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[Mind]

Many of you have seen various diagrams of metabolism like this one. Human metabolism has been described as extremely complex (to put it mildly). People who have spent decades studying the subject still cannot comprehend how it all works yet some of them have created charts that are supposed to help everyone understand it, but these charts barely help, probably just making things more complex for the average life extension advocate.

What I propose is making a more graphical user-friendly chart - something like a 3-D network connection map. Different aspects of the network (human metabolism) would be color coded and connected. Strengths of connections could be estimated from known research. Effects of different gene expression and exogenous factors could be illustrated with changing size of various nodes in the connection map. I hope you get the picture. Presenting metabolism in such a way might allow more regular people to "manipulate" different aspects of metabolism and see what effects it has on the rest of the system - and hopefully on the rate of aging and/or rejuvenation. It could be "gamified" to use a recently trendy term.

With the current charts presented the way they are, it locks out a lot of human minds. Humans are experts at pattern recognition. Presenting human metabolism in a more graphical form might unlock more of our innate processing power. Just need some good coders and graphic artists to convert arcane biological knowledge and charts into something more useful.

Edited by Mind, 05 May 2012 - 02:03 PM.

[xEva]

Great idea. But. What I also find needed in addition to the proposed improved view of the web of the metabolic network is the overall picture of how the body operates. Both lay public as well as many researchers don't seem to take into account that, first of all, the body is like an aquarium separated into sections controlled by an elaborate sluice system* (see below), the main characteristic of which is cyclic ebb and flow of nutrients and metabolites, as well as cytokines, hormones, etc. Instead, the prevailing tendency is to view the body as a machine with a complex circuitry with the idea that it is enough to flip on the right switch and -- voila the right circuit is activated, bringing in the desired results.

In reality it is the relative concentrations of some relevant molecules to others that decide whether a particular receptor on the surface of a cell will be turned on or off. And those concentrations never change linearly or abruptly, as the case could be in a circuit board. They fluctuate, they ebb and flow, they dance seemingly chaotically around an attractor before settling in, and even then they do not settle in for long.

A good illustration to my point is comparison of how a robot and a dog move in a room from spot A to spot B on the floor. The stationary robot standing at A suddenly perks up and begins to move deliberately toward B, upon reaching which it just stops. In contrast, the dog would get up from A and approach B haphazardly, as if he bumped into it by accident. Then he will circle B sniffing around and spin about himself several times before finally settling in. That's the difference in behaviour / modus operandi between an alive system and a machine that is not accounted for in many engineering approaches to biological systems that I see around all the time.

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* re: body as an aquarium with an elaborate sluice system: Think, first of all, of the layers of fascia that wrap each and every organ and thus control what molecules get through in what direction of their membranes. The nutrients in blood vessels also seep through the vessels' walls in order to reach the cells of the organs for which they were intended. The characteristics of plasma in which each organ is bathed depend not only on the organ in question but also on the phase of a cycle in which that organ operates. So, if you want to control the workings of some metabolic pathway, it helps to consider the setting in which it takes place.

Edited by xEva, 05 May 2012 - 08:00 PM.