| Home | Microtubules
Like many of the articles on this site, this was written to help me clarify in my mind just what I do know about the subject. For many years I have been fascinated by the apparent consciousness of mitochondria. These incredibly complicated factories that power our cells know when to give us the energy for motion. I mentioned in another article that when you decide to step over a mud puddle the mitochondria seem to know before you do and supply the energy. I asked how they knew to do this? It seems that even smaller conscious entities told them! Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff have proposed that microtubules may even be involved in the quantum processes that do our brains thinking. "Protein assemblies within the brain's neurons are viewed as self-organizing computers." This has been classed as 'panpsychism' by my search engine. Our cells contain a microscopic highway called the cytoskeleton made up of microtubules and microfilaments. Along this highway travel proteins to their destinations, the mitochondria and other organelles are moved about the cell in a purposeful manner. Even RNA molecules are sent to the right area. In addition to animal cells this also occurs in plant cells and all the other eukaryotic cells. This cytoskeleton of microtubules in the plant cell is what prevents it from collapsing into a gooey mess. These thin rods of the microtubules, which are 2000 times thinner than a hair grow inside the cell and determine the form, growth and development not only of the cell but the plant itself. In plant cells the microtubules grow near the outer wall of the cell rather than deeper inside as in animal cells. And some materialist will try to tell you, all this happened by a chemical reaction through evolution. I don't believe in creationism but perhaps the theory of evolution as taught in the schools needs to shed some of this neo-evolutionist garbage. |