Sort of trying to piggy-back on this thread in hopes someone with knowledge will be able to share it.
I've been having conversations about viruses recently and in those conversations / thought experiments I keep coming back to a point someone made to me.
Someone this person knows, with extensive medical expertise, explained that the "membrane" of the cell contains a ridiculously large number of unique types of proteins.
Understanding, in vague terms, how viruses penetrate cells the question I pose is "is this true because each of those proteins has a unique and distinct function in the cell membrane? Or is it more a matter of scale and utility?" In other words, does the observation simply indicate that our bodies are not as perfect as we'd like to think they are and the body's process for creating / repairing cells is more a utilitarian function where the "rules" of cell construction are extremely flexible such that these molecules are constructed in various ways where our cells are using materials available to them at the time?
If this is the case it starts to make a lot of sense to me at a molecular level why certain people tend to be more susceptible to contracting certain diseases. Could a lot of it really just come down to diet, along with probably a hint (or more) of DNA's interaction with those proteins we're providing to our bodies? And to what extent does each of those play a role? DNA and the proteins.
I've been having conversations about viruses recently and in those conversations / thought experiments I keep coming back to a point someone made to me.
Someone this person knows, with extensive medical expertise, explained that the "membrane" of the cell contains a ridiculously large number of unique types of proteins.
Understanding, in vague terms, how viruses penetrate cells the question I pose is "is this true because each of those proteins has a unique and distinct function in the cell membrane? Or is it more a matter of scale and utility?" In other words, does the observation simply indicate that our bodies are not as perfect as we'd like to think they are and the body's process for creating / repairing cells is more a utilitarian function where the "rules" of cell construction are extremely flexible such that these molecules are constructed in various ways where our cells are using materials available to them at the time?
If this is the case it starts to make a lot of sense to me at a molecular level why certain people tend to be more susceptible to contracting certain diseases. Could a lot of it really just come down to diet, along with probably a hint (or more) of DNA's interaction with those proteins we're providing to our bodies? And to what extent does each of those play a role? DNA and the proteins.