

Sometimes, something other than a photograph inspires you.  Particularly, if you are someone, who is continually amazed at the human body design, and how it has implicit messages for our society.

Our body is made up of millions of cells, each containing 23 pairs of chromosomes, all containing about three billion base pairs of DNA strings, that are kind of a "program" that decides how we live, our health, our diseases, our longevity etc etc. Cells are constantly dying and being replicated, and in order that all the Program instructions (DNA strings) get replicated without missing end stuff, all these strings have a buffer piece at the end, which saves the strings from being corrupted. This buffer zone stuff is called  a Telomere.  Not that the telomeres win all the time, but they work till their last breath, so to speak, and then the strings get corrupted, and we get some disease, because the DNA string is now something else.   The "program" malfunctions. 

The 1000 Genomes Project is a massive research into variations that are seen in human genes, and the BBC reports that 95% of these have bee identified and mapped , teaching us much about inherited and other diseases. 

There is a message in all this for how we function as a society. No one will do research on this, but we must learn. 

(photo courtesy BBC News)

Millions of bodies,
each
with millions of cells
and nuclei,
each
with 23 pairs of chromosomes,
and more millions of genes;
so many
behaving by rules ,
slight diversions
taken care of by telomeres
keeping the wild
methylating DNA strings
in check,
and our bodies
continue to work
with amazing checks and balances.

Then again,
we millions of people,
with millions of ambitions,
aspirations
and wishes,
with millions of rules,
security,
regulations,
laws,
facilities,
and sometimes
even family help,
are unable
to behave decently
individually
for the betterment of our society.

We learn nothing
from that which makes us....
:-(

Spiralling up in the mind ....

Today is Thursday .

Some blogger friends who do photoblogs , participate in something called Thursday Challenge, where photos satisfying a particular theme are put up, on Thursdays.

This time , my blogger friend Magiceye, has put up this picture, of one of the old buildinga in Ballard Estate, which is like the old downtown business district of Mumbai, harking back to the British days.

The Thursday theme this time was "CURVED (Bent, Rippled, Coiled, Spiraling, Twisted,...) " !

The spiral staircase in the picture gave me some ideas :-)


Two
tough old fogeys;

The stonehearted,
well established
relentless,
conservative
pillar
of corporate life;

And the
green,
networking,
Gulmohur of the ages
remembering
the old brickless days,
and still
quietly endeavouring
to spread
her branches wide,
sometimes preening
amidst the orange blooms.

And
that double helix
of a staircase,
twirls upward in delight,
around the
stout central pillar,
wondering
which side
of the family
it got its DNA from....