

### THE MYTH OF

### HUMAN INTELLIGENCE

Nature's incredible ways of problem-solving

Dr. Rajkumar Chetty MD FRCPath

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2014 DR. RAJKUMAR CHETTY

License Notes: This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Ebook formatting by www.ebooklaunch.com

# TABLE OF CONTENTS

Prelude

1. Origin and development

2. Getting organized

3. The art of communication

4. Balancing the books

5. The mother of all battles

6. The hi-tech nature

7. Death as a change of form

8. The brainless teacher

9. The Similarities explained

# PRELUDE

### THEME OF THE BOOK IN A NUTSHELL

Lots of different complex systems of varied nature, living and non-living, with or without a brain, end up in a strikingly similar state of functional and structural organisation! Why? How? This is the basis of this book written by a medical doctor, who is also a biochemist.

About 350 to 400 million years ago life forms that had evolved in the sea began to move into the land, just as a human infant comes out of the 'amniotic sea' after 10 months! The water that is inside and outside of your body cells is salty just like it used to be in the ocean where primordial life evolved. Salt in the body fluids allow cells to work exactly like batteries! Positively charged sodium atoms and negatively charged chloride atoms are the very basis of excitability of living cells by way of their inward and outward movement across the cell borders.

Atomic elements that led to origin of life were 'seeded' here on earth from a distant star almost like a 'galactic pollination' mechanism! Even if one is less willing to accept the theory of seeding earth with life spores it is difficult to disbelieve the fact that precursors of life/organic matter i.e., the atomic elements, did not from on earth anyway. They were all synthesised deep inside faraway stars long ago. These stars spewed these elements into deep space when they exploded in a cataclysmic fashion. Though purists may hate to accept even life spores that originated extra-terrestrially may have inseminated the earth there can be no arguments to the fact that inorganic and organic matter were deposited on earth after their formation in the distant stars and inter-stellar space. Nature's recurrent motif of exogenous, projectile, motile transfer of creative potential in the form of sperms, pollen, atomic elements and even life spores is worth thinking about.

Morphogenesis during embryonic organ development, neuronal remodelling in brain development, continental drift (Platectonics) and geological change, social movement in the life of a human being, herd movement, cancer metastasis and growth of cancer etc. represent the recurring theme of movement and re-modelling in the early development of diverse systems.

A nest, a burrow, a house, a cell membrane, a national border are all variants of the same theme of a territorial boundary.

Our skin is like a fortress. It is the 'wall of your body's house'. You may have a mansion of your own with four walls. Your body needs its own too. The skin is an impregnable wall, in every sense of the word. It is protected by several defence mechanisms. Only when the skin is breached, as happens during an injury, it becomes vulnerable and microbes try to gain access into the body. A wound getting infected is a sign of how the skin has become the target of attack from outsiders when a breach develops.

Inside our body, the mindless cells have their own army! The lymphocytes are their dedicated warriors! A section of them keep circulating in the blood like 'coast guards'! Groups of these lymphocytes are stationed in troubled regions of the body just as we station U.N and U.S forces in war torn regions of the world! These lymphocyte bases are called Lymph nodes, situated at vital points in your body.

I am not exaggerating. The immune system of a human body has every defence strategy you can possibly think of. It is infinitely more complex than you can imagine. It is said that human B-lymphocytes, the cells that make antibodies, can generate highly precise antibodies against any molecule present in the known universe!

You may be surprised to know that there is military logistics and organic chemistry in a single celled organism too. Fungi make antibiotic substances to kill their competitors, the bacteria. We exploit them by making them produce the antibiotics for us (e.g. penicillin). The bacteria, especially antibiotic-resistant bacteria, make highly targeted chemical molecules that will degrade these antibiotics (Penicillin-degrading enzyme) like an anti-ballistic missile that inactivates a missile! So much for military logistics and organic chemistry from a single-celled bacterium! The antibiotic resistance that is haunting the hospitals today is a result of some sophisticated 'star wars' kind of warfare between microbes.

Numerous examples cited in the manuscript that illustrate the marvellous ways and means organisms defend themselves.

An example: Sometimes you find some organisms such as the monarch butterfly behaving as if they are toxicology experts. The monarch butterfly feeds on milkweed ( _Asclepias_ ) and extracts some poisonous chemicals such as cardiac glycosides (cardenolides) and pyrrolizidine alkaloids. If some predator eats the monarch butterfly it will end up with heart failure, nerve damage in minutes. Yet, a mouse ( _peromyscus melanotiz_ ) that lives in Mexico can countermine the defence of the monarch butterfly. The mice usually eat only the internal tissues of the monarches, which are low in poison content. They reject the cuticles, which are rich in poisons!

Another example: Snakes are poisonous. We treat snakebites with anti-snake venom injections, which are very difficult to obtain in remote regions where, paradoxically, the risk of snakebite is high. The mongoose is not afraid of snakes. Even if a snake bites it nothing happens. This is because the mongoose does not have the molecular receptors upon which the snake venom normally acts! That is the mongoose's answer to snake's offence!

I have discussed the need for association of discrete entities into groups and organisations as a fundamental property of nature. A primitive human settlement would have been unsophisticated just as unicellular & oligocellular life forms. Every cell in your body is a specialist! Evolution prefers bigger systems, whether it is social evolution or biological evolution, though there may be with a limit on what is sustainable. Population control is an example. Surprisingly, 'Population planning' occurs at the cellular & molecular level too and not just at the international levels. Cancer is an uncontrolled cellular population explosion with no regard to resource availability. That is why cancer kills. As life systems evolved, 'cellular population expansions' must have been a critical issue in determining size of the life form. That is why we don't see too many organisms like the whales, elephants & dinosaurs. Dinosaur was a big evolutionary mistake, presumably. The same thing can be said of huge companies. They are 'economic dinosaurs'.

Need for communication is not restricted to our social life. There is an amazing degree of highly complex information exchange, using coded molecular messages and electrical signals, going on 24/7 between the trillions of cells that constitute your body. The human body contains roughly about 10,000 billion cells. In terms of absolute numbers, our body has roughly 1500 times more cells than there are humans on this planet. What is incredible is the fact that diverse information-capture tools like sense receptors, TV antennae, Radio aerial, insect antennae etc are all fundamentally similar in the way they are designed and obviously similar in the function.

Neural networks in the brain are a 'biological internet' that preceded ours by millions of years.

Life forms are carbon-based 'computers'. Silicon, used in real computers, is closest to Carbon on the periodic table and both are so similar in their properties. This is uncanny in that nature and nurture have homed in on nearly identical atomic choice to design their processors!!

I have also shown that Biological information hacking is as much a reality as your cyber-terrorists!! The antibiotic resistance that is haunting the medical sciences today is a result of some sophisticated 'star wars' kind of warfare between fungi and bacteria targeted at information flow. Even poisons are information hacking tools! Bacteria such as the ones that cause cholera, Whooping cough etc. can attack our cellular information machinery like the G proteins. Even lowly viruses can hijack our DNA to protein information flow!! In fact, many of the antibiotics made by the fungi to kill the bacteria hit the DNA translation step, thereby starving the bacteria of information.

Did you know that the oil that we get out of the "Earth's belly" is chemically of the same nature as the fat we store in our body cells? Both are Hydrocarbons! Both support the energy needs though at different levels completely - one for the individual organism and the other for the entire human race. What would happen when your body fat stores run out? Why do we make body fat stores in the first place? It is easy to answer this by saying that the organism is storing surplus energy for future use. This is a biochemical explanation. But, it is hard to explain why the earth stored the oil hydrocarbons. But, fact of the matter is we humans are enjoying the energy supplies from nature anyway. The similarities are too striking.

An organism lives on a daily budget. The financial system of man uses the monetary currency as the unit of transactions. The cellular energy is available in tiny quanta called the Adenosine triphosphate (ATP). It is the equivalent of our monetary currency.

An average human being needs about 2000-3000 calories per day and ea(rn)ts that much food to supply this energy. It may be as high as 4000 calories for heavy working people. Just because you make millions you can't eat 10,000 calories a day. As I said before, metabolism is a great equaliser!

When one eats more than the required amount of food, he or she is in a state of surplus budget. What happens when you don't eat enough to get even 2000 calories? You are obviously in a deficit budget. All economic principles operating in a cash-starved country or company come into play. Inside your body, all your energy savings are mobilised i.e. your fat reserves are used up just like you would draw from your bank account. Firstly, you notice the loss of body weight, which means all your fat, has gone. Then comes a stage when your body desperately tries to find some energy from anything it can lay its hands on. Proteins are attacked. There isn't energy or resources for making many important proteins in your body. What do you think you will do in a situation like this? Wouldn't you sell your car, your valuables to buy some food? How long can you go on in a deficit budget? Surely, there is a limit to it. You can't endlessly cut subsidies, development programmes etc.

Up to a point, all these strategies work to keep the system from breaking down, whether it is the body, your company or a government. Nevertheless, a stage is reached when nothing more can be done. That is when people die of hunger as in Ethiopia and Somalia. That is when cells in a life system start dying. The 'famine' of a country and the hunger of an individual life system literally coincide here.

Our sun has been producing energy by the principle of nuclear fusion, exactly similar to our own nuclear power plants for the past 5 billion years.

The leaf of a plant is a photochemical machine designed to capture this unlimited sunlight like a solar panel. All food is created by this photoelectric effect!

Incredibly our body cells can generate electrical power inside our mitochondria. Yes, you heard it right. I mean electrical power. They do it by a process called the Oxidative phosphorylation plucking electrons out of your burgers and steaks and fries and what not and conducting them along cytochromes as if they were wires. A meal at the Ritz meets the same fate as fish and chips in a corner shop. Metabolism is a great equaliser.

Technology is a word we associate exclusively with humans. Once in while people refer to some sort of tool-making abilities seen in other animals. But, to be honest, a whole lot of stunning 'technological' abilities can be seen in nature.

The Stomiid fish can pick up reflected red light from the prey, which works like an infrared sniper scope! We are not the only ones who can see in the dark with infrared cameras!

Plants are aerodynamically designed to filter large amounts of pollen of their own species from the air! Airflow patterns around a pine cone model, placed in a wind tunnel, visualised by releasing helium-filled bubbles by stroboscopic photography have confirmed it.

Bumblebee is able to produce more lift than wings of an aeroplane! What is worse, according to our aeronautical theory, the bumblebee should not be capable of flight, but it does!

Seabirds like the stormy petrel, albatross, cormorants, guillemots and sea gulls can consume the salty water of the sea by desalinating it!

Electric eels can obtain oxygen by electrolysing water into hydrogen and oxygen!

European colias butterflies and gonepteryx butterflies from the Canary Islands have the capacity to pick up patterns on their mates using a vision no different from our UV-sensitive cameras and UV spectrophotometers!

The bats can use a sophisticated echolocation system sandwiching long, constant signals between brief, frequency-modulated pulses. The bats compare the emitted pulse with the echo frequency and determining the Doppler shift. What a physicist this bat is?

Reptiles can detect their prey by tracking their heat radiation in a manner identical to our infrared-guided missiles!

Our planet had only finite resources to start with. There is no way matter can be created on earth. We may get some organic and inorganic matter coming into the earth in the form of meteorites and asteroids but overall the amount of matter available for use is finite. There are 30 million types of life forms, each in unknown numbers, vying with each other for the available matter.

You have to live. It does not matter what happens to the other organism. This seems to be the attitude of all life forms. Symbiosis is probably the only decent way of mutually agreed way of utilisation of matter. Predation seems to be the worst. When you look at a predator gobbling up the poor prey it not only looks so selfish but arrogant as well. The predator seems to think it can do a better job with the matter the prey is holding onto. In the world of business you can easily see the same thing happening. Smaller companies get gobbled up by 'hungry' conglomerates no different from a predator running down a hapless prey! Ultimately, it is all about who will manage the resources better - whether it is earthly matter or money.

I have tried to show the concept of death is applicable to a whole lot of things other than life forms such as organisations, civilisations, institutions etc. Death here is a change of form and structure. It is not an end.

One of the incredible facts of our life is the continuous death of our body cells day in and day out. Cells of your keep dying all the time though you continue to live. Your blood cells such as the red and white cells die within a few days of their birth. Their birth and death are not synchronised to your own birth and death. The same can be said of your skin cells, gut cells etc. They all have a short life span. It is a wonder how you continue to live even though what was part of you has disappeared. It is no different from what wee in our social life. A company continues to maintain its identity and function though staffs keep changing all the time. A nation retains its national identity though the citizens keep dying only to be replaced by newly born.

The molecular turnover is not only seen at the level of the individual organism. Living matter of the entire biosphere can be renovated every 8 years on an average. The matter of land plants is renewed once every 14 years. The entire mass of the living matter of the ocean alone can be replaced in 33 days. The plants of the sea have their molecules turned over once every day.

Atmospheric oxygen is replaced in several thousand years whereas carbon di oxide once every 6.3 years. The global cycles of nitrogen, carbon, and phosphorus last millions of years.

The molecular jugglery is an inevitable part of the existence of living systems. The amino acids that come into your body today may have been a part of a chicken, goat, or pig yesterday!

I have drawn on exciting recent developments in our understanding of complex adaptive systems, Critical State Universality principle of Per Bak and the physical theory of Fractal self-similarity (Benoit Mandelbrot), the phenomenon of 'Emergence' seen in complex systems to support this provocative claim that there are only a few ways of doing things in nature. These motifs get repeated at different levels of organisation in nature. Many a times these motifs are exactly identical, if not better, to man-made solutions. Quite often it is difficult to evade the question - does the brain really matter? Is the human intelligence worth all of the glorification it has received?

# 1. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT

It is believed that the earth originated about 5 billion years ago. Initially, it lacked the capacity to support the life forms. The 'baby' earth, born 5 billion years ago in the solar system, became a fit place for creation of life only about 3 billion years ago. Coming to think of it, a woman is not fertile until 13-16 years after birth. It takes so much longer for the body to physiologically mature to a point when it can support another life. I wonder if the earth had to wait about 1.5-2 billion years until it reached 'puberty' _._ Cooling of the surface, emergence of water, and formation of organic molecules were probably the 'pubertal changes' that constituted the puberty for the earth!

It is interesting that the maturation period before reproduction is a universal theme for all living beings, whether plants or animals. Roughly speaking, this waiting period for a woman could be about one fourth of an average life, span which is about the same waiting period for the earth too. 1.5 billion years works out to be just about 1/4 of the earth's life span.

I would look foolish if I made tall claims based on a similarity as flimsy as this. For all you know the theme of pubertal growth, even it is for a proportionately similar duration, looks so obvious that it is almost silly to make a big deal out of it. But, the story is just beginning.

According to the theory of 'Panspermia', life never originated on earth. It was brought to the earth, from space, where it had existed in embryonic forms. The most typical proponents of these concepts were H. HelmHoltz and S. Arrhenius, though J.Leipzig had earlier expounded similar views. Current scientific evidence favours the view that life arose spontaneously in the 'primeval soup' i.e. the ocean of the early earth.

According to Arrhenius, the force of the light pressure transported spores or bacteria that had descended upon the microarticles of the cosmic dust from one point in space to another. The spores grow and give rise to biological evolution when they reach a planet with appropriate conditions for life.

Fred Hoyle puts forward the suggestion that microorganisms could exist in the interstellar space. He believes that clouds of cosmic dust contain bacteria & spores.

Fred Hoyle and N.Wickramasinghe, in 1981, postulated that the latter is more likely. They estimated that the earth's upper atmosphere annually receives 10 cosmic spores as the residue of the hard material that is dispersed in the solar system. Thus, comets are the carriers of embryos of life, which formed earlier in the interstellar space.

David Deamer of the University of California at Santa Cruz has studied the Murchison meteorite, which landed in Australia in 1969. While numerous researchers have been studying its array of organic molecules Deamer had found something more interesting. He had found hundreds of microscopic globules deep within the loose sandstone rock. When he powdered them and rinsed them in a solvent he found the tiny, two-layered vesicles swimming in the liquid. He had no idea what they were. Neither did any one else. He published his findings in 'Nature' in 1985, which shows the credibility of his findings.

Lou Allamandola and his colleagues at NASA's Ames Research Centre have uncovered new evidence to support the possibility of origin of life in interstellar space. When they recreate the harsh conditions of space in their lab, they found cell-like structures emerging out of the molecules!

Allamandola's staggering findings prompted David Deamer to collaborate with him. Jason Dworkin, an expert in origin of life, who had worked with Stanley Miller (The scientist who did the epic 'Primeval soup' experiment confirming origin of organic matter in vitro conditions), also joined the team. He has found that the vesicles are similar to the lipids, which are the major components of cell membranes. It is possible that such precursors of membranes led to prototype organisms.

The concept of seeding life on the planet by exogenous, motile objects such as comets, asteroids or meteorites may be quite shocking to many. Whether life spores were transported as such or not is a debatable issue. Let us assume that, in all probability, life originated on earth de novo from organic compounds that formed spontaneously in the 'pre-biotic soup'. In the 1950's Stanley Miller, as a graduate student in the University of Chicago, mimicked earth's atmosphere that existed about 4 billion years ago by using electric sparks, ammonia, hydrogen, water vapour and methane. He was the first to show that the organic molecular precursors of life do form out of random chemical interactions in the pre-biotic soup. Besides amino acids, other researchers had also demonstrated adenine and guanine, the building blocks of DNA. Interestingly, Miller still continues with this line of research and has demonstrated the other building blocks, namely cytosine and uracil, nearly 43 years after his initial experiments.

A number of scientists thought that Miller's experimental set up was wrong because the incipient earth was hydrogen-starved and entirely unsuitable for organic synthesis outside of a few heavens, such as deep ocean vents. This led to other hypotheses for occurrence of organic matter in early earth. There was a fanciful theory that the organic building blocks came from inter-stellar space as components of asteroids and meteorites. Jeffrey Bada, a geochemist at Scripps institute of oceanography, found in 1996 that carbon molecules called 'buckyballs', the molecule that has generated so much interest among organic chemists recently, has been delivered intact into the solar system 2 billion years ago. He and his colleague Luann Becker found a meteorite, the size of Mount Everest, which crashed on to the earth near Ontario, Canada. The single impact site contained 1 million tones of extraterrestrial buckyballs. If complex buckyballs could fall to earth without burning up, so could other complex organic molecules. This surprised Bada, as he himself was a non-believer in the theory of delivery of organic matter from space until he found this evidence. Christopher F.Chyba, now at University of Arizona, reported in the reputed journal 'S _cience_ ' about 20 years ago, his estimate of how much organic matter would have reached the earth through such impacts. In his estimate, about 10000 tons of cometary organic matter could have accrued on earth per year. He postulates that 25% of the organic matter could have arrived on earth intact. It is true that a great deal of the organic constituents would have been lost en route by burning on impact.

Computer simulations by Bret Gladman of Cornell University and his collaborators suggest that 7.5% of matter ejected from Mars will reach earth, approximately a third of it in ten million years. It is known that microbial spores can survive even longer periods. The spores of bacteria that lived in the past have been found preserved in salt and amber on earth for periods longer than that. Microorganisms have every chance of surviving an inter-planetary journey if a solid outer covering of rock protects them. The main problems would be the ultraviolet rays and the cosmic radiation. A thin layer of rock is enough to protect the spores against UV rays and a layer of rock about a metre-long is enough to shield them from cosmic rays. Some microbes are known to survive temperature up to 120 degrees centigrade and accelerations up to 10000g and pressures of hundreds of atmospheres!

Arrival of life forms or spores from space is still largely a speculation. However, delivery of organic matter by meteorites has been proved beyond doubt. This organic matter, plus the organic matter that formed spontaneously on earth, led to origin of life on earth. Coming back to the theme of exogenous objects as carriers of life spores it is quite possible that life originated from random molecular interactions in the sea in the pre-biotic era. However, nobody has ever shown emergence of life systems when they tried to mimic the conditions that might have prevailed in the pre-biotic era.

I know that I am treading dangerous territory here. Fully aware of the danger of appearing as a non-scientific soul, I have to stand up and say, from a personal view-point, that transportation of life spores onto the early earth is a more elegant hypothesis. This, of course, does not rule out emergence of life spontaneously out of molecular interactions elsewhere in the universe (and just found their way onto the earth!).

The reason for my belief is simple. It may not be based on currently accepted norms of science. However, I have learnt to deduce the ways and means of systems by looking at what another system does to solve a similar problem. I am talking about factual principles here. The systems are self-similar in that the difference is only in the magnitude. The underlying theme must be the same whether you look at the whole or just a component of it.

Look at human reproduction. I started the discussion on how a woman becomes fertile at puberty. Impregnation of a woman by exogenous, projectile, motile objects called sperms is quite analogous to the ' _Insemination of the earth_ ' by meteorites carrying life spores. Conceptually, both the processes are similar even if it is difficult to accept it from the scientific point of view.

If you look at fertilisation in the plant kingdom, isn't pollination the motif behind propagation of species? Passive transport of pollens by wind and insects ensure transfer of life spores to faraway places. Isn't it?

In my view, origin of life on earth is likely to have come about by a _'galactic pollination'_ mechanism simply because it fits the scheme of things as seen everywhere else. I know it is preposterous but I can't help it. It fits elegantly with what happens elsewhere.

Even if one is less willing to accept this theory of seeding earth with life spores it is difficult to disbelieve the fact that precursors of life/organic matter i.e., the atomic elements, did not from on earth anyway. They were all synthesised deep inside faraway stars long ago. These stars spewed these elements into deep space when they exploded in a cataclysmic fashion. Such elemental matter condensed with cosmic dust & gas to form the planets and other stars. Organic compounds such as DNA, porphyrins, amino acids formed out of these atomic elements and, presumably, life too. I have not broken any conventional principles of science here. You can see the scheme of ' _galactic pollination'_ written all over this sequence of events whether you like it or not. It is an open & shut case.

Let us now stop the discussion on how life got started here on earth and move over to the issue of what happened afterwards. I am talking about evolution of diverse life forms and its backdrop. I am going to see if this process has any resemblance to the ways a foetus grows in a human womb.

In the womb, after the fertilised ovum finds its foothold in the uterus, there is a rapid division of cells. Initially, they are very primitive & unsophisticated in that there is no indication of any specialised functions like brain, heart, liver etc. until a time point. Encased in a sac filled with the amniotic fluid, the foetus bathes in this watery environment until delivered. In other words, while in the womb we were 'sea-dwelling' creatures.

Isn't this reminiscent of evolution of life on this planet? In the beginning, organic molecules formed in the primordial sea. Later, the cellular forms of life appeared. For over 2-3 billion years, evolving life forms were living in the sea. About 350 to 400 million years ago life forms began to move into the land, just as a human infant comes out of the 'amniotic sea' after 10 months!

Once we are out of the womb, we crawl on all four legs. The baby learns to walk on two legs only after a year or so. If you carefully looked at the evolution of species one thing that will strike you is the realisation that the first animals to evolve as land-based (terrestrial) animals walked on four legs. It took more than 400 million years after origin of terrestrial life forms for man to appear with capacity to walk on two legs. It may sound childish but you can't deny the truth behind it. It is incredible that this scheme is identical in every bit of detail in development of baby as a system on one hand, and evolving life forms as a whole, on another!

You will be surprised if I tell you that there is a tiny ocean in each of the trillions of cells in our body as well as that of every life form. Every cell in the body of an animal has water in it. There is water outside the cells too. The water that is outside the cells is salty just like it used to be when life evolved in the sea. Is it because the life systems need a salty, water environment for sustaining them simply because that is the way it has always been since their origin (both in the womb and the planet as a whole)?

The salty character of extra cellular water is due to a molecular pump called sodium-potassium ATPase situated on the outer membranes of every cell in our body. They pump out sodium and take in potassium. Sodium takes chloride with it, leaving a higher concentration of sodium and chloride outside the cells resulting in the salty character just like the water in the sea. If you chemically analysed the water in the ocean, and the water outside your body cells, you would not find much of a difference. Even though life forms have moved out of the sea, they need the kind of environment that prevailed in the primeval sea for them to function properly! Is it because the art of living, as designed by God, is a bit too inflexible because there is no other way other than to depend on salty water?

Is there any specific reason for the absolute need for water and the ions such as sodium, chloride & potassium? Movement of these charged ions across cell membrane, by the action of the molecular pumps, helps alter the electrical potential inside the cells thereby making them excitable in response to a stimulus. Excitability is one of the most important properties of a living system and this became possible when the sea had an abundance of such charged ions.

If you looked into the interiors of a cell you would mistake it for a metropolis, albeit miniaturised. Lots and lots of molecules & cellular structures like golgi bodies 'swim' around in the 'intracellular sea' just as you find in the real sea in the macro world. Maritime operations are as important in the tiny micro world of the cells too!

Now I am going to move on and point out another interesting motif that recurs at any level of nature you care to look at. That is the theme of movement and re-modelling as a fundamental need in origin & early development.

Let us start with foetal development. The fertilised ovum, as I said earlier, begins to divide and multiply into hundreds of thousands of cells resulting in a mass of undifferentiated, non-specialised cells. They are all the same. There is no heart, muscle or brain cell yet. It happens a bit later. Once the time is ripe, these embryonic cells begin their 'journey'. They migrate in precisely guided ways to unite with cells of its own type and other types to form the organs. Molecules liberated at the right time and place within the growing foetus control this process, called morphogenesis. We still do not know the exact molecular events underlying this process.

Even in adult life lots of tissues like brain, bone and other growing organs undergo remodelling which changes the layout and structure of them. It accompanies the growing process that keeps happening until you reach a particular stage.

In the brain new neuronal connections are established all the time to help nerve cells 'talk' with each other as if it were a telephone exchange or something. Virtually, it is no different from the way our telephone companies connect your telephone to others through the cables so that you can establish contact with others.

What is the need for this remodelling in the process of growth? This remodelling is invariably associated with movement of structures spatially. If a nerve cell has to establish a connection with a nerve cell far away, it has to grow its tail called the axon. It also has to 'know' with which cell it is supposed to establish a connection. In real life, the target cell identifies itself by a 'molecular beacon' that it exhibits on its surface.

If you looked at a brain of a baby at 3 years of age, and compare it with the neuronal layout after 10 or 20 years, it is going to vastly different. The same thing applies to a growing foetus. Cellular movement and organ layouts keep changing every week until delivered. Organogenesis needs the movement of cells and tissues physically over long distances.

It is extremely interesting that, at the planetary level, the earth isn't what it was a billion years ago. Is it? About 300 million years ago, there were two major continents on the earth. South Africa, America, India, Australia & Antarctica constituted one of them (Gondwanaland). The other continent, called Laurasia, had North America and Eurasia. About 275 million years ago, Gondwanaland and Laurasia collided and joined up to form a single super continent, Pangea. Pangea is a Greek term meaning 'all the earth'. During the last 170 million years, Pangea has broken up and the continents have drifted apart slowly.

In the beginning of this century, a German scientist called Alfred Wegener put forward the theory of continental drift commonly referred as Platectonic theory. In an updated form, this theory has come to win the recognition of science. Wegener's theory has been refined in the light of modern geophysical data. According to this theory, whole plates of the earth i.e., the crust and a part of the mantle together, seem to be moving. These plates are about 200 Km thick. There are also oceanic plates, which do not have continents on them, apart from the continental plates.

The plates slide under each other, or simply collide by the movement of these plates. The movement of these plates occurs due to the internal forces of the earth, which is mostly heat. The asymmetric arrangement of the continents is due to the continental drift. The continental drift decides the lay out of the continents on the globe. Such an asymmetric layout of the land is typical of other terrestrial planets like Venus, Mars & Mercury.

I feel that there is not a great deal of difference between the way organs in the growing foetus develop by the process of morphogenesis and the way continents develop by platectonic movement.

It is very difficult to ignore the striking recurrence of the movement theme when you see how diverse systems move about in an all-pervasive way as part of their development. At a social level, it is becoming extremely uncommon for someone to be born at a place, live and die at the same place. People just move out for jobs, education and fun all the time in the career-formative years of their life before they acquire a more stable life.

I wonder if the universe has had the same structure since the beginning. Galaxies, stars and planets keep forming all over. Already formed stars destroy themselves in supernova explosions. Above all, the galaxies & stars move in space. The motion of clusters of galaxies and super galaxies away from each other is due to the expansion of the universe. Edwin Hubble showed by a simple equation how the distance between galaxies grows faster the farther away they are from each other. There is plenty of evidence favouring the view that the galaxies too form complex structures as you will see in the next chapter.

I guess it is time to move on (to another topic, not spatially). One of the recurrent motifs in our world is the use of simple units to form complex things. Use a simple brick, one on top of another, we can build a huge mansion. We can design our houses the way we want, all of them using the same building block, the brick.

Atoms are the 'bricks' with which molecules are built. There are only 105 atomic elements but the number of different molecules is manifold higher. What are the bricks that make atoms? The precursors of atoms are just three types of subatomic particles: electron, proton & neutron. You find nature generate 105 types of atomic elements by juggling these three particles in varying combinations!

Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins and nucleotides are the blocks that make DNA and RNA. Just 4 types of nucleotides, in different permutations & combinations, and you suddenly 30 million types of living species!

You can virtually rattle of a number of such examples where infinite diversity and complexity can arise with simple units. However, the underlying motif is the same: use monomeric building blocks to come up with the higher order of existence. It is so common in nature that it almost bores you.

Every biology student must have seen the evolutionary 'tree' that depicts diversification of life forms as time passes by. You start with a basic living system, which acquires new properties and structure resulting in a new life form with new capabilities. This goes on and on **.** The 'evolutionary tree' concept applies to almost anything, say an institutional growth, social history, evolution of languages and even the scientific process of discovery **.** If you take the case of evolution of language one finds that a language can 'mutate' or exchange words with other languages and result in a new language altogether. This can be enhanced by the mobility and intermixing of populations.

What is the advantage of divergent evolutionary behaviour? One important characteristic of this behaviour is the appearance of new capabilities in the off shoots. The descendants acquire capacities that are slightly better, or more suitable, to their environment. Interestingly, the progeny continue to carry out functions related to the original function, even if their roles have become slightly different.

Even the biochemical molecules show divergent evolution **.** There are quite a few 'molecular families' now identified, which have all had their own common ancestors. Biochemists talk of the immunoglobulin super family, DNA binding protein family, cell adhesion molecule family, peptide hormone family, etc. These families of molecules have unique common function but the individual members of the family will have separate roles to play. Obviously, the individual molecular members originate from a common precursor. It is amazing that such molecular evolution brings about such complexity to biological functions.

Let us just take one such molecular family as an example to understand what I am talking about. Take the case of the immunoglobulin super family. Immunity is an extremely important defence mechanism for higher life forms. It involves two types of cells, namely T and B lymphocytes. B cells make antibodies to kill the microbes whereas the T cells make other types of molecules like interleukins and interferons to kill them. In order to do that T cells should have a mechanism to recognise their targets. They do that with the help of a molecule on their surface called T cell receptors that help bind the target under attack.

Another thing that is important in the immune response is that the target has to be clearly, identified so that the body's own cells don't die in the 'cross fire'. In other words, the 'self' has to be differentiated from the 'non-self'. This needs the help of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecules.

Finally, in order for execution of a concerted effort, T cells and other accessory cells need to come together physically to 'exchange' information, which needs molecules to 'glue' them up temporarily. Now comes the interesting bit. The antibody molecules, the T cell antigen receptor, the MHC molecules and the 'glue' molecules all of them are similar in structure. Obviously, they have had a common ancestry. Their evolution down the line has given them newer functions, which have enriched the immune functions. It looks too good to have resulted by pure chance.

A company which markets a product will not meet with success unless its product in good enough. The company with the 'fittest' product captures a large share of the market, if not the monopoly. To survive, the companies come up with more and more improvements in the quality of the product. Each company's product may be good in its own way and the consumer finds that he has to make a choice. He settles down for a brand but does not hesitate to buy other brands when the top brand is not available. After all, what he wants is the service that the product has to offer.

The competition for survival has made the companies evolve the products with increasingly attractive characteristics leading to different forms of the same. If you wanted a car there are virtually hundreds of choices. If you wanted a mobile phone it is the same story. In fact, this applies to all consumer goods we need. It is a redundant state and the consumers never starve of the service they expect. You could call the whole process as convergent evolution, which essentially leads to a redundant state. Manufacturers of the respective products keep working on improving the product and their efforts converge on a common goal - a better consumer product. Redundancy is extremely important for the stability of a system. It makes a system fail-proof in times of challenges. If some company were to go bust there are others who will continue to provide what we want.

Redundancy is so commonplace in biological systems. For example, if your body wants glucose there are many ways of getting it. There is no total dependency on any one of the pathways. This makes life systems flexible and largely fault-tolerant.

When a system has found an answer to a problem, it doesn't just stop there. It goes ahead and finds more solutions and this is the driving force behind convergent evolution. Stage dramas, sports, radio, television, cinema, video are all variations of the same theme i.e., entertainment. Man's curiosity is unlimited and that of nature is equally so.

Every time a mutation occurs it looks as though nature is curious. Mutations lead to new form and function in life forms - both convergent and divergent.

To sum up on the theme of origin and development it is quite evident that some motifs recur. The concept of mobile carriers of life precursors, the motif of maintaining a watery environment in early development, the motif of maturation period before origin, the need for crawling before walking, the theme of remodelling & movement, the need for diversification, and the state of redundancy, are all too similar irrespective of the level of nature's hierarchy you care to look at.

These solutions have been time-tested, be it a planet, embryonic cells, atoms, or the stars! What an assortment of things!

Their answers to the problem of origin and development seem to have been unimaginably similar. Irrespective of the nature of the system, the sequence of events repeats itself too often _._ Does it mean that there are only certain ways of doing things and these don't depend on the nature of the systems at all?

# 2. GETTING ORGANISED

Small birds such as kinglets and long-tailed tits inevitably die off after a short time when kept in solitude. They are much happier if you put a little group of them in the cage.

Fish is also a very sociable creature. In an aquarium, a herring placed alone dies of depression in a few days. They yearn for the company of their fellow herrings.

Some insects like the caterpillars of the European processionary moth, a scourge in our woods, always grow up as groups. They keep close together in a column as they creep from branch to branch, eating the leaves on the way. The caterpillar that falls behind and loses the way is doomed. It fails to grow into an adult. Its metabolic rate will fall as it loses its appetite. If some fellow caterpillars come in its vicinity, it then becomes lively again.

Bees, ants, termites can't even stand a smaller than usual group, let alone loneliness. They bring order and purpose in their lives only if their company is adequately large. The minimum number is about 25 for bees and ants. They are accustomed to living in more crowded groups and would get depressed and lead a disoriented life, if they find themselves in a smaller company.

Man too likes to associate himself with fellow human beings. There is nothing worse than loneliness for humans. Physical and mental interactions with fellow humans keep us happy. People always tend to identify themselves as belonging to groups. The smallest such is the family unit and, at the other extreme, it is the nationality. May be, you could even say religious groups are also to be considered at the upper end of this spectrum. Politics is another place where we find intense groupism.

For some reason, man tends to become emotionally involved to whatever group he belongs. Whether it is his family or nation or religion or a political party, it does not matter. At a lighter level people love to group themselves as fans of sports stars and clubs and even pop groups, and often become delirious and excitable during matches or concerts. Quite often, people cross the line and become too emotionally attached to some celebrities though they have never had any personal contact. They would even give up their lives if they can.

It is perfectly understandable if a human is devoted to his family or to his nation. Many individuals and leaders work for the welfare of the humanity at large, irrespective of their nationalities. When famine strikes a particular part of the world, people in the rest of the world respond with help. When war takes its toll in some corner of the world, there is help coming from people whom you have not met at all.

The people that matter to you, next to your own family members, will be those who went to school or college with you, or those who work with you. Friendship means a lot to every one of us. We do not know the exact molecular basis for the emotional bonds seen in kinship, friendship, patriotism and the basic humanitarian tendencies. Though they are abstract entities, they must have a basis for their origin. Obviously, these feelings originate in the brain and there is no doubt it will boil down to some neuronal connection and neurotransmitter molecules. They are emergent properties of the neuronal associations. Ultimately, the molecules mediate their expression. It may be a bit disappointing to reduce some of the most cherished human values down to some chemical molecules!

Neurophysiologists tell us that a part of the brain called the limbic system is important for genesis and expression of emotions. The limbic system consists of a rim of cortical tissue around the hilus of the cerebral hemisphere and a group of associated deep structures - the amygdala, hippocampus and the septal nuclei. Hypothalamus, another part of the brain, plays a role in emotional functions too. The limbic system, the reticular core and the hypothalamus form the limbic-mid brain circuit, which regulates the instinctual and emotional behaviour. Though unidentified, some of the neurotransmitters like norepinephrine, dopamine, histamine or serotonin present within these structures must be mediating these functions. These molecules bridge humans near and far, related by blood or not. In the molecular aggregate called the neurones, and subsequently in the neuronal aggregate called the brain, such wonderful things are happening.

One may wonder why or how the molecules in the neurones aggregate to form the cells. In their absence, there is no possibility of a human society. Because, the emotions generated during these molecular/cellular associations in the brain bring up the properties like kinship and patriotism. Without these feelings how could there be an intact society?

I wonder how objects in the size range of nanometres and angstroms determine the formation of things like human societies! It is interesting that the tendency to associate and aggregate at the level of molecules and cells results in human aggregative behaviours. The motif of association and aggregation is not only present at different levels of nature but one is responsible for the other. It is not as if the molecules choose to or 'decide' to aggregate in a purposeful way. Atoms aggregate to from molecules strictly under physicochemical principles like covalent, co-ordination bonds, and Van der waals forces.

At the level of the molecules, the interactions occur strictly under the influences of electrostatic, hydrophilic, hydpophobic forces or through hydrogen bonds. Presence of a charged atom or group (like calcium which is positively charged and a carboxyl group, which is negatively charged) on the surface of the two neighbouring molecules is enough attraction for them to interact. Similarly, a water-loving or hating chemical here and there would seek out a compatible group from a jungle of molecules & atoms.

In simple terms, chemical reactions between atoms determine the formation of the higher order of organisation, the molecule. In a figurative sense, it is almost like formation of social groups by people who are compatible. An atom with a positive electric charge on its surface would be sufficient attraction for another atom with a negative charge. Similarly, an atom with a water-soluble surface would easily find another atom with the same nature. It would avoid an atom if it has a water-hating surface. On the other hand, all water-hating atoms would come together and avoid water-loving atoms. This is simply a result of their chemical nature. The sum total of all atomic interactions results in all the physical and biological systems in the universe!

At some stage in evolution, molecules have evolved to physically accommodate potential molecules they will react with, like how a key would fit a lock. For example, an enzyme molecule will fit its target perfectly. Similarly, receptors for neurotransmitter molecules, hormones & other regulatory molecules have a perfect 3-D structure to bind and 'talk' to their respective molecular targets. Some kind of selection pressure must have been responsible for evolution of such molecular adaptation.

At this point, I would like to point out a very fascinating facet of the theme of aggregation or association as a behavioural pattern. I mentioned just a while ago that atoms and molecules are the players in this game. I mentioned about all types of chemical forces that govern these interactions. The common denominator underlying all these inter-molecular 'dialogue' is electrons.

The electrical charge of chemical entities is due to the electrons. The solubility of chemical moieties is also due to the electrons. These two are the determinants of most chemical reactions. The number of electrons on the outer side of the nucleus is determined by the number of protons inside the nucleus of the atom, but protons (neither the neutron) never involve themselves directly with atom-atom or molecule-molecule interactions.

Whether it is the covalent, co-ordinate or an ionic bond, the electrons are the bridging forces. In a covalent bond, the participating atoms share the electrons. The Van der waals forces that operate between molecules is a result of the unequal distribution of electrons around a molecule. We all know that these types of inter-atomic bonds between neighbour atoms forms the basis for formation of all kinds of molecules inside your body. These molecules, in turn, generate higher order functions. In short, electrons are the 'diplomats' mediating the inter-atomic and inter-molecular relations!

Going a level higher, the molecules that are responsible for emotions are also dependent on their electrons just like any other molecules. In other words, the functions like learning, memory, fear, emotions and social behaviour are all dependent on electrons because the molecules that mediate these interactions depend on the electrons present in atoms constituting the brain neurotransmitter molecules!

Consider the case of the diplomats trying to settle an international dispute. Though the physical bodies of the diplomats are present at the conference table, it is their brains that are responsible for the thinking & talking. Their muscles, bones or other organs are in no way directly involved in the deliberations. Even in the brain, it is not the entire brain but only a few portions of it, which are responsible for the thinking. Going further, even in the portions of the brain that take part in thinking function, the actual players are the molecules and the electrical charges (which are again nothing but electrons and movement of electrons).

I said a little while ago that all molecular and atomic interactions depend on the electrons. If that is the case, aren't we perfectly right in claiming that the electron is the real 'diplomat', not just for the inter-atomic but also for the inter-national dialogue! Can anybody find any fault with this line of reasoning though it is the height of reductionism?

It is extremely fascinating to find this facet of nature assume a surrealistic dimension when you look at the electron at the centre of the inter-atomic, inter-molecular, inter-personal and inter-national dialogue! Can you believe that?

This binding between atoms mediated by electrons is a force that would act over such small distances as the atomic dimensions. In real terms, the distance would measure no greater than a few angstroms.

In the brain, these extremely short-acting forces become the 'emotional bonds' and patriotism, which act as social binding forces cutting across barriers and reaching up to thousands of kilometres!

What an incredible way of doing things? A force that could act over such short distances between atoms amplifies to social bonds acting over the breadth and stretch of the world!

Coulomb's law states that the electrical force between two interacting entities is inversely proportional to the distance between them. In other words, the attraction between them would decrease if the distance between them increases. Contrary to coulomb's law, the force of the emotional interactions does not decrease in intensity with increasing distance. In fact, the distance would only increase the force of these affective feelings between the loved ones!

Apart from the stunning truth that electrons revolving around the periphery of the atom actually translate into human emotions determining the human societies, there is one more equally tantalising motif that I want the readers to appreciate for themselves. I said the electrons at the periphery are the seats of action. Why don't you find protons or neutrons joining the fray? Firstly, they are deep inside the atom and it is physically difficult for them to get involved. Ever if you look at whole molecules only those atoms situated at the periphery of the molecule will be reactive and not the ones buried deep inside.

For example, let us take a protein like an enzyme. Proteins can be of various shapes, many of them globular. This means the amino acids making up the enzyme proteins roll up into the shape of a ball. Many of these amino acids bury themselves down under, making it difficult for them to interact with anything. The amino acids at the surface of those enzymes are ideally suited for such interactions.

What I am trying to get at is the fact that it is the boundary or periphery that is important in associative behaviours. It is incredible that if you look at international relations, the states that are physically in contact will have some dispute to settle. We are looking at the periphery or boundary here.

If you take the case of the United Kingdom, they will have political friction with the state at their geographical border i.e., Ireland, and they are less likely to have anything with Japan, for example. If you take India, it is always Pakistan or Sri Lanka or China because these three countries are at the periphery of India.

Such 'international reactions' often have resulted in re-organisation of geographical or social history of nations just as inter-atomic or intermolecular reactions change the structure of a molecule. Sometimes, nations have disintegrated into numerous ones like what happened in U.S.S.R or it could be a move in the positive direction like the European Union or U.S.A.

Countries are the equivalents of atoms. When they interact, the result is re-organisation of nations. When the atoms interact, the molecules form or disintegrate. At both levels, the interaction occurs at the periphery.

Aggregation and disintegration are cyclically recurrent phenomena seen at all levels of nature. Systems associate to form a complex structure, which has to undergo a change of form some time or other **.** Just as atomic interactions at their periphery can lead to association as well dissociation, international interactions can result in a union of states or disintegration.

Surprisingly, even galaxies form orderly aggregates as if they were simpler units of a higher structure.. Regular, coherent, and complex supra galactic structures do occur in the universe! Evidence for the fact that the universe is full of enormous, complex structures continues to pile up.

Population density of galaxies varies regularly across most of the visible universe. One of the reasons why the galaxies aggregate is proposed to be due to a 'Great Attractor', which is believed to be a conglomerate of galaxies with enormous density. It is capable of drawing the galaxies towards it gravitationally. People have attempted to calculate the mass of the great attractor to determine if it can account for all of the Milky Way galaxy's motion in that direction. A mass of something like 10 million billion times the mass of the sun would be required to explain the streaming speed of galaxies at the rate of 600 Km/sec. Nothing could have such mass and, therefore, scientists have considered non-standard possibilities.

One such consideration is the energy that arose during a phase-transition that the universe might have undergone. Any system will release energy when they change from one phase of existence to another. For example, condensation of steam (one phase) to liquid water (another phase) is one such phase transition. Freezing of water (one phase) to ice (another phase) is another example of phase transition. Both release energy in the form of latent heat. At the universal scale, a cosmological phase transition could have liberated unimaginable amounts of energy that could have helped the inflation of the universe. A relatively recent phase transition could have been responsible for the great attractor phenomenon.

Another supra galactic structure in the universe, called the 'Great Wall', has been identified by the US astronomers. The great walls refer to galaxies that tend to line up in filaments up to 100 million light years long, with voids of a similar size in between. Newer results suggest that walls are approximately the norm in the universe. Thirteen mega walls have been found in a space of 7000 million light years.

For all you know the future may come up with even more surprises. The universe could be organised according to a 'plan', just like any other complex system. The basic unit of such an organisation could be a star. The next higher level could be a galaxy, followed by a supra galactic structure. Who knows? I will only be surprised if things don't turn out to be this way.

Look at a star. A central core surrounded by planets orbiting around them. Isn't it exactly the same kind of organisation as in the case of an atom with electrons revolving around them?

What a remarkable similarity? In that case, is a galaxy simply a 'molecule' at the universal scale? Is the supra galaxy a cell or something? Why not?

John Gribbins, the popular science writer, has written an article titled, 'Is universe alive?' in one of the issues of _New Scientist_ , the respected Science journal! This only shows that such ideas have already occurred in the minds of scientists.

Quarks unite to form the subatomic particles. Protons, neutrons & electrons unite to form the atoms. Atoms unite to form the molecules. Molecules unite to form the cells. Cells unite to form the organs. Organs unite to form the life systems. Life systems form social organisations. At the higher levels, planets and stars form galaxies. Galaxies unite to form supra galaxies. Why all this? Why should systems associate to form a higher level of organisation? Why does this motif recur so much? Of what benefit it is to the individual system?

Obviously, unity is strength. When molecules, cells, organisms combine with members of their own type, their functional capacity increases.

A subatomic particle releases part of its rest energy if it forms a system with other particles. This is the basis of the atomic fusion energy. In a natural state, nuclear fusion occurs inside stars liberating tremendous energies, which possibly power the stars. Gravitational aggregation is even more powerful in uniting systems. The productive energy that we get out of coal, wood, petroleum comes from the association of oxygen with these fuel Molecules (Hydrocarbons).. When hydrogen atom combines with oxygen to form a water molecule, the energy output is 4.17 electron volts. When fuel molecules combine with oxygen the energy out put is incomparably higher.

There is always an emergent property that appears when individuals units associate together **.** For instance, when many different amino acids, none of them with catalytic properties, unite to form an enzyme protein, you find the emergence of catalytic properties in the system. Where did it come from? Is this property the goal of the union? Who aimed at this goal? Obviously not the amino acids as they lack the mind to think. The plot becomes a bit more purpose-oriented when you find that there are a whole lot of regulatory mechanisms within the cell, orchestrating the timely synthesis of the enzymes. The facilitatory support to generation of enzymes raises the suspicion that it is a guided event.

Starting from genes encoding the enzymes there are so many molecular agents, which make sure that these genes are transcribed to form the enzymes in adequate quantities at the right times. Ribosomes & endoplasmic reticula play their part in providing a physical framework upon which this amino acid assembly can occur as if it were an assembly line in a factory. Why all these elaborate arrangements to make a protein such as an enzyme?

In fact, honestly, I can't find any difference whatsoever between an assembly line in a factory and the protein synthesis assembly line on the ribosomes!

It is true that amino acids in the pre-biotic past could have formed proteins out of purely random molecular interactions. On the contrary, inside the present cellular forms, the formation of the same proteins and other vital biochemical molecules occur under the regulation of sophisticated mechanisms. I wonder if the associative behaviours of systems are not always random phenomena but happen under the influence of possibly emergent properties that I alluded to a little while ago.

A cell in your body is capable of doing some function. The life force, that is you, does not arise until the trillions of cells in your body work as a cohesive unit. As a collective unit, your body cells behave much differently than what they would have done alone.

Individual units of a collective system tend to divide the labour amongst them, which may be one of the beneficial outcomes in formation of a complex system.. I see some of the readers getting ready to object to the use of the phrase, 'divide the labour' just as expected of a conventionally trained biologist. Convention abhors the belief that a system other than the brainy humans can also come up with a behavioural pattern resembling that of our own. Whether you like it not, that is what you see. I said that individual units of a collective system divide the labour amongst themselves. I do not know if it was 'intentional' or just a randomly emergent property.

Look at the way an organism develops. After fertilisation, the zygote begins to divide. Until a particular stage, there is an endless division of cells resulting in a mass of daughter cells, all of them alike. Then comes the beauty. A process called tissue differentiation begins. What it means is the cells begin to show signs of specialisation something very analogous to the way humans take up careers of different types.

Our kids are alike until the end of their school education. Every one of them has the potential to become a businessman, a lawyer, a doctor, a sportsman, an engineer or any thing. In reality, we find that one career route is chosen and pursued until the end of life. This is a good arrangement for the society because manpower is utilised for doing different things rather than all of us doing the same thing. What use is it if all of us are engineers? Alternatively, all of us doctors.

The cells of a growing foetus go through the initial phase of divisions and then become irreversibly differentiated into a muscle cell, a brain cell, a liver cell, a blood cell, a kidney cell etc. It is a kind of career specialisation for them. They stay that way until they die. Do people change careers commonly? You may find isolated cases like that but people remain stuck to their career paths. Don't they? It may be theoretically possible for a doctor to become a lawyer if he went to law school. There is nothing to stop him if he wants to. However, a number of other factors like the need for going through law school, other family commitments will prevent him. We are all like that. We may be facing a number of difficulties in our jobs. Career change is not the first option we exercise.

Growing foetus, once the cells have completed their functional differentiation, is ready to departmentalise its function. You find that the brain cells take over the role of management. Nerve cells complete the communication networks. The blood cells do the job of transport system across the body. The kidney cells take on the sewage functions. The muscle cells take care of locomotion. The gonads do the reproductive function. The immune cells take care of defence. It is plain and obvious that all the basic themes of our social organisation are evident in a foetus as if it were a miniaturised version.

It is even more surprising to find molecules exhibit a similar tendency. Biochemical molecules like enzymes, DNA, proteins etc. are huge molecules made up of building blocks of amino acids or nucleotides depending on the molecule. These building blocks are linked to one another as beads in a chain. The assembly of such amino acids, as in the case of an enzyme protein, results in the ability to catalyse a biochemical reaction. For instance, an enzyme called Fatty acid synthase is a terrific example of how 'co-operative' behaviour can occur in mindless molecules. It is an enzyme complex made up of seven different enzymes physically linked together and the overall function of these enzymes is to synthesise fat molecules. These enzymes are arranged in no different a manner than what you see in a factory assembly line. The first enzyme picks up the 'raw material' (in biochemical jargon it is the substrate) for the fat molecules and acts upon it. Then it 'passes' the unfinished product down the assembly line for the next enzyme in line to do their job. The partially finished product is shuttled to the next enzyme in line in succession. At the end of the assembly line the fully finished fat molecule emerges, ready to go to the 'storage granaries' of the body, the fat cells.

It is true that not all enzymes in living organisms are multi-unit structures like fatty acid synthase. In the case of other enzymes, they may not be physically linked but work coherently as if they are in a loose web. For instance, if you look at the overall organisation of biochemical reactions in a living cell you can make out the beauty of molecular order and purpose. There are many metabolic pathways inside the cells in which groups of enzymes act sequentially on the 'raw materials' until the 'finished goods' come out.

If you take the case of biosynthesis of cholesterol in your body cells, there are about 15-20 enzymes required to accomplish this task. The first enzyme acts on a simple precursor, and the product of the first enzyme is the precursor for the next enzyme and this goes on sequentially until cholesterol emerges out of this 'molecular tinkering'. None of these enzymes is physically grouped together yet the 'assembly line' concept holds well. There are so many such sequential, purpose-oriented reactions in every living cell of higher or lower life forms.

What would you do if the product your company is making is faced with a situation where there is a glut building up in the market? Will you go on manufacturing it even if nobody is buying it? That does not make common sense and it doesn't make sense for the cells either. The enzymes know when to stop when no cell is 'buying' its product. How does this happen?

What actually happens is the last enzyme in the metabolic pathway has a region on its surface doing the job of the marketing department. Wait a minute, am I talking of an industry or a molecule? I can't help it if you can't distinguish between both.

I told you in the beginning that enzymes are proteins, which are nothing but strings of amino acids. These amino acids remain in a 3-D physical shape, which is mostly globular. I told that the property of catalysis emerges due to the association of amino acids to forms this complex. Actually, groups of amino acids in different locations on the enzyme surface take on different functional roles. For instance, a few amino acids make up the marketing 'personnel' in every sense of the word. They do exactly what our marketing executives would do in the real world. The phenomenon by which the enzymes shut down the synthesis of a product is known as the 'product feed back inhibition'. This simply means that the product 'manufacture' stops if there are no takers in the cell. It resumes when the demand grows. The mindless enzyme can assess the rate of utilisation of the product and quickly stop unnecessary manufacture in times of a glut. In actual biochemical terms, the mechanism is simple. If the product accumulates, then it makes contact with the part of the enzyme, which acts as the 'marketing department'.

Would an industry have only the marketing department? Wouldn't it have a manufacturing unit too? The 'catalytic or active site' is the manufacturing unit of the enzyme! The actual chemical reaction happens here. Again, a few amino acids making up the enzyme structure will do this job.

Often, the enzyme surface has amino acids with affinity for binding the right kind of raw material specific for the enzyme. This is probably the equivalent of our 'purchase department' of an industry doing the job of picking up 'raw material' molecules and directing them to the active, catalytic site. If the raw material of an enzyme is not available, the sequence of reactions cannot proceed.

Would you be surprised if the enzyme factories need power too? Yes, they do. For them the power comes in the form of ATP, the chemical equivalent of your money. We will come back to the power needs of biochemical systems in a different chapter.

It is amazing that a complex system manifests the same organisational motifs as any other. Truly, nobody would expect an enzyme molecule to be so beautifully 'departmentalised'. Did you?

You wouldn't have to go far before you encounter another complex system that is organised the same way as your society, irrespective of the fact that there is no brain to come up with these solutions.

Let us say you want to start a new business involving manufacture and selling of a product and you intend to have a purpose-built factory and office space. Naturally, you can't do everything yourself. You are going to need skilled labourers. You need engineers to build, workers, managers to run the office, sales personnel & people to do the accounts. If you insist on doing all by yourself there is a price to pay. You have to settle for something small and simple. You have to give up complexity.

The unicellular organisms are like someone who wants to do everything by himself. It is made of one cell, which does everything from seeking nutrients, digestion, excretion, defence, locomotion and reproduction. Naturally, they are very simple creatures. Multi-cellular organisms are more ambitious and enterprising. They have teamed up with members of its type as well as others to aim for something more sophisticated. They recruit groups of cells to do the specific jobs.

In a single celled system, each job would be the responsibility of a sub-cellular organelle. For instance, the nucleus does the management role. The ribosomes do the 'industrial' role of 'manufacturing' proteins. Lysosomes do the 'recycling function'. The microtubules & Golgi bodies do the transportation functions across the cell. The outer membrane provides the housing for your cell. The mitochondria generate power for it!

When you say a system has multiple units, the question of management and leadership arises. In our body, the brain plays the role of the chief executive. It takes decisions on critical issues, based on information available to it though the sensory receptors, which are again another class of body cells. The sensory receptors are specialised to do the 'intelligence' operation as if they are 'sleuths'. They gather as much information as possible and pass it on to the 'boss' cells, the brain.

Is it possible for the Prime minister or president to take care of day-to-day running of every city and town in the country? That is the reason why the governmental machinery has regional administrators. Their job will be to handle tasks at the local level without bothering the big boss at the top.

Can the brain handle all the information despatched by the sensory sleuths? If the brain cells are consciously engaged in each trivial task, where is the possibility for thinking?

For instance, your heart is beating non-stop whether you are awake or asleep. You lungs are breathing every minute until you die. Do you ever consciously 'want' to beat your heart or to breathe? What about digestion of the food you ate? Do you do anything other than relishing the food?

Isn't digestion of the food inside your body an automatic process under the influence of an array of different cells? They do everything from secretion of digestive enzymes, absorption & packing of absorbed food into a form ready for circulation in blood. It is a process as complex of your food industries. Do you ever realise the number of cells deep inside you doing such jobs for you? This is because the brain has been relieved of such repetitive, menial tasks like 'beating the heart, breathing & digestion'.

Apart from these repetitive taskmasters, the brain also has other subordinates who can handle a few tasks, which require a quick action and so cannot wait for a conscious decision from the brain. The spinal cord is a tail-like structure beginning at the base of the brain. It has some nerve cells in it, which can respond to emergencies in a flash. For instance, if you touch fire you withdraw your hands so fast that you are not consciously aware of the withdrawing motion. The spinal cord does the trick. If you had to wait for a response from the brain, it would have meant a scar on your hand.

I am sure the 'cellular societies' i.e., the living organism, have sorted out the task of administration & bureaucracy much the same way as the human societies have. Do you agree?

The blood vessels are the equivalent of your motorways. You need them to transport food molecules oxygen and the blood cells. The blood vessels cover the length and breadth of the body.

Red blood cells are one type of our body cells specially suited for oxygen transport in your body circulating in the blood stream, it is amazing how well they have adapted to their function of oxygen transport. This is a supreme example of how an individual system can pull its weight when part of a collective whole. Oxygen is a gas. It is difficult to deliver it to the cells in the dissolved state. The red blood cells do the job of oxygen transport to cells. The red cells are the 'oxygen tankers'. The red cells are 'purpose-built' to do this job. Together with lungs, they run a monopoly in the oxygen trade of the body. Lung cells are again specialised to 'import' oxygen from the atmosphere for use of other body cells.

What would you do if told to design a cargo ship? You wouldn't waste space in the ship by trying to include unnecessary things in the carrier. Would you? It makes sense to maximise the utilisation of space specifically for packing the cargo. This is what the nature has come up with. The red cells lack mitochondria and nucleus in order to create space. Mitochondria and nucleus are two of the most vital structures for any cell. The red cells do not have them because they need the space for packing oxygen. Removal of nucleus gives the red cells a biconcave shape like a flat disc. This shape helps the red cells to squeeze through tiny capillaries in the nook and corner of the body. If the red cell had a spherical shape as other cells, it would be difficult to pass through narrow blood vessels without rupturing. Doing away with mitochondria has a positive benefit apart from creating space.

The mitochondria are the 'power plants' of an animal cell **.** Energy production occurs here, making use of oxygen & food molecules. Without oxygen, there is no way mitochondria can make energy. If mitochondria were present inside red cells there would be a tendency to use up the oxygen cargo for red cell's energy needs. Red cells are the most abundant cell type in the human body. There are 5 million red cells per cubic millimetre of human blood. Humans have about 5 litres of blood, which means the total number of red cells in our body could run into billions. If all these red cells start making use of the oxygen they are carrying there wouldn't be any left for other cells. Doing away with the mitochondria solves this problem in one shot. What a clever move!

When I look at the red cell adaptation, I am reminded of the stories we hear at what the kings did to protect their wives from male servants. It is said that the male servants in the queens' chambers were castrated in order to prevent any mischief from the males who fancied the queens! The red cells are 'castrated' as far as their ability to use oxygen is concerned!

It is the division of labour such as this makes human enterprise possible. What starts of as one embryo, ends up in a system where each cell type is specialised to do a job, which collectively adds up to the whole.

The kidney cells take care of the waterworks and sewerage functions of the body. The skin cells constitute the walls of your body house, acting like a fortress. The white blood cells are your warriors fighting against the microbes for the sake of other cells. The liver cell is the 'industrial nerve centre' of the body. It has a wide repertoire of manufacturing capacities. It can synthesise so many important biochemical molecules. The fat cells do the job of 'storage granaries'. You could say they are the body's 'refrigerator' from where the cells can always hope to get some 'food'. It is incredible that the human body, as well as any other multi-cellular organism, has the same degree of complexity and organisation as a big nation. Every element of sophistication is present, as if you have taken a reduced version photocopy.

What makes it possible for the cells to individualise their skills so that they can pool their resources? Is a fat cell different from a brain cell? Is the kidney cell any different from a skin cell? What makes them different? All cells in the human body are similar to each other in their genetic make up. They all have the same 30,000 genes or so present in a human cell. Then how do they manage to look and function different?

Can you tell me if a doctor is a different kind of human being when compared to an engineer? Is a sportsman different from a scientist? It is no secret that human beings have the potential to be anything they want to be, as much as a cell can become any type of cell. What individualises a human being is his training & education just like what the process of tissue differentiation does to the cells. During this process, activation of unique sets of genes out of the common complement of 30,000 genes that every cell has received results in specialised functions. The genes activated in the kidney cell, for example, are different from the set of genes activated in the brain cell or any other cell. The genes activated in the liver cell will not be active in any other cell type in the body. This selective gene activation is generally irreversible. Because of activation of different sets of genes in different cells, one finds them making different products depending on their active genes. What a beautiful way of dividing the labour? It is as impressive as what our human society has done to functionally specialise its subjects!

A primitive human settlement would have been unsophisticated just as unicellular & oligocellular life forms (organisms with one to just a few cells) because of lack of enough subjects to do more sophisticated jobs. Evolution prefers a bigger system than this, whether it is social evolution or biological evolution.

In fact, if you look at a simple molecule, let us say, ammonia, which has just one atom of nitrogen and three atoms of hydrogen. What can it do? Not a great deal, really. Similarly, there are so many small molecules like sodium chloride (one atom of sodium and one atom of chlorine), carbon dioxide (one carbon atom and 2 oxygen atoms) and so on. They are very limited in functional capabilities. Whereas look at proteins. Look at DNA. They are huge molecules with lots of constituent molecules and atoms. They can afford to do large volume tasks and exhibit functional specialisation just any other collective system can.

One is left wondering if a collective system were so advantageous that would make it grow endlessly towards bigger and bigger structures. Will they be viable? A human body is likely to contain trillions of cells. Will our size evolutionarily grow in the future?

As life systems evolved, 'cellular population expansions' must have been a critical issue. There must have been a survival value if there were only a minimum number of cellular units only. That is why we don't see too many organisms like the whales, elephants & dinosaurs. Dinosaur was a big evolutionary mistake, presumably. A body of a dinosaur had more cells than our own. It is equally true that the dinosaur had more to do with all the quadrillions of cells!

First comes the question of finding food for all of the trillions of the cells and secondly, how to communicate with all of them? It must have been a logistic nightmare to transfer information to all the cells, considering the fact the dinosaur's brain was not proportionately big enough. It is no wonder excessively huge systems such as the dinosaurs failed.

That is the same reason I am sceptical of too huge, multi-national corporations. They gobble up small and big companies hoping to become unbeatable by the sheer size of the company. However, the longevity of the 'economic dinosaurs' is questionable. Countries like India and China do have dinosaur-like properties and we will have to see if they will survive in the present format. Disintegration of U.S.S.R could mean that large systems aren't stable after some time. Yet, it does not deter other systems such as Germany (east & west unification), European countries (European Union). India wasn't one big state until 60 years ago. It comprised of numerous smaller kingdoms, which united into one whole when it gained independence from British rule. It did go through the unification to collectively increase its power so that there will not be any future threat of colonisation from a foreign country. They have the muscle power now but there is a negative side to it in terms of enormous increase in population, hunger, disease & disorder. We will have to wait & see. May be time will find an answer. Already there are extremist movements demanding liberation of some of the border-states like Kashmir, Assam, Punjab, Tamil Nadu etc to become independent from India.

Population control is not an issue only for countries like India and China. The world as a whole worries about that too. How many different species can the earth support? People come up with different figures as to how many species are there currently on earth. Figures range from 2 to 30 million. Each type of species will have millions & billions and trillions of members. How long can the earth support all of them? Is there a critical limit? Natural calamities, food limitation, disease and other factors probably limit the numbers to a more manageable level.

Surprisingly, 'Population planning' occurs at the cellular & molecular level too. Cancer is an uncontrolled cellular population explosion with no regard to resource availability. That is why cancer kills. In a growing cancerous lesion, the cells multiply at a rate disproportionate to the availability of blood supply and consequently, nutrient supply. The cancer cells try to overcome this problem by selfishly gobbling up all nutrients. They secrete molecules, which will lay down new blood cells to siphon the nutrients to them That is why 'vascularisation' is a characteristic diagnostic feature of tumours! Still, in a large tumour, there are many _'famine death of cancer cells'_ , which clinically appears as cellular necrosis. Even the increase in blood vessel growth is not enough.

Our body has extensive mechanisms to prevent cancer cell proliferation. The huge number of cancer-affected population simply means that the cells constantly are trying to achieve a state of immortality because that is what the cancer cells are. A cancer cell can go on forever, without dying, if given enough nutrients. You thought that man alone was looking for that elixir to ageing & live forever, didn't you?

The normal cells divide under tightly controlled situations. They divide and multiply when there is a need. For instance, cells lining the gut die in 2 days. Blood cells die constantly as they have a short life span. Skin cells undergo multiplication to replace the lost cells. The normal cells do not cross the line and go on dividing forever. They know when to stop. One of the proposed theories suggests that as soon as the cells establish contact with neighbour cell boundaries they stop. This phenomenon is called the contact inhibition. Contact inhibition is an 'intercellular treaty', which is agreed to by all cells of the body. However, the cancer cells disobey this treaty. They do not follow the inter-cellular norms. They go on dividing, even after the next cell boundary touches their own. This appears clinically as a tumour. Microscopically, the cells appear to pile up one on top of other.

Cancer cells tend to disregard order and regulation and behave as if they are independent and single. Intriguingly, old age and death do not exist in unicellular systems. They just divide into two cells to propagate themselves. Most interestingly, sit back and wonder what underlies continuity of our heredity. It is the sperm & ovum, the gonadal cells. They carry the torch of heredity. They don't die. They move on down the generations. Their descendants go down to the next generation and this goes on forever. While the sperm & ovum keep themselves alive the other body cells stop the journey when the body they constitute dies. The way bacterial spores come back to life after even millions of years further emphasies the immortality of uni-cellular systems!

It is puzzling why bacteria have remained uni-cellular for the past 3.5 billion years. Is the advantage of immortality a bargain they have gained while they lost the chance for complexity? Who is the true winner? Is it the microbe or the complex life forms? It is said that three-fourths of all biomass on the planet is constituted by the microbes. I guess that is enough for an answer.

We have all along been looking into how a system tends to prefer associations with other systems of its own type to form a complex organisation. We saw how this aggregative behaviour leads to the possibility of increased volume of work and division of labour. In this context, it would be appropriate to view symbiosis as an extension of this phenomenon. Innumerable examples of intricate symbiotic relationships exist in nature illustrating how associations cut across the boundaries of different life forms.

Hermit crab has no tough shell like other crabs. It has a long soft body that finds protection in the empty shells of whelks and other molluscs. With its heads and legs sticking out of the shell, the hermit crab goes about the seabed, searching for food with sea anemones. The sea anemone has stinging tentacles, which gives protection to the crab against predators. What does the sea anemone get in return? It benefits by obtaining tiny particles of shredded food, which result from the crab's untidy feeding habits. When the hermit crab grows too big for its shell, it tends to move onto a new and larger shell home. When it leaves, it encourages the sea anemone also to live with it in the new home. Well settled, they both carry on their co-operative life style as ever before.

In some European rivers, there is a type of fish called the _bitterling_ , which look after the off springs in an extraordinary way. Instead of tending them itself, it employs the help of a fresh water mussel - a mollusc found in the bed of streams. There are tubes called siphons on the mussels, which they use for filtering food from the water. The female _bitterling_ lays the egg inside the mussel by inserting her long ovipositor through the siphon. What do the bitterling and the mussel get out of this social agreement? As the _bitterling_ is laying her eggs, the mussel releases its young. The young mussels have small clamps with which they attach themselves to the side of the fish to hitch a lift to a different part of the river.

The giant clams living in the sea lie with their pink shells open. They measure almost a foot across. Some of them can be 4 feet long. A clam never has any need for catching food. They obtain most of the nourishment from tiny green plants called algae that live in its soft body. The clam also feeds on little plants and animals that drift into its open shells. Why should the algae make it a point to feed the clams? The algae need the sunlight to photosynthesise their food, which the clams use too. The clams help the algae to get the maximum sunlight by staying near the surface of the water. It may not be possible for the algae to get a lot of sunlight if they grow in the bottom of the oceans.

Among the butterfly caterpillars, only the _riodinidae_ and _lycaenidae_ families form symbioses with ants. The caterpillars provide ants with secretions rich in amino acids, sugars, and other nutrients. The ants find themselves attracted to the caterpillars and those caterpillars surrounded by the ants generally escape from the predators. Predators avoid the caterpillars surrounded by ants. How do the caterpillars manage to attract the ant army? They send out signals in the form of acoustic calls. Riodinid caterpillars have a pair of acoustic cells. Riodinid caterpillars have a pair of vibratory papillae, which can generate stridulations at a rate of 16 pulses per second.

Why should the ants respond to acoustic calls sent out by the caterpillars? Most surprisingly, the caterpillars are exploiting the communication systems normally used by the ants among themselves. Many ants produce and respond to stridulations & vibrations as part of colony communication and recruitment. For example, the stridulations of a buried atta ant attract the nest mates who help to dig it out. Stridulations of the _novomessor_ and _messor_ ants serve to recruit nest mates to food sources. It is likely that vibration calls of butterfly caterpillars elicit an investigative response in the attending ants. They find the nutritious secretion of the caterpillars there. As they are busy eating, they serve the caterpillars as bodyguards, probably without realising it at all!

On a more globally significant level, one can mention the symbiotic relationship between plants and nitrogen fixing bacteria, collectively known as _rhizobia_. The bacteria have the ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen, converting it into ammonia, which the plants use for making amino acids. Plants and animals cannot use atmospheric nitrogen directly. Only bacteria can introduce nitrogen into the biogeochemical cycle. Without this nitrogen, there is no question of proteins in our body. Bacteria don't stop just with this. They also help in decomposing the dead organic matter, returning the constituent atom into the biotic cycle without allowing them to be locked in wasteful empty carcasses. The bacteria perform a considerable amount of this work in the alimentary tract of the metazoans.

Domestication of animals is a type of co-operation between life forms in achieving complexity not possible for individual life forms. Man has been domesticating horses, for the purpose of transportation, for thousands of years. We also breed cows, sheep, pigs, and chicken for their nutritional value. We also domesticate certain animals & birds as pets. Agriculture is a type of domestication. We breed plants. We give water and fertilisers to them in order to get our food.

Domestication has not stopped with macroscopic life forms. So many types of bacteria & parasites live in and on animals, doing a bit of help to the host and getting something back. In our skin, the harmless bacteria called _propionibacterium acnes_ produce antibacterial lipids retarding the colonisation of dangerous bacteria like _staphylococcus_ and _streptococcus_. The harmless bacteria & the harmful ones compete for nutrition they can obtain on our body. By encouraging the harmless bacteria to 'win', we get some protection. In the lower intestine, certain bacteria produce some fatty acids, which can inhibit the growth of typhoid bacteria. They can also de-conjugate the bile acids, which have an inhibitory effect on the growth of some deadly bacteria like _clostridia, enterococci, bacteroides_ and _lactobacilli._

Apart from the bacteria that protect us against disease, while getting back some nutrition for themselves, we also have bacteria in our gut which can synthesise useful compounds like vitamin B12, which we can't make ourselves!

It is not the prerogative of man to domesticate animals. Lower life forms do that too. We saw how symbiosis mutually helps participant organisms. Occasionally, you come across instances where certain life forms actively 'domesticate' certain other life forms.

Red wood ants normally live exclusively on the excretions of aphids, which contain sugar and other nutrients. The ants not only gather the excretions; they also protect the aphids against their enemies, breed them and tend them. In the autumn the ants search for the winter eggs of the aphids and hide them in their anthills! It gets warm in the spring and the ants drag the young aphids into the grass and feed them. The ants carry them back home every evening. Some ants breed aphids that live on roots and build for them miniature sheds of earth. About 100 kg of aphid excretions is collected by a single anthill in a year.

Another extremely important of symbiosis/domestication occurs in almost all the multi-cellular life forms today. It is probably the most significant development since the origin of life itself. It is a supreme example of how far systems go to reach higher levels of function & organisation. Mitochondria could be bacteria living in symbiosis with the human cell! What a shocking statement?

Let us see the arguments in support of this theory. Mitochondria and bacteria are similar in a number of ways. Mitochondria have their own DNA though they 'live' inside a cell, which has the common nuclear DNA. The DNA of mitochondria is circular unlike the linear DNA in the nucleus. Interestingly, the DNA of bacteria is circular too. Most of the readers may know what a codon is. A codon is a kind of code for making an amino acid. DNA is a stretch of nucleotides and information present in it is read three letters at a time. Each of the three letters is a codon. Each codon has the information for a specific amino acid. A group of codons will be required to make enough amino acids to form a protein. The 'codon language' is mostly similar in bacterial life forms and higher forms like us. In other words, a codon coding for an amino acid in the bacteria will code for the same amino acid in the human cell too. However, there are some differences in certain codons in bacteria, which, surprisingly, is similar to the ones in mitochondria!

The mitochondrial DNA replicates independent of the nuclear DNA, as if it was an independent organism. The mitochondria also divide like the bacteria by a simple fission, which results in two daughter mitochondria. This division is again independent of the cellular division. Most interestingly, some of the antibiotics we use against bacteria act also on mitochondria, but not on the cytoplasm. This shows that mitochondria could really be bacteria. The outer membrane structure of bacteria is very similar to the mitochondria. The bacteria have their energy production apparatus i.e., electron transport chain, situated on their membranes. The mitochondria have their electron transport chain on their membrane too!

Why are these 'mitochondrial bacteria' living inside our cells? When did this relation get started and why? Day in and day out we find big companies 'gobbling' up smaller ones, which presumably have some new technology. I guess this happens in all forms of business. I mean this is the solution arrived at by us to earn the right to gain access to new technology. What is surprising is some 'thoughtless' organisms that lived 3 billion years ago 'thought' the same way and 'co-operated' so that oxygen utilisation technology could be transferred to organisms that didn't have it. I understand that nobody sat on a conference table and discussed all these things. I have to explain it this way because of the inherent difficulties while communicating scientific themes.

Nobody can deny the fact that the solution to the problem of energy is the same at the level of the human society and at the level of primitive organisms. Apart from the use of electrical energy, both of them depended on finding more efficient means of energy capture before complex, large 'societies' can become possible. For an organism, the 'society' was a group of cells. For a human society, the group consists of humans. Interestingly, the cells have found electrical energy for their use just as us!

Secondly, oxygen plays a central role in fuel utilisation of cells and the society. Oxygen not only combusts the fuels but also provides much greater energy than non-oxygen mechanisms. Literally, you get more energy output when you combust a fuel with oxygen. Inside the body cells the fuel is the food and there are both aerobic (using oxygen) and anaerobic (without using oxygen) was of capturing the food energy. Aerobic method is about 18 times more efficient.

In the primeval earth the earliest organisms were anaerobic by default. This is because there was no oxygen on the planet yet. So, the energy generation was very inefficient but sufficient as the life forms were single-celled. When oxygen started to appear on the planet earth it created a new challenge and an opportunity to the simple life forms. The challenge was how to deal with the highly reactive oxygen, which was reacting with cellular reactions due to its chemical nature. There were harmful bye products formed due to reactions involving oxygen (oxygen radicals which are even more reactive than oxygen itself and can damage cells) and the cells had to find defensive mechanisms like anti-oxidants. The opportunity was that the cellular fuels liberated far more energy from the aerobic interaction. When food was combusted with oxygen the release of energy was magnitudes higher. This oxygen utilisation technology evolved in a new breed of life forms (aerobic life forms), which had a clear survival benefit in that the higher energy output enables formation of multi-cellular life forms.

Mitochondrial 'technology transfer', is a concept we would have reserved for advanced civilisations like us. Unicellular organisms seem to have accomplished this quite long ago. Early, unicellular life forms (bacteria) that 'learnt' how to combust with oxygen and produce more energy suddenly became ecological market winners! There were other organisms that did not have this capacity and were on the brink of extinction. The industrial-type of symbiotic technology transfer became possible when the aerobic life forms (prototype for mitochondria) became intracellular dwellers inside those organisms that could not handle oxygen! You thought only man was a technologist?

To sum up, a system tends to achieve a higher level of organisation by employing motifs that are recognisable at a level of organisation that may or may not be related to the system in question. Inanimate systems & animate ones follow the same patterns while seeking solutions of how to organise themselves. It is difficult to avoid 'anthropomorphic' language simply because of the limitations of language. If I were to follow the practice of biologists, the safest way of expressing these ideas would be to suggest that a system would survive better if it did certain things. The selection advantage offered by the themes of organisation to whatever systems I have discussed so far means only one thing. There aren't many ways of doing a thing. There is not a great deal of difference between what you do and what other systems do. For some strange reason, God keeps using the same tricks repeatedly!

# 3. THE ART OF COMMUNICATION

Whether it is a biological system or a social system, information is a way of life. Systems constantly need to 'know'. This craving for information makes them evolve towards newer means of acquiring and transferring information. If you look at human beings information continuously reaches our brains. Lots of information reaches us as sound and the nerves carrying this information from the ear to the brain is called the acoustic nerve. It is made up of 30,000 conductor fibres. The information coming in as light is carried by the optic nerve from the eyes to the brain. It has about 1.2 million nerve fibres in each of the two. The eyes do the job of telefax for bio systems. The eye-brain system can process up to 5 megabits of information per second. The ear-brain system is a bit slow and can do up to 50 Kilobits/sec.

When a person is awake, the brain is constantly tuned to its various 'information channels'. Apart from the eye and the ear, there are so many other routes through which information from external world can reach our brain. There are 11 major types of sensory receptors, which constantly inform the brain about what is happening in the environment. They are the receptor concerned with vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch-pressure, warmth, cold, pain, acceleration and movement. In addition, a large number of receptors relay information about the internal environment of the body and they never reach the consciousness. The unconscious senses include special receptor for temperature of the body, blood pressure, pH of the body fluids etc.

These receptors mentioned above are the 'information windows' for the brain to get information. They are the equivalent of sleuths working for a government who do the intelligence operations.

The receptors are biosensors that can convert mechanical energy (touch-pressure), thermal energy, electromagnetic (light), and chemical energy (odour, taste, and oxygen content of blood) into a form that is sensed by the brain, which is electrical.

It is indeed surprising that the receptor cells in all the sense organs of all animals on the earth are very similar in the overall design. All of them have a tiny mobile hair or flagellum. The flagella of the receptor cell are similar not only in the design but they do the same function as our radio & TV antennae!

In the sixth century B.C, in Persia, slaves with loud voices put atop tall towers had to shout messages across towers. About 30 messages a day could be transmitted that way. In a battlefield, a little bit of secrecy was maintained. Warriors would pass orders by word of mouth down the line, forming a 'live telephone'. ' _Notes about the Gallic war'_ , written by Gaius Julius Cesar, has the description of this practice.

Beating the drums was a method of information transfer, practised by the natives of America and Africa. Each tribe used drums of their own design. Duty operators beat the drums round the clock. Any time of the day a message could come in from the neighbouring villages. It would be passed on immediately by whoever was on duty. For many centuries, sound signalling was in operation in Africa.

As late as the turn of the century, during colonial wars, the drum telegraph was in use by the Africans to convey messages about the European troop movement. The messages could cover a distance of up to 300 km a day.

Over a long period in history, man used sound signals as a means of communication. Horns, trumpets, bells, have also been used like the drums. After the invention of gunpowder, it became possible to use the sound of a rifle or canon shot for this purpose.

People living in Moscow in the olden times used bells to convey a message that a fire had broken out. One of the biggest drawbacks of sound signalling is it travelled quite slowly. As human societies expanded, we needed speed in everything. Light caught our attention as a potential signalling mechanism. Campfires had the advantage of speed. Aeschylus, in his ' _Agamemnon',_ tells us how king Agamemnon, who led the Greek troops in the Trojan War, told his wife Clytemnestra he would let her know at once when Troy had fallen and when the war was over. Men sent to the tops of mountains, on the islands between Asia Minor and Greece, had to set up signal fires. Eight signalling posts covered a total distance of 550 Km from Mount Idea, near Troy, to Mount Arakhneipe, not far away the castle of Mycenae. Clytemnestra knew that Troy had fallen when she saw a bright fire one morning.

Between the 14th and 17th centuries, the armed post set up to guard Russia's southern borders used fire signalling at night and smoke signalling during day time. The information content of such mechanism could at best be a 'yes' or 'no'.

The information content of the drum beats or the fires was enhanced by beating the drum in many different ways or setting up one, two or three fires, respectively. Beating the drum faster, beating it vigorously, beating it lightly were some of the variations in drum heating. ' _Stephen Razin'_ is a novel written by the Russian writer S.Zlobin, based on the peasant war in Russia in 1670. It describes how one haystack on fire meant there are good many troops in town, two haystacks on fire meant there are not good many but the enemy can stand up against us. Three haystacks on fire will mean that there will be no resistance at all and they can come in without any fight.

Horses were used to carry messages by the 14th century in some countries. Stations were set up all along the route where the horse riders would change the horses. A distance of 150-200 Km could be covered in a day easily. By the end of the 17th century, Russia had over 3200 horse-relay stations and about 3700 horses to take care of the horse-relay mail service.

'Pony Express' was a postal service linking the Eastern United states with the Far West, started in 1860. It was the time when no railway went farther than the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. All mail for the west had to travel by the stagecoach, on a long & slow route. Pony Express used a shorter route starting at St.Joseph, running across the salt desert of Nevada and Utah. Between 16 and 24 kilometres apart all along the route, a series of relay stations were set up, where horses were kept. About 120 Km apart the riders were stationed. Riders carried the mail between relay stations. They changed horses at each station, taking not more than 2 minutes. From St. Joseph to Sacremento, California, the mail took only 9 days. It saved two weeks when compared to the mail coach route. It was unfortunate for the Pony Express (but not for mankind) that the electric telegraph cable across the US was completed about that time enabling messages to be sent in minutes instead of days. Pony Express ended 18 months after launch.

We have had such unimaginable advances in communication technologies that would have been considered impossible not long ago. Technological advances have made it possible to dial somebody thousands of miles away. You are able to talk to a person instantaneously though physically separated by thousands of miles! Every time I do that, I am amazed! E-mail, Fax, Videophone and such things have transformed the way we communicate. Information transfer is as vital to the human society as food. There will be chaos & pandemonium if we can't communicate. When man was living in small groups as in the pre-historic past, there was no great need for communication. All that was required was probably a hearty shout that everybody in the community could hear. This was not possible when the numbers became hundreds and thousands.

Maintaining order amongst the growing numbers needed ways of communicating with people even when they were far away. Sound, light, smoke, horse-bound messengers proved useless when societies expanded across continents and the numbers became millions. Fortunately, the concept of telecommunications came into being at the turn of the century. Cables carrying sound messages connected the speakers & the receivers separated by huge distances. Telephone & telegraph were set to transform the human society. How ingenious of man to invent the telecommunication concept?

Before man's ingenuity overwhelms you, I have to prick your inflated ego. Man is not the first to come up with the concept of telecommunication as a means of information transfer. Nature has come up with the telecommunication tools millions of years ago. If you haven't guessed it yet, I am talking about the Nervous system. Structurally and functionally a nerve is exactly similar to our electrical and fibre optic cables that link up continents conducting your E-mail, fax and telephone messages. The very organisation of the nerves in the nervous system has a striking resemblance to the basic design of the communication cables of the modern human society.

The electric and fibre optic communication cables are bundles of a number of conduction fibres enclosed in a protective covering. For protection against mechanical injury and climatic vagaries, optical cables are encased in plastic, aluminium, steel or composite outer sheaths. Inside the optic cables, the core is surrounded by what is known as cladding which is a transparent material with a low refractive index serving the reflect the propagating beam of light to reduce the radiation loss into the environment. There are three or more coatings on the outer side of the cladding called the primary, secondary and the outer coating of some polymeric material such as polyethylene, polytetra flouroethylene or polyamide.

Coming to the structure of the nerve 'cables', a nerve is made up of many axons which are the tails of nerve cells which can be as long as tens of centimetres. The axons connect the main body of the nerve cell (speaker) to the target cell (the receiver). The axons conduct the electrical signals from the brain to the target cells. The axons of a number of nerve cells are collectively bound together in a fibrous envelope called the Epineurium. Nerves are bundles of axons. The axons are individual communication channels that link the brain and the target cells. Signals flow towards the subscriber cells from the brain as well as backwards from the target cell to the brain.

Sometimes, you would have noticed that the internet service or telephones in your locality can become slow due to traffic. There are only a finite number of cables and if too many people use the service at the same time then your system cannot cope. But, again you would have noticed that even during poor reception or congestion service operators allow 'emergency calls' to 911 or 999. Such calls take priority. Important offices have the 'Hot line' facility where the president or the prime minister can call someone directly by lifting the receiver. Our body also has the same sort of prioritisation mechanism operating. Certain signals of survival value are transmitted at a faster rate than others! Obviously, a single nerve can hold only a limited number of communication channels for want of space. In other words, the channels become crammed with information traffic at times, making it necessary to 'queue' the information traffic. This is the reason why some important signals gain priority over others as if it were a 'hot line'!

The axons themselves are individually sheathed by what is known as myelin, a protein-lipid complex made up of many layers of cell membranes of a special type of cell called Schwann cells. The myelin sheath has an insulating function, preventing electrical signals from straying non-specifically. The insulating sheath is absent at the axon end where it is connected to the target or subscriber cell! The disease called Multiple Sclerosis where there is patchy destruction of myelin in the neurons of the central nervous system highlights the importance of insulating myelin sheath. Normal, directional movement of electrical signals fails because the signals are flowing in every direction. In a normal nerve, apart from the myelin sheath, the nerve cell membrane is itself is rich in cholesterol which reinforces the insulating function of the nerves. It is incredible that insulation as a more efficient way of transmitting electrical data has been arrived at by a system other than us the thinking creatures. The organisation of a nerve and a modern telecommunication cable are too striking. A central conducting core made of numerous cables, an insulating layer and a protective coating is a bit too much for the uninformed reader because it breaks the myth that we alone can innovate.

Your telephone allows you to make out-going calls and also allows you to receive other calls. Otherwise, what is the point? Your computers also allow you to send and receive emails and Skype calls. Nerves are two-way conduction cables too. Data transmission occurs from the brain to the target cells as well as from the target cells to the brain. While some 'axon cables' transmit information towards the target there will be some, which carry information away from it. Information that emanates from the target cell will usually be sensory information like touch, pain, pressure, and positional sense about orientation of the body in space, which is important in maintaining the body in balance. Nerves carrying touch and pressure sensations have conduction velocities like 3-6 meters/sec, and those carrying pain sensations do about 12-13 meters/sec. The nerves carrying information about maintaining the balance or equilibrium of the body conducts at a faster speed of about 70-120 meters/sec. Considering the cellular dimensions (only a few billionths of a metre) this speed is amazing!

In a typical fibre optic cable, a transmitter generates an optical signal by converting electrical signals into light. The optical signal flows into an optical fibre, which carries it to the destination where a receiver converts the optical input into the electrical format by means of a photo detector. In the telephone cables, sound waves are transformed to the electrical format before conduction. The basic pattern in the communicating systems of the modern world includes a transmitter, a conductor, and a receiver. The principles of information theory, as postulated by Claude Shannon in the 1940s, are applicable to the information transfer in biological systems too. There is always a message source, an encoding step, a channel for transfer and finally a decoder or receiver.

The conversion of one form of signal to a suitable form for conduction and re-conversion back to the original form is the way our nerves function too. Our nervous system has the capability to transform chemical (neurotransmitter molecules like Acetylcholine, epinephrine, dopamine etc.), mechanical (touch, pain, pressure sensations), sound (hearing), light (vision) signals into the electrical input, which will subsequently be carried by the nerve cables.

Biological communication methods are the subject of hot research today. Scientists are trying to understand how cells communicate hoping to learn a few tricks of the trade for application in our information technology!

Just why did biological systems evolve equivalents of telecommunication networks? In the beginning, organisms were unicellular. Every organism was independent and they could communicate with simple chemical messengers. Then slowly organisms with a few cells emerged. They were the equivalents of our prehistoric communities. They needed to communicate with each other for co-ordinated effort but their demands were not high. If these organisms were going to evolve into truly multi-cellular life forms one major requirement was the need to transmit information instantaneously in order to prevent any sluggishness in metabolism and locomotion. Sluggishness in either of these two functions could mean you are a sitting duck for the approaching predator.

The most primitive type of nervous system is seen in organisms belonging to the class coelenterata. The coelenterates were the first to develop special nerve cells with a high degree of irritability and conductivity. These cells were sensitive to external influences and were capable of transmitting them to other cells.

Separate clusters of nerve cells emerged when the co-ordinated action of many contractile elements was required. Such clusters form the nerve rings encircling the umbrella of a jelly fish and cause the whole umbrella to tighten up or come loose, thus enabling the creature to move swiftly in water.

In flatworms, which are the descendants of coelenterate, all the nerve cells are concentrated in strands around the body in intricate patterns. A diffuse network of nerve strands was undoubtedly an improvement compared with the network of randomly scattered nerve cells.

In Annelids, which must have descended from the flatworms, all the nerve strands connecting them hold only the long processes of cells. Almost every segment of the worm has a pair of ganglia connected to each other. Besides, each ganglion is joined through the nerve strands with the corresponding ganglia of the preceding and following segments. The ganglia came close together in higher worms, making up a compact structure. Now the features of contemporary vertebrates start emerging.

One of the most primitive representatives of the chordates, the Lancelot, has a nerve cord but no cerebrum, yet. The cerebrum first appears in cyclostomes and in fishes. The brain of the primitive animals is divided up into the same sections as the brain in humans. The difference is only in the complexity. Moreover, the well-developed forebrain of man gives him the capacity to do sophisticated mental functions.

In mammals, the brain development was rapid. Individual zones, each of them responsible for a certain kind of information processing, developed. There were separate regions for controlling visions, hearing, olfactory and skin sensations. Association areas developed in higher mammals, for communication between the processing zones mentioned earlier. In man and the apes, the association areas are predominant. They process the information that reaches the brain and make some sense out of it.

If you look back the sequence of events, it reads so much like the way our information technology evolved! From primitive communication tools our technology evolved to the point we had information networks like Internet and Local Area Networks. The brain & the individual information-processing association areas, which inter-link them, are probably equivalents of our databases of information. They make it possible to handle complex information, as well as generate meaningful knowledge out of information junk.

The computing ability of an individual nerve cell is hardly worth mentioning. However, a collection of nerve cells have the power to process more information. In fact, the human brain works by exchange of information between different regions. The different regions of the brain are functionally linked by the association areas, which allow a synthesis of 'knowledge' from the mass of data held by the nerve cell groups. The sensory data do not mean anything until the association areas work on it the way our computer networks do. A database is only a mass of data. We have to convert it into knowledge. In this respect we can confidently say that biological systems are one up on the information technology of the 21st century! Information revolution of mankind is yet to reach this level of sophistication!

What the reader needs to also know is that neural transmission is not the only means of communication in biosystems. There is always a buzz of inter-cellular communication in your body round the clock. Our body is a society of cells of various types. They need to work together towards the common goal of survival. In order to achieve that the cells need to be told what to do when. This is primarily the job of the controlling organs like the brain & the Endocrine glands. These organs secrete a number of 'molecular messengers' like neurotransmitters, hormones and growth factors, which carry specific commands/information to the cells concerned. The cells respond to these commands, which results in a biological effect appropriate to the situations.

Cells 'talk' to each other using a number of 'molecular languages'. Each language is a chemical molecule capable of conveying a specific message. Not all cells can understand all languages. Can we? Cells respond to only certain types of molecules because the complementary receptor for that molecular messenger may not be present on all the cells. This brings specificity to inter-cellular communications. Will you ever hope that your letter will reach the desired destination without writing the address on the letter? The cells don't do that too. For example, a messenger molecule like testosterone, which is a male sex hormone, can 'talk' to gonads because the gonadal cells alone have the specific testosterone receptor on their cell surfaces. It is a kind of one-to-one communication. No other cell can 'read' this message because they cannot decode the message encrypted in the molecule called testosterone.

There is a 24/7 inter-cellular communication of all sorts happening inside your body. Cells never sleep. They never get tired. They work all day and 365 days a year. The trillions of cells in your body make so many contacts with each other to make sure there is a concerted, well-orchestrated, meaningful life process going on.

Round the clock, 365 days a year your body cells are at work. Every cell in our body is in a way a world of its own, a miniaturised version of our society. Their ways of life are as complex as our own.

Molecular messengers are travelling back and forth all day long. The buzz of inter-cellular information traffic can be 'heard' every single living moment.

Messages that travel between cells are subjected to the same rigorous checks we encounter in our technological information. There has to be specificity in the communication meaning that only the authorised recipients should get the message. Life systems have achieved the specificity by allocating decoders (Receptors) to only those cells that need to get the message. For example, chemical messages like adrenaline, insulin or testosterone and others can only be decoded by a select group of cells because they have the right cell-surface receptors acting like the antennae.

In the biological world the message decoding has a new dimension not matched in our information technology. Cells cam send molecular messages like adrenaline and make different cells decode them differently! What does this mean? One message but multiple meanings!

The supremacy of biological communication in this regard achieves the same message to produce different effects in different cells. Interestingly, all these effects add up. The sum total of the output will be geared towards a meaningful life process.

The other peculiarity of biological communication is that is hierarchically organised. Some messages produce direct effects. Whereas most others go through a sequence of information flow consisting of a second or a third messenger. This happens at the cell surface. The primary messenger cannot get inside the cell. Only some messengers are allowed entry into the cell. These are usually the ones, which are compatible with the oily interior of the cell membrane. Such molecules enter the cell and proceed to the 'manager', the nucleus. The nucleus takes the message and responds.

Mostly, the messenger is stopped at the cell surface. They are not allowed in instead, a message is taken by the so-called 'second messengers', a type of molecules stationed at the cell surface just for this purpose. These second messengers pass on the message to a tire of molecules called the tertiary messengers. Finally, the actual effector molecule brings about the desired effect.

This reads almost like the usual process you encounter in an office. You meet the receptionist at the entrance and shown the door out or let in depending on who you are and why you are here. Occasionally, you are asked to meet someone and not the one you hoped to meet. I am sure you didn't expect the cells to be so bureaucratic. Did you?

The cells have to be very choosy about whom to let in and whom to throw out because of the limitations of space inside the cell. Every molecule or atom or atom that comes in will attract water due to osmotic pull, which is further going to swell up cell.

One of the problems in cellular communication is that many hormones share the same second messengers. In addition, a majority of the hormones use calcium as the third messenger. If this is the case, how can the cell distinguish the commands from different hormones? In other words if a hormone a, b and c activate calcium signalling system how does the cell know if it has to do the task as encoded by the hormone a or b or c? What do the tiny cells do? The cells actually seem to depend on a frequency mode transmission here.

Calcium is a messenger for a number of cellular communication molecules. Every time a hormone that uses the calcium messenger arrives, the cell recruits more calcium from its intracellular stores so that there will be plenty of messengers. This is to amplify the signal. The number of times calcium level rises and lowers (frequency) and the range over which the fluctuations occur (amplitude), are unique for each messenger. If you plot a graph showing calcium levels in the cell against time, the graph will be oscillatory than a straight line. The spikes show a characteristic frequency due to specific agents. If the frequency of calcium oscillation is x cycles per second then it has to be the hormone y and something like that. This cellular mechanism resembles the frequency mode (FM) broadcast of our radio.

I said a little while ago that receptors on target cell surfaces actually 'decode' the message by binding the messenger molecules. Here again the cells can be made to do more than one task with just one messenger. For instance, insulin is one such messenger, which can bring about multiple effects in a cell. How does the cell know which effect it is supposed to bring about? Determining how many receptors are occupied by insulin actually does this. Receptor occupancy rate is the mechanism by which the cells bring about more variety in their communication strategies. This is probably similar to the olden days when man tried to encode more information in fire signalling by making one, two or three fires. Alternatively, it could even be said that the variety caused by difference in speed of drum beating is a similar strategy.

With simple communication tools, systems always try to pack as much variety in information as possible. For a single cell, this level of sophistication in communications is incredible. If you look at our offices, we have mechanisms to neatly file various transactions marking them clearly, as to what category they come under. With computerisation it makes it even easier to track down the information as to when and where they came in. If you talk about brain as a system, it has memory to aid its information department. The question of how does a single cell manage all that is not easy to answer?

Communication is an art. At the same time, it is a pure survival tool. Life forms employ various strategies to transfer information to their fellow members. Insect use acoustic signals for mate recognition, rivalry & courtship. Some ant types produce stridulations to recruit nest mates to food sources, as we have seen before. SOS signal can be sent out by buried ants to their nestmates to help dig them out.

Vampire bats emit individually distinct vocalisations. On analysis of the sonograms, it is found that 'contact calls' often accompany grooming sessions. These calls have the acoustic characteristics of variable frequency and low intensity that are necessary to encode individual identity. These calls help in individuals recognising long-term roost mates. Perhaps olfactory sensations are also important.

Killer whales use whistles and calls when communicating under water. They are quite distinct from the high-energy, sonar-like clicks they emit when navigating by echolocation.

About 300 fish species are said to possess electric organs capable of producing weak electric discharges ranging between 0.2 to 2 volts. The catfish can generate a current of 400 volts and the eel upto 600 volts. The torpedo ray can do as much as 60 volts. Some of the fish that generate intense electric currents could be using them for hunting. However, after careful studies, it has been found that the electric organs have more to do with information transfer. The electrical equipment of these fishes has evolved not towards greater discharge force but towards high sensitivity to electricity. Many of these fishes are nocturnal and live in muddy water. Some fish such as Nile mormyrus keep their heads buried in the mud how would it know the approach of an enemy? The fact is, it can. The electric organs of Nile mormyrus can not only generate electric discharges but can also sense electricity. It generates 300 discharges per second, creating around them a weak electrical field which is constant in pattern. The lines of electrical force converge at the level of its head. When a large fish appears in the vicinity, the uniformity of the electric field is disturbed. The body of a fish is a better conductor than the surrounding fresh water. Therefore, the lines of force shift towards the approaching enemy. The Nile mormyrus is warned of the enemy.

Sea and fresh water lampreys obtain information about the presence of prey by electrical location. In the muddy waters of fresh water basins, this is very useful. Knife fish, which lives in the Atlantic near the coast of America, has an electrical locator on its tail. It thrusts its tail into the rock fissures and passages to locate the prey by detecting the electrical field.

Typical shoal fishes such as scombroid fishes (horse mackerels, mackerels or toothed planes) exhibit admirable co-ordinated manoeuvres while they move. Thousands of fishes can change their direction with unbelievable simultaneity. It is believed that feeble electrical signals are used to co-ordinate their movements.

Dance as a language is a rather unusual means of communication in the animal kingdom. The bees do that to communication to other bees about the location of plants that contain food for them.

Fire flies use luminescence to find their mates. When there are other glow worms around, the flashes of light can be misleading. To overcome this problem, the males send out rhythmic flashes to appeal to their mates. The female in the vicinity sends out her reply as light flash signals at strictly regular intervals. The interval between appeal and reply helps the mate to distinguish a female of her own species from those of other species.

Human beings use speech recognition as a means of communication. Of all the life systems on earth he alone uses language as a means of information transfer. People have always raved about how man has developed this ability due to the power of his brain. Ability to use language is one of the major milestones in human evolution. Man may not have witnessed such tremendous advances in science, technology, and literature but for his ability to use language to generate and transfer information. In India, 15 major languages are spoken and about 857 minor languages & dialects. For a population of about 800 million this may be OK. It is surprising that, in Papua New Guinea, which has a population of just about 3 million, more than 700 languages are spoken!

Whatever is the language that is spoken the basic structure of a language seems to be the same. Use alphabets in different sequences to generate sentences and words that have pre-defined meaning. English has just 26 alphabets but the majority of scientific & literary advances of the human civilisation depend on transfer of information in English. Juggling the 26 alphabets in all possible ways man has made it possible. For that matter, all languages have their own alphabets and grammar just like English.

In the last 30-40 years man has come up with another language that is set to transform the way we are going to communicate in the next century. It is a language that has just two alphabets, 0 and 1. We use the Binary language with our computers. Man now prefers to represent and transfer information in the digital form. It is a waste of time for me to glorify Internet and the power of the brain because it is so obvious.

It is a point to ponder why man can't think of some other means of encoding information other than re-arranging monomeric alphabets, whether it is the common language alphabets or the binary alphabets. Is it the ultimate solution to the problem of information generation? (Why do we need anything better than this?).

Now he is probably looking for another set of alphabets in electron spin (qubits) so that he can design his Quantum computers.

In the last 3000 years or more man has reigned supreme in the domain of intellect. We are way beyond reach of any other form of life in terms of our supremacy in information management by inventing writing that involves use of monomeric alphabets to encode information. In the last 100 years the binary has taken him into the information stratosphere!

This is just about the right time for me to let you know that use of alphabets, no inferior to your binary, to imprint information has been around 3500 millions of years on the planet! Just for your information, man as we know him has been around only for the past 2-5 million years at the most. What a let down? Anyway, have you guessed what that language is? It is the language of DNA.

The language of DNA has four alphabets only, namely, adenine (A), guanine (a), thymine (T) and cytosine (C). The unit of DNA is the gene, which conveys a biological meaning just as a sentence would. An organism is like a book written in the language of DNA, using sentences called genes. Using different combinations of these four nucleotide alphabets, like beads in a string, nature has encoded enough information for creating endless variety of life forms. We are still yet to comprehend the sophistication of the DNA as an information transfer tool. We are only beginning to grasp the DNA information code. If you think for a moment our DNA has got enough information in it to program a self-directed growth for our life span of about 70-80 years. It has the programmed information also to bring about your end!

DNA is in every sense like a language. Its accuracy is guarded by the ability of proof-reading that is accomplished each time a copy is made during cell division. The same enzyme which makes the copy also does the proof-reading! Life process is sustained only when the error rate is kept to a minimum. Too many errors, especially, in crucial genes, is enough to make continuation of life improbable. The life system is discarded to safeguard the integrity of the information held inside DNA of the species.

DNA also evolves like the way languages evolve. Everyone knows that languages 'evolve' and give rise to dialects and newer languages.

People tend to borrow and mix words from other languages. I am sure most of the languages can be traced to a common ancestry. The whole scenario looks very much similar to organismal evolution. DNA exchanges & mutations account for slow changes in the DNA of an organism, which ultimately branches the organisms into a new species altogether.

Another biological language in nature is the protein language. Amino acids are the alphabets here and there are about 20 of them. Arrange them in different sequences and you get a whole variety of proteins, each of them with different capabilities. There are literally thousands of proteins in our body.

Information encoding by use of 'alphabets' is a recurrent motif not restricted to our binary system we use in our computers or the language we use for speaking. Nature does it a lot too.

# 4. BALANCING THE BOOKS

Our planet had only finite resources to start with. There is no way matter can be created on earth. We may get some organic and inorganic matter coming into the earth in the form of meteorites and asteroids but overall the amount of matter available for use is finite. There are 30 million types of life forms, each in unknown numbers, varying with each other for the available matter.

Matter is precious. Life systems know that too well. Given the intense competition for matter it is no wonder that it is used in the best possible way. Matter is never allowed to be locked up in unusable forms. Life forms grow virtually everywhere. You can find them even around volcanoes, hot streams, deep oceans, and rarefied heights of atmosphere as high as 50 Kilometres!

You have to live. It does not matter what happens to the other organism. This seems to be the attitude of all life forms. Symbiosis is probably the only decent way of mutually agreed way of utilisation of matter. Predation seems to be the worst. When you look at a predator gobbling up the poor prey it not only looks so selfish but arrogant as well. The predator seems to think it can do a better job with the matter the prey is holding onto. The predator thinks the prey is not worth living and can part with the matter.

Since Darwin, people have started calling some of the most extreme forms of selfishness by the magic phase 'survival of the fittest'. Any form of 'cut throat' tactic goes in the biological kingdom under the respectable term called survival. Darwin's theory legitimised such behaviour.

Our planetary resources are utilised in such an efficient manner that will put human resource management strategies to shame. Matter is never static. Matter is never allowed to go waste. Matter is never allowed to concentrate in localised regions longer than necessary. Nature likes to spread the matter evenly across the planet so that the user will find it everywhere. Added to the movement of matter, the users of the matter move as well. The term 'user' refers to any bio system.

Movement of matter from one point to another is achieved by nature through a variety of mechanisms. Either the matter moves in search of users or the user moves in search of matter. It is happening always. It is marketing at its best.

If you take a quick look at our own commercial marketing strategies you will find movement of commodities of all types to the place where it will be wanted. This ensures wider utilisation of things available only locally. What use is it for a country to grow tons and tons of surplus grains? What is the use of having millions of barrels of oil, which you know cannot be used all by yourself? Commercial arrangements of our society help making such commodities available for the population living in faraway corners without them.

Man has always explored continents hoping to find things he can use as well as finding a place he can live. He has done that even before he had reliable means of transportation. History is replete with explorers who went in search of metals, spices and what not. Man does not even want to leave the icy Antarctic. People talk of colonising other planets hoping to gain access to matter and space there!

Even in the 20th century, we find some nomadic tribes like the Lapps of Northern Europe who follow the yearly migration of animals such as reindeer. In Iran, a nomadic group called the Bakhtiari drive herds of domesticated animals from place to place in search of pasture. The Bedouins of Saudi Arabia, once a nomadic group that used camels for transport, are now having everything the money can buy, thanks to oil.

Technological advances have helped the human nomads abandon the wandering life but a number of animals, birds, and insects have always lived this way. Seasonal migration of birds, mass migration of animals in search of food, movement of swarms of insects and fish are all forms of such active movement.

Insects and wind carry plant matter like the pollen grains over dozens of meters. They help in dispersal of plants, which in turn will gain access to matter far away. From another angle, the newly dispersed plants can help users in that region. Vertebrates can transport spores and pollens over longer distances. Seasonal migrations of birds, animals or fish can cover distances of thousands of kilometres.

Sometimes organisms move from place to place in enormous numbers. It leads to temporary accumulations of living matter, according to Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky, a Russian scientist. The data gathered by the British Naturalist G. Carruthers on the annual flight of locusts over the Red Sea served Vernadsky in illustrating his idea of movement of living matter. Carruthers noted that the annual flight of this particular swarm of insects took a whole day to cross a particular region. The swarm occupied a space of 6000 cubic Km and was calculated to possibly weigh around 44 million tones! Swarms of such dimensions are encountered even today. In Argentina, the flight of a swarm of desert locusts lasting 5 days was observed recently. Swarms measuring 120 Km in length and 20 Km in width have been described!

In the book _'Old Africa's secrets'_ , Lawrence G. Green describes miles-long herds of South African Gazelles that migrated over Africa in the last century. It took 3 days for one such herd to pass through a village and gazelles can cover up to 100 miles a day!

Medieval chronicles describe hordes of mice and rats, which overran towns from time to time. Locust invasions have caused famines. More than 800,000 people died of starvation in the year 125 B.C in North Africa because of locusts. Even today, we find warnings of huge swarms of insects threatening to wipe off agricultural efforts across continents!

In 1874, the Colorado beetle invaded the US in such numbers that, in some areas of the Atlantic coast, these beetles made up a layer of about 50 cm in thickness, forcing Bostonians to abandon their homes for a period of time!

Movement of matter does not always happen only in the animal kingdom. Directed abiotic transfer of substance and energy can also occur as a result of river run-offs on land, horizontal circulation flows in oceans and seas and finally by the wind. This ensures the functioning of a unified gigantic cycle of substances within the biosphere. An evidence of global biospheric cycling is the discovery of the presence of DDT in Antarctic penguins. DDT used by man has reached as far as the Antarctic. Similarly, radioactive Strontium appeared in the milk of European women 4 months after testing of atomic weapons on the atolls of the Pacific Ocean!

I said in the beginning that matter is never allowed to remain static in one form longer than necessary. Let us take your own body. You are a life system holding on to your quota of matter. You exchange that matter with the environment constantly. You take in something and leave out something.

What happens when we die? What happens when other life forms die? Does it make sense to let the matter associated with their bodies go un-utilised forever? The concept of 'recycling' is not restricted to human society. We are not the only ones to worry about sustainable resources **.** When we came up with ideas of recycling paper, plastics, metal etc. we found a way to solve our resource crunch as we were able to reuse matter. Wherever possible, we tend to use 'biodegradable' materials, which is another way of avoiding matter from being locked up forever. Microbes break down the biodegradable materials to release the matter back into the cycle.

Saprotrophs are microbes, which feed on dead organisms. They do the job of decomposing the valuable organic compounds into mineral forms like carbon dioxide, water, nitrogen and mineral salts. They protect the biosphere from the toxic effects due to the decomposition process of the body of the dead. More importantly, they return the carbon and nitrogen, held by the dead body, into the free mineral form, which is further used by other organisms.

The cycling of matter that occurs in the biosphere is analogous to the recycling of wastes by man today! We not only recycle man-made goods but even 'organs'. I am referring to organ transplantation, taking organs from dead donors!

Animals on our planet obtain their nutrients from unbelievable sources, which makes us wonder looking at the beauty of 'planetary resource management'. There are organisms, which eat blood, wood, wool, feathers, fish scales, dead organisms, wax and even excrement (of their own or that of others). Coprophagy, the practice of eating excrement, is a bit too much. It may not suit our aesthetic taste but it is so much useful for the biosphere as a whole because valuable organic compounds are recycled.

Beetles, mites and worms feed solely on dung. Among them are some, which will eat only cow, horse or hare dung. The larvae of the honey comb moth usually feed on beeswax. If the bee nest is completely devoured, there is nothing else to eat. Now the larvae change to a dung-eating habit. It starts eating its own excrement that they have accumulated over the past. How can one expect any thing useful in the excrement? Haven't they absorbed every thing that was useful during the first round of digestion?

Beeswax is a substance, which is extremely hard to digest. Even though the honey comb moth is a specialist in eating beeswax, its intestines cannot completely digest it in one go. Some amount of undigested or partially digested wax is passed in the excrement that comes in handy during periods of scarcity. By repeated processing of excrement more than one generation of honey comb moth can thus grow up. This cycle can even last for up to 7-8 years.

It is curious that, occasionally, excrement of organisms that lived as far back as 7-8 million years ago can be put back into the biocycle. Ichthyosaurs were gigantic, predatory reptiles, which lived in Europe 7-8 million years ago. They have left traces of their existence in the form of enormous dung heaps. The excreta have become fossilised and are seen in England and West Germany. Man has learnt to make use of them. These fossilised excreta (coprolite) are finely crushed, to be used as a fertiliser! Time is not a deterrent to the resource-consciousness of biosystems!

Food, water and fuels have always been in short supply for mankind. At any point in time or place there are always regions of the world, which find one or more of the commodities lacking or not available freely. Many regions in Africa totally lack water, and are uninhabitable. Food has always been a problem in many parts of the world. Competition, seasonal availability and other factors contribute this state of affairs. Fuel is a big issue for invariably all countries in the world. The fossil fuel are not going to last and the race is on to find alternative, cheap fuels. Man tends to conserve oil in the fear that he may run out of it. We conserve drinking water too. This state of affairs is seen uniformly in developed and developing countries.

Man can build dams to store water. He can employ modern agricultural practices to grow more grains. He can find alternate fuels if he runs out of natural fuels. Yet, these things don't happen without man having to fight tooth and nail. Africa is a stark example of how man can fail in sustaining resources.

For lower organisms, the solutions to resource sustenance are found in genetic adaptation. What man does with his brains & science the lower life forms achieve with the help of genetic solutions.

_Oryx Gazella_ is a horned animal living in the Nabib desert. It can be very economical in the use of the precious commodity in the desert i.e., the water. It can live for weeks with out drinking. It will stop sweating when water is in short supply. As sweating is a normal physiological mechanism for getting rid of the body heat, this animal gets heated up from its normal body temperature of about 39 degree centigrade to about 45 degree centigrade. Such temperature can damage the brain and _Oryx gazella_ has to protect itself. What it does is diversion of the heat away from the brain so that it doesn't get heated up. The artery that carries the blood into the brain and the vein that drains the blood out of the brain are closely situated forming a network. The heat that goes in the arterial blood is transferred to the venous blood that is just getting out of the brain. Therefore, the blood entering the brain is cooler!

What the tenebrinoid beetles living in the Nabib desert do to prevent loss of water is interesting. They secrete wax. This wax coat saves the water from evaporation. When the humidity in the air is high, as happens occasionally, the wax coat is removed!

_Arthraerua Leubnitziae_ is a dwarf shrub of the Nabib plains growing along the fog belt. As expected of any desert dweller this plant also is conscious of the scarcity of water. Its way of minimising water wastage is peculiar. In the absence of rain, the plant standing above the ground surface consists of only a green stem. When it rains, a few short-lived leaves appear and small roots and root hairs re-grow rapidly. In a cross-sectional view, the stem of the plant shows deep grooves radiating from the centre like the spokes of a wheel. This peculiar arrangement is said to cut down water loss due to evaporation. Above all, these plant deposits salt crystals on its surface, which extracts moisture from the atmosphere!

When we exhale air, it is humidified. It makes us lose up to half a litre of water a day. Ostriches are not prepared to part with even this water when they breathe! They let out air that has been thoroughly unsaturated with water vapour!

Baboons living in the Kuiseb canyon in the Nabib desert eat plants with high moisture content. In times of water scarcity, they avoid physical activity and just lie around to minimise water loss. The absence of muscular activity also reduces the body heat and protects it from the heat stress.

Kidney of a starving camel goes to the extent of reabsorbing and reusing urea, a waste product of proteins. Even we form urea and excrete it through the urine. We have no way of reusing it. Our body has no capacity to do so. The camel can. It can reuse it to make proteins. In a desert, every ounce of matter counts!

An organism lives on a daily budget. An average human being needs about 2000-3000 calories per day and ea(rn)ts that much food to supply this energy. It may be as high as 4000 calories for heavy working people. Just because you make millions you can't eat 10,000 calories a day. Metabolism is a great equaliser!

When one eats more than the required amount of food, he or she is in a state of surplus budget. There is some scope for saving some energy for the rainy day. The fat cells are our bank of food energy. Surplus food energy is stored here. The fatter the person, the more wealthy his body is. This is at least true from the point of view of how much energy is stored. However, the fact that an obese person is at more risk for developing stroke, heart attacks, diabetes etc., is probably a lesson for the economical organisation of our society. Every individual, every company, every nation is constantly on the look out for surplus cash that it can stash away. When wealth is accumulated by a single person, single company or a single nation, the 'economic obesity' would put things at risk for the system. It cannot be healthy.

What happens when you don't eat enough to get even 2000 calories? You are obviously in a deficit budget. All economic principles operating in a cash-starved country or company come into play. All developmental activities come to a stand still. There are no more saving activities. Do you ever put money into your savings account when you are struggling to pay your bills? Can a country think of spending a hundred million dollars on a sports stadium when its budget is in the red?

Inside your body, all your energy savings are mobilised. Firstly, you notice the loss of body weight, which means all your fat, has gone. Then comes a stage when your body desperately tries to find some energy from anything it can lay its hands on. Proteins are attacked. There isn't energy or resources for making many important proteins in your body. What do you think you will do in a situation like this? Wouldn't you sell your car, your valuables to buy some food? How long can you go on in a deficit budget? Surely, there is a limit to it. You can't endlessly cut subsidies, development programmes etc.

Up to a point, all these strategies work to keep the system from breaking down, whether it is the body, your company or a government. Nevertheless, a stage is reached when nothing more can be done. That is when people die of hunger as in Ethiopia and Somalia. That is when cells in a life system start dying. The 'famine' of a country and the hunger of an individual life system literally meet here. The country has nothing to offer to the citizen. The citizen has nothing to offer to his or her body cells.

While discussing the aspect of storage of energy I should mention the overwhelming similarity in the way life systems store our energy and the way the earth has done it. I can see some eyebrows being raised when I said the earth has some energy stored inside it.

What do you think you are using to run your car? Where do you think you got the gas to heat your homes? Where do you think you get coal? They all come from the belly of the earth. The earth takes care of the energy needs of the hi-tech society in every sense of the word!

Do you think it is getting a bit interesting? Now I will let the cat out of the bag. Did you know that the oil that we get out of the "Earth's belly" is chemically of the same nature as the fat we store in our body cells? Both are Hydrocarbons!

I am sure every one of us knows why we need to save energy. Considering space limitations it makes sense to pack as much energy as you can in a given volume. Hydrocarbons are your best bet. They shun water and, therefore, don't become bulky. Hydrocarbons give you twice more energy, weight for weight, when compared to carbohydrates, for example. Life systems have solved the problem of energy storage by 'choosing' hydrocarbons as the storage form. Is it more than a coincidence that the earth stores hydrocarbons in its belly?

The hydrocarbons in the earth's interior presumably got there by thousands of years of transformation of plants & animals life forms that were buried inside. It was a slow process. The matter that was once a part of different life systems ends up being transformed to hydrocarbons. If you look carefully, it looks as though the 'planet digests & metabolises' matter converting them to a form similar to what an individual life systems does. We eat different plant and animal products, digest them, metabolise them and churn out hydrocarbons (fat) as the storage form!

Going beyond the similarities in the mechanisms of formation of hydrocarbons and the chemical similarities let us ask one simple question. Just why do the fossil fuels exist? What do we do with it? Don't we get energy out of it for running our machines and cars, just as our body cells get energy out of our body's hydrocarbons for running the cellular functions? OK when we starve, we use up all the stored fat. What do you do to replenish the stocks? You eat. All of us know that the earth's fossil fuels are not going to last. Does that mean the earth will have to go on a 'feeding cycle' again? What I mean is the earth has so much plant & animal matter getting buried into it. Such matter will one day replenish the energy stocks!

I have to point out that I never intended to make earth look like doing a planned operation. I know, as well as you do that we alone can plan. I can't help it if two dissimilar systems do similar things. Can I?

Did you know that the cells have their own ways of carrying out their energy transactions? Energy for the cell is like money for us. They use it to bring about biochemical reactions. Every biochemical reaction carries an energy price tag. Metabolism costs a lot in terms of energy expenditure. The cells have to find this energy from the food. Much of the food energy is used to make life possible but the 'overhead expenses' come a bit high inside the cell. Isn't it the same case in our society too?

The financial system of man uses the monetary currency as the unit of transactions. We use Dollars, Pounds, Rupees etc., to measure the quanta of the money involved. A man may be in possession of millions of dollars in the bank account in addition to the property he owns. That does not mean that he can show the documents to this effect to the shopkeeper to buy a pack of cigarettes! The shopkeeper would like hard currency. Again, what if the millionaire walks around with thousand dollar bills! You need much smaller bills to be able to offer the exact money needed to buy what you want. In essence, the financial system works with small units of monetary currency.

The cellular energy is also available in tiny quanta called the Adenosine triphosphate (ATP). It is the equivalent of our monetary currency. All cells work to obtain this ATP energy currency in order to be able to run their molecular machinery. When they can't make enough ATP, they starve to death.

The food that we eat has enough energy to make millions of ATPs. If you burn the food, it would be charred liberating the heat energy. This burning of the food requires oxygen to combust the food. I told you earlier that our bodies breathe to obtain this oxygen to 'combust' the food inside the body in a controlled manner. It is not a one-step reaction. If it were, all energy would be released in one shot, which would probably be like incinerating the cells in the sudden release of energy. We don't want such massive release of energy as if a bomb exploded every time we eat. Do we?

The body cells produce the food energy in small quanta, which occurs inside the mitochondria. These 'energy currencies' are used to run their life.

Do you know the efficiency with which our man-made machines work? It would probably be in the order of 20-25%. In other words, we are able to use only 20-25% of the energy associated with your fuel, the rest going as waste. The wasted energy goes as heat. Whether it is your car or your industrial machine, all of them can manage only this level of energy efficiency. We accept that the wastage is unavoidable.

Our cellular machines can do better than that. They are said to be able to capture about 45% of the food energy, almost two times the energy efficiency of man-made machines! It is the result of hundreds of millions of years of evolution! If your car could capture energy at this efficiency it would give you twice as much mileage for every litre of petrol you feed it!

# 5. THE MOTHER OF ALL BATTLES

All systems, living or non-living, do everything they can in order to preserve their form & structure. The drive for existence, in other words survival, is inherent in a system. In order to survive, systems have found every strategy one can possibly think of. There is no room for morals here. Cut your enemy's throat before he cuts yours. In this chapter, I have tried to capture the incredible ways humans and other animals defend against danger.

What we call as immunity is a real war between the microbes and our body cells. Our body cells fight them as if our body cells are independent, free-living organisms. All military strategies are found here just as you find in the real battle. You find strategies like espionage, counter-attack, decoys, molecular disguise, forged identity, take-overs, terrorism, opportunism, dedicated warriors, coast guards, and protective shelters can all be seen in our ever-lasting battle against the unseen enemy.

Today, in the modern world, in spite of all medical advances, we keep facing the challenges of emerging infections like AIDS, Ebola, Marburg viruses and even Influenza. Just why or how do these microbes come about? I have tried to explain the basis of their emergence solely from their survival point of view. It is the battle between man and the invisible enemy. It is incredible that such tiny beings, with just a few genes, stretch human ingenuity to the limits. I have shown the reasons why they don't give up before wiping away humans by the millions.

Generally, the lay public is not aware of the complex mechanisms of the immune system that protects them against the harmful microbes. It is my view that disease and death is a result of the struggle for survival between the microbes and man. Disease and death are outcomes of our anti-microbial wars. But do we have to go this far all the time? We do not. Most infections subside over time because we manage to thwart the microbial attack. Evolutionarily speaking, all battles are an on-going effort to gain control of the meagre resources available on our planet. We strike a balance at some stage and that is when microbes live in harmony with us as symbiotic organisms.

Our body is home for many types of microbes, which have learnt to live in peace with us. This does not mean they have ceased to fight us. It is a kind of cease fire agreement between us and the enemies. It represents a no win situation. The fact that such symbiotic organisms can wreck havoc when we are weak is testimony to the real nature of microbial parasites. What is a normal symbiotic organism in most of us can start attacking the host when he or she is weakened by other systemic illnesses. It is what we called opportunistic infections.

Our skin is like a fortress. It is the 'wall of your body house'. You may have a mansion of your own with four walls. Your body needs its own too.

The skin is an impregnable wall, in every sense of the word. It is protected by several mechanisms. Only when the skin is breached, as happens during an injury, it becomes vulnerable and microbes try to gain access into the body. A wound getting infected is a sign of how the skin has become the target of attack from outsiders when a breach develops. We tend to control the situation by using antibiotic substances. Under normal circumstances, the secretions on the skin surface make it a little acidic which exerts an anti-microbial action.

If the microbes manage to evade the skin's security check, it is going to be a bit of a problem. Microbes would then be able to enter the bloodstream and move all over the body. It is bad news but certainly not the end of the story.

We have cellular 'coast guards' 'patrolling' the blood 'sea'. I meant what I have just said. Probably the readers may be a bit confused that I was mistakenly talking about our national defence forces. No, I am talking about the defence forces of our body! They are the white blood cells, more specifically the neutrophils and lymphocytes. Their job is to track down the unwanted microbial intruders and liquidate them. They are constantly circulating in the blood and reach out the parts of the body where there is a need.

The white blood cells are the immune 'warriors' that are ready to give up their lives for your protection. Many of them do lose their lives in the course of an immune war. If you look at your wound, sometimes you see some pus coming out when the wound is infected. The pus is whitish in colour and we always look at it with disgust. Did you know that pus is nothing but dead white cells? Truly, the white cells are the unsung heroes! You look at your own patriotic warriors in disgust!

When there is a war, there are civilian casualties too. Some of the innocent bystander cells get caught in the crossfire when the white blood cells are fighting the microbes. The scar of the wound is a reflection of the civilian casualties! The scar is the damage to our tissues.

An infection is a war between your own body's cellular forces and the microbes. Most of the times we win the battle against our unseen enemies.. Nevertheless, microbes can be deadly sometimes. They can kill an individual human being. In fact, they can wipe away hundreds of thousands, and even millions, in one shot. Flu epidemics, plague, cholera and now AIDS are stark reminders of the microbial power.

Apart from such devastating, large-scale effects a microbe can commonly account for a human life or two every now and then. The jaundice virus is one such frequent killer. In such cases, it is usually a question of how prepared the human body was in the first place.

A normal healthy man may take on the invisible, microbial enemy with no problems. The war certainly drains his immune resources but he wins. Let us say, close on the heels of an infection, he lands with another infection. This time his immune system will only be half as powerful. A weakened immune system is a fertile ground for microbes to gain the upper hand. This is exactly the same case as what you would expect in a war-torn nation. Civil unrest and terrorism breed inside the country in no less a manner than how opportunistic infections would flourish in a weak human body! This is because the defence forces are depleted while fighting a previous enemy and there is a reduced resource availability to fight the next one.

I said that white blood cells are our soldiers. They are capable of killing the microbes with chemical weapons like antibodies, interferons, interleukins and complement proteins. Even the antibiotics we use to kill the microbes are chemicals only. Chemical warfare is prohibited only for the outside world. Inside your body, all battles are fought with chemical weapons.

A particular type of white blood cells called the lymphocytes, the ones I referred to as the unsung heroes, can be stationed in different regions of the body in clusters. These clusters are anatomically referred to as lymph nodes _,_ which are pea-sized structures in your groins, axillae, neck and internal organs too. They are the equivalents of your military bases where soldiers and armoury are stationed in troubled regions. Why do the US government and the U.N have such military bases in strategic locations? The idea is to have battle trim war machinery closer to potential sites of trouble. This military tactic is evident in the way lymphocytes are organised in lymph nodes.

The lymph nodes are full of lymphocytes and explode into action when the need arises. The lymphocytes make clones of them and quickly expand in numbers when there is an infection. You can personally see this as swellings of the lymph nodes in the regions mentioned above. The swelling of lymph nodes occurs at sites closest to the site of infection. If you had an infection in the mouth then the nodes in the neck are swollen. You can actually feel them for yourself as pea sized swellings. If you had a wound in the legs then the groin lymph nodes get swollen. It just represents cellular military logistics inside your body happening without your conscious thinking!

What would law enforcement agencies do to keep track of known criminals? They keep dossiers on them and, in the current age of information, keep databases. Fingerprints, a bloodstain or a photo can all aid in identifying the criminal. It would probably knock you off your chair if I said our own white blood cells are capable of a similar feat. They can keep a record of their enemy's features. They are called the memory cells. They are real.

Our white cells 'remember' the microbial enemy long after they are gone. I mean what I said. This is the basis of what we call immunity. That is why a person who suffers an infection usually does not land with the same infection again.

Next time the offenders are around, they are greeted with the unwelcome treatment so swiftly that the microbes don't know what hit them before they die. What I am referring to is what we call as immunity. A person who has a chicken pox will not get it again. Because his white blood cells have encountered the virus before and know how to fight it. In most cases, a person who has had a particular disease will be less susceptible the next time because of this phenomenon of immunity. This immunity can spread across the community by the genes getting passed down the generations. That way a whole community knows how to recognise the enemy and how to blast them. That is why people from other parts of the world are more likely to get diseased when they visit, let us say, a tropical country. People in the tropics have the trick in their bags because of repeated exposures to their ancestors but a person coming from another part of the world will be encountering the organism for the first time.

The mechanism behind the immunity is very simple. There is a definite molecular basis to it that is scientifically accepted. Few of the white blood cells take on the role of what is known as the memory cells. They 'remember' the enemies. I am not talking some sci-fi stuff. Am I? This concept can be seen in any standard immunology textbooks. I can't help it if you think I am exaggerating.

There is also an unpleasant side to the white blood cells. Sometimes, for some reason, they turn against your own body cells. They indiscriminately attack our own body cells. The result is destruction of cells and tissues in localised organs or multiple organs. In medical jargon, this is the autoimmune disease. Why should the white blood cells behave like terrorists? We all think that humans alone can be terrorists. It's a bit of a relief to know that cells can also be terrorists!

There are many theories offered to explain why the patriots turn into terrorists. I am talking about the cells. Sometimes I have to be clear about which system I am referring to because things are so similar between systems that the readers might get confused as to which system I am referring to. I feel it is the triumph of my hypothesis.

As to theories behind why white cells behave abnormally, it is said that it has something to do with the philosophical issue of self and non-self discrimination. Early in our development, white cells are taught how to recognise foreign organisms and unusual molecules. They are made to lose their reactivity to self. Those white cells, which react to 'self', are eliminated or suppressed at a very early stage in our life. It is said that, in some individuals, those self-reactive white cells escape containment, like criminals escaping from prisons. They wreak havoc.

Some say it is not the white cell, which is at fault. It is the trickery played by the microbes. One of the cheap tricks played by microbes is to cover themselves up with certain bits of molecules of humans. Where do the microbes get the fragments of human molecules? It is frightening to think that bacteria or viruses seem to have come in possession of genes, or bits of genes, coding for human molecules. Using them, they make the human molecules to disguise themselves as humanoid beings. Real scary stuff, isn't it? It is nothing short of espionage. The microbes have come in possession of secrets about us, just as we try to spy on our enemy defence capabilities.

What is the motive behind this molecular mimicry? It is to shield them with something that would be recognised as self and therefore escape immune attack because, as I said earlier, the white blood cells are taught not to react to self-looking components! How ingenious?

In reality, what happens is that the white cells sometimes mount an attack sensing the fact that the molecules are partly human and partly microbial. The chemical weapons generated by the white cells also attack the genuine human molecules, which the microbe was trying to mimic. These genuine molecules are present on human cells far away but the white cells can't contain the effects of the weapons they have produced. The weapons attack them too.

Molecular mimicry is helpful to the microbes in another way. It helps them get inside human cells. As I said in the beginning, getting into the human body is extremely difficult, as the microbes have to go through several lines of security checks. Once inside the body getting into individual human cells is another task by itself. Cells normally take in molecules such as messenger molecules and nutrients from their immediate environment. This happens at points called receptors, which are equivalents of cargo delivery points. The receptors are like addresses. The molecular travellers dock in and get into the cells through the receptors.

These receptors are dumb structures. Microbes easily fool the receptors and get in. How do they do that? They do it by using humanoid molecules I was referring to before. For example, the vaccinia virus, which is one of the disease-causing viruses, has a molecule on its surface, which resembles one our own molecules called epidermal growth factor (EGF). This is a normally occurring compound in our body and we take it into our cells through receptors specific for it. When the vaccinia virus comes near the cellular receptor for EGF, the receptor binds it because EGF-Coated virus looks like it is EGF. Consequently, the Vaccinia virus finds itself inside the cell! Almost all microbes that attack us use one of these cheap molecular mimicry tricks.

It sounds like a plot in Frederick Forsyth's ' _The day of the Jackal'_ to me. In my opinion microbes use a strategy nothing dissimilar to illegal entry using forged passports. I have mentioned vaccinia virus as an example. So many others use a whole array of important human molecular structures to gain unlawful entry.

We will see what happens next. When a microbe such as a virus enters a human cell there is only one objective. The viruses want to use our cellular machinery to survive. The viruses are such small creatures that they can't survive independently. They always look for some hosts to support them. Viruses have hardly a few genes in them. A human cell has about 30,000 genes. Roughly, a virus is a thousand-fold less complex than us. Nevertheless, once inside the human cell, this tiny creature takes over the control of the human cell!

The human cellular machinery, including the protein synthesis factories called the ribosomes, is forced to produce only viral proteins and not human proteins. The human cellular machinery work like slaves for the viral commanders, doing what the tiny virus wants! In no time, virus multiplies into thousands more in number, break open the cell and go on to colonise more human cells! It is amazing!

History is replete with small armies of soldiers taking over kingdoms. They hit where it hurts. They capture the kings & his advisors and the whole kingdom is theirs! The subjects do as they are told. Sometimes a handful of military commanders can topple a ruler and take over an entire kingdom! It looks like the viruses know about this trick too!

It is incredible that an invisible virus can specifically inactivate host cell manufacturing capabilities using very precise molecular strategies. However, complex organic chemical and molecular biological manipulations are second nature to microbes.

In fact, the antibiotics we use in our modern medicine are products of lowly organisms like fungi. The fungi make them as a means to killing the microorganisms, which compete for the scarce nutrients in their ecosystem. Man has exploited them. He has used 'fungal intellectual properties' without permission! Pharmaceutical companies spend lots of money looking for microbes & plants that can make useful medicinal compounds. Natural compounds give a lead to further research for production of more potent drugs.

If fungi make antibiotic substances to kill the bacteria, what would the bacteria do? Will they take this non-sense without any fight? They launch a counter offensive. They make chemical compounds, which can inactivate the antibiotics. For example, a type of fungus called _Streptomyces_ makes the penicillin antibiotic, which kills a type of bacterium called _Staphylococcus_. The _staphylococcus_ makes a compound called beta-lactamase, which breaks down the penicillin! This evolutionary battle has been happening for hundreds of millions of years.

In other words, the fungus launches a chemical missile and the bacterium responds with an anti-ballistic missile. Real star war stuff, isn't it? How could an organism, which has just one cell to its credit, develop compounds with such precision? Our pharmaceutical companies take several years and many PhD scholars to come up similar high precision medicinal substances.

Just how do the microbes manage to accomplish this task? At what level is this counter offence strategy developed? I thought you needed a military headquarters or a high-tech lab to come up with such things. Am I wrong?

Unfortunately, from the clinical point of view, these bacterial counter-offensive measures make the medicines impotent. This is called the drug resistance phenomenon, which is set to put medical science in serious trouble. The bacteria have become resistant to almost all our antibiotics. It is a question of time when we will be left with no effective antibiotics. Man will succumb to infections the way he used to, before 1940, when first antibiotics came into use.

In this context, I feel that I should point out another situation where counter-offensive strategies are found in non-thinking systems. One of the ways we treat cancer is by using chemical drugs, which predominantly kill the cancer cells. During treatment of cancer with drugs, it has been observed that some cancer cell types develop resistance to the drugs they were previously sensitive to.

The cancer cells dig up the gene for making a molecular pump, which is used to literally pump out the harmful medicine out of their cellular territories. This is an indication how autonomous a cancer cell is. It behaves as if it were a single-celled organism. It tries every means of selfishly using up body resources without consideration for normal order. Interestingly, the pump used by the cancer cell seems to be a primitive molecule in the sense it is found in other life systems too, such as in poisonous plants. This pump had evolved in the early organisms to protect the cells against toxic substances in nature. A normal human cell has no use for it now. This is because we have evolved complicated detoxification systems based in our liver. They take care of detoxifying a number of chemical substances entering our body in the form of food additives, medicines and others. The fact that cancer cells can dig up this gene for the pump means that we humans may have certain ancient evolutionary traits in dormant form.

The point I am trying to make is the fact that cellular systems and organismal systems can come up with counter-offensive strategies as a means to defending themselves. In the biological world, you can find every tactic you can think of. Man tries to kill disease-causing bacteria with antibiotics found in nature. For the level of complexity of a human system, it would be degrading to totally depend on them. He uses his immune system as a supplement. Immune cells use chemical weapons like antibodies to precisely attack surface structures of the bacteria. They are like heat-guided missiles, which find the targets unfailingly. Microbes have found ways of evading these immunological missiles. They shed off the particular molecular structures, which the antibodies are targeting! The antibodies dutifully attack the detached, life-less structure while the microbe goes about unharmed. Use of 'decoys' is such a common tactic in our own military and non-military practices.

Some microbial systems use a different strategy to evade our immunological missiles. They duck to escape. Literally, the single celled systems pull in the target structures so that they are not visible on the outer surface. If you hide behind a wall or a tree, how can your enemy shoot you? This simple and effective strategy of hiding and ducking happens at the molecular and cellular level, whether you believe it or not. This phenomenon is technically referred to as sequestration of antigens, a common immune evasive strategy of pathogenic organisms, especially the ones that cause chronic infections.

I said sometime ago that microbes could coat themselves with humanoid molecules as a disguise. Now you have been told that they use decoys, duck and hide to give the slip. It is amazing that evolution can come up with solutions such as these. What is incredible is not only the fact that the solutions are so much alike our own but also the fact that it is so specific and high tech too.

There are a whole variety of other defence mechanisms seen in the animal world. It is just not the defence against the microbes all the time. There are various other threats we need to guard ourselves against. These strategies show the extent to which these fighters go to survive against all odds. Let me show you what we have got.

The practice of building a shelter as a defensive behaviour is ubiquitous in the biological world. A bird builds a nest. Man constructs a house. Some animals dig up a burrow. Some organisms use exotic types of homes. The amazing thing is it is not only the organism that needs a home but organs too. Brain is 'housed' inside the skull! The bony cage formed by the ribs protects the heart & lungs!

There is a common debate in most countries as to whether it is worth spending millions of dollars annually towards the security of Prime ministers and presidents. How are their lives different from a common citizen's? Does it make sense? Look at the body. The brain alone gets some extra protection. Is it because the brain is the 'boss' of the body or what? Is brain a V.I.P? Look at the heart & lungs. They do the vital functions of breathing & circulation. It is no wonder the human body has come up with some extra protection to them. Military installations, power plants, treasuries and places like that get more security than an ordinary shop or a house for obvious reasons. Our body runs a good security department, doesn't it?

Look at the bats. They use echo-sounding to avoid obstacles as well as locating the prey. They resort to ultra high frequency sounds ranging from 40,000-300,000 cycles per second. When bats emit high frequency sounds, its ability to detect objects will depend on the sound-reflecting property of the targets. Some of the prey organisms of the bats, such as nocturnal moths & certain beetles have found a way to avoid detection by the bats. They have evolved a soft dense fluff surrounding their body, because of which the echo they produce is feeble. Rough and soft surfaces dampen the sound and reflect them poorly. I didn't know that moths and beetles are such experts in acoustic engineering. Did you?

Sometimes you find some organisms such as the monarch butterfly behaving as if they are toxicology experts. The monarch butterfly feeds on milkweed ( _Asclepias_ ) and extracts some poisonous chemicals such as cardiac glycosides (cardenolides) and pyrrolizidine alkaloids. If some predator eats the monarch butterfly it will end up with heart failure, nerve damage in minutes. Yet, a mouse ( _peromyscus melanotiz_ ) that lives in Mexico can countermine the defence of the monarch butterfly. The mice usually eat only the internal tissues of the monarches, which are low in poison content. They reject the cuticles, which are rich in poisons!

Snakes are poisonous. We treat snakebites with anti snake venom injections, which are very difficult to obtain in remote regions where, paradoxically, the risk of snakebite is high. The mongoose is not afraid of snakes. Even if a snake bites it nothing happens. This is because the mongoose does not have the receptors upon which the snake venom normally acts! That is the mongoose's answer to snake's offence!

Self-defence is an art. Disguise is probably one of the most widely used strategies. Even we do that. Don't we? Criminals change their appearances not to be spotted. Detectives and police wander around in plain clothes not to attract the attention of thieves. Army soldiers wear uniform that has a leafy pattern blending with the bushes in which they move. For many organisms, disguise is the only survival mechanism.

Treehoppers are insects living on weeds and trees all over the world. There are about 2300 types of treehoppers and they are called treehoppers because they hop for short distances on the tree. The treehoppers have a hard plate on its back, which can grow into a shape looking like part of the twigs. The back plate is called the pronotum. From a distance, the back plates of some of the treehoppers give an appearance as if the treehoppers are carrying ants. This is an unintended disguise for the treehoppers because the larger insect predators avoid eating ants because they taste bad. Moreover, the ants fight fiercely. In fact, the mimicry is so perfect that even real ants are attracted to the fake ants on the back plates thinking they are real. The 'unintentional' disguise goes a step further now. The real ants that have approached the treehopper are 'bribed' with a sweet, nutritious secretion to keep them near. It is like the plants tempting the insects with nectar. Unfortunately, when a man bribes somebody he is considered unscrupulous.

The goosefish has a very large mouth. It lives in most oceans of the world. Because of the large size of the mouth, it is also called 'allmouth'. To live up to the reputation, it eats squids, crabs, small sharks, diving birds, other fish etc. The goosefish is quite large and can weigh up to 45 kg and measure 5 feet in length. Its size is so big and is a sort of a handicap in approaching the prey. So the goosefish settles itself in a place and grabs the 'passing meals'! Wouldn't the prey notice the waiting monster? To take care of that angle, the goosefish has skin growths that look like weeds. It helps in camouflaging the fish against the background of the seaweed on the ocean floor.

Molluscs belonging to the class cephalopoda include octopuses, squids and cuttlefish. They can change their body colour to match their surroundings and remain undetected. In addition, they can squirt a dark ink-like substance into the water to conceal themselves.

There are some fish, which simply swallow water and puff up when attacked. By doing that, they look larger and fierce, unnerving the attacker for a fleeting, moment. This gives the fish the time needed to escape!

Even plants can take care of their defence. Weeds like dandelions and thistles have spiky stems or leaves, which prevent many animals from eating them. This is one of the reasons why the weeds are able to grow so uncontrollably.

There are some unfortunate organisms, which are not born with a silver spoon of defence. They are lacking in a bad taste, don't have a colour or appearance that blends with the background, and don't have a fierce looking structure. That doesn't stop them. They can learn some disguising skills. For example, the inchworm is one of those poor creatures with no natural disguise. It is a small, hairless caterpillar feeding on flowers. The crab spider is always looking for it but doesn't find it. Why? This is because the inchworm bites off bits of petals and sticks them on its own back. From above, the inchworm looks like a part of the flower! Having organised its own security, the inchworm goes about its job of leisurely finishing its meal.

When the squids and cuttle fishes find an attacker nearby, they eject a cloud of fire, which is very similar to their own shape and size. The predator pounces on the glowing dummy while the real fish is escaping.

Deep sea-shrimps have special glands near their mouth, which can release a screen of light when the animal is in danger. The light screen conceals the school of shrimps as the predators can see only some fiery spots. The shrimps rapidly disperse. Some sea-living creatures emit light only when they have been caught in the mouth of a predator. The sudden light emission frightens the predator and it opens the mouth, the prey beats the hell out of the predator's mouth.

Mouth brooder is a fish than can protect its young in a peculiar manner. The young fish swim around the heads of their parents in a tight shoal. If a predator appears, the young ones rush quickly into the mouth of the mother. Once the danger has passed, the mouth brooder gently releases her tiny young back into the water.

Some organisms use bad taste as a defence tactic. They make themselves taste so bad that the predator never touches them. The Parrotfish, called so because of the parrot-like beak, coat themselves with a gelatinous substance in the night. Eels and other larger fish, which prey on the parrotfish, are discouraged from doing so by the awfully bad taste! Psychedelic fish belonging to the group called Dragonets, living in warm coastal waters off the Philippines islands and Northern Australia, adopt a similar strategy. Even birds do that.

Pipe wine swallowtail is a butterfly deriving its name from its pipe vine colour. Pipe vine coloured butterflies taste bad. Birds avoid eating them. There are some good-tasting butterflies among the swallowtails and they are called the yellow tails. They can mimic the bad-tasting pipe vine swallowtails, by taking up the pipe-vine colouring. Birds avoid eating these mimics too.

The mimicry as a means of defence does not stop with mimicry of bad-tasting members. Some flies can look like wasps with black and yellow bands on their bodies. We are afraid of the sting of the wasps and so are the predators of these flies. The mimicry is so perfect that several species of hoverfly can enter colonies of bees at will and lay their eggs inside. It can even make a buzzing sound similar to the one the wasp makes. An insect called mantispid is capable of looking like a wasp to scare the birds away.

Most of the biosystems and non-biological systems invariably are capable of rectifying any malfunctions that impair the functioning of the system as a whole. If one of your machines, let us say a computer, breaks down you fix it. We tend to maximise the use of a system such as gadgets in this example, as much as we can by attempting to put it back into working order. We tend to protect them from developing any damage in the first place. We keep certain instruments and machines in air-conditioned rooms and keep them dust free.

If your company should develop a problem, it is rectified with help from various sources depending on the problem. Fixing the problem allows the organisation to continue functioning productively. The same thing applies to a nation too. There are so many problems and issues arising every day and the government tries to address them and find a remedy.

Repair of a system is an economical way of maintaining it. You can't afford to let systems disintegrate at the slightest fault. All systems have built-in defences to get back in shape. Obviously, the magnitude of the disturbance will determine if the system will succumb or survive.

We employ medical knowledge to the welfare of an individual and the society. We do whatever we can medically to save an individual from dying. We try medicines, surgery, organ transplanting, artificial ventilation and many more. There are still so many diseases against which man stands defenceless. Simple injuries heal on their own without we bothering about it. We never realise the extent of sophisticated cellular reactions underlying a simple healing response. If the injury is a bit severe people lose their limbs or even die. We can't regenerate lost limbs or parts of our body.

Some snails can grow new eyes. Starfish can regenerate entire parts of their bodies. A starfish called the _linckia_ lives in tropical areas of the Pacific Ocean. It can cast off one on more of their arms and each arm can grow into a new starfish. The starfish replaces the lost limb.

About 100 years ago, in New England, a curious problem faced the oystermen who caught the oysters for a living. The oysters were eaten by the starfish, which meant that the oystermen had little to catch for them. Therefore, they decided to eradicate the starfish. They collected a good number of the starfish and cut them into pieces. Assuming they were dead, they threw them back into the water. To their dislike, they soon found out that the starfish menace had only increased. Then came the realisation. The cut parts of the starfish were growing into new starfish, multiplying their numbers! From then on, the oysterman never cut them into pieces. They just left them on the seashore to die!

The extraordinary regenerative capacity sometimes can work to our benefit. The crab has the ability to regenerate parts of its body including its claws. In Florida, the stone crab is a delicacy and too many crabs were caught for this purpose. Soon the stone crab became scarce. People wanted to eat the crab but still save it from dying. The tastiest part of the crab was the claws and the crab had the ability to regenerate it. So a law was enacted to make the crab-catchers take only the claw leaving the crab back in water. The crab can regrow its claw, which can be harvested later.

An organism called stentor can regenerate even if you mince them up to 40 different fragments if they are still adherent!

Some worms that are luminescent make a combined use of the regenerative capacity and light emission to their advantage. When it is bitten into two pieces, the rear half will emit a bright flash and the head end will put the light off. The predator eats the rear end while the head end is uneaten. The head end regenerates a tail end later!

Man does not have such remarkable regenerative capacities. His repair capabilities are now externalised in the form of medical sciences. His own body has so many physiological defence mechanisms to maintain the homeostatic balance all the time in presence of changing external conditions. His immunity protects him against the microbes without any conscious action from his part.

# 6. THE HI-TECH NATURE

Man is believed to live the kind of lifestyle no other living organism can dream of. Humans are unique in the biological world. Science and Technology has changed the very nature of every day human life.

But, unfortunately, principles of optics, acoustics, aerodynamics, nanotechnology, fuel efficiency, energy production, electrolysis, desalination, navigation by sophisticated means, thermal technology, technology Transfer etc., are seen in nature if you know where to look for them.

We are not alone in the hi-tech world.

Visible light penetrates hundreds of metres into the deep ocean. Deep Sea fish also emit light produced by themselves, called bioluminescence, mostly at a wavelength around 470 to 490 nanometres (blue light). Most fish eyes are tuned to the wavelength that matches the visible light penetrating the oceans. Two genera of stomiid fish, _Aristostomias_ and _pachystomias,_ are equipped with two types of light-emitting organs. One emits blue light and the other produces red light with a wavelength of around 700 nanometres. This is almost in the infrared region of the spectrum and invisible to other fish. Red light is used to illuminate the prey, which would be unaware of the danger they were in. If the stomiid fish need to be able to see the reflected red light, they need to have pigments to detect red wavelength light. Ronald Douglas of the City University in London and Julian Partridge of the University of Bristol have found a pigment in the stomiid fish which can pick up reflected red light from the prey, which they believe works like an infrared sniper scope. They also think red bioluminescence might be used to attract mates without altering predators. It looks like a secret waveband of communication. These fish don't need an infrared camera to see in the dark because they have an evolved, in-built mechanism not unlike it.

Manx shearwater is a sea bird. It finds its way back home in the late night. Its eyes are especially suited for night vision. The ratio of the refractory power of the lens and the cornea is 1.6 for shearwater whereas the ratio is 0.4 for day-active birds like pigeons. The shearwater has a lens with shorter focal length. In the language of the photographer, the shearwater's eye is faster, or has a lower F-number. So much optics for a bird!

Claire Brunton and Michael Majerus of Cambridge University have found that the European _Colias_ butterflies and _Gonepteryx_ butterflies from the Canary Islands have two types of patterns on their wings. One can be seen in visible light and the other only through an UV-sensitive camera. The UV colouration on the wings of the butterflies is created by ridges on them, which results in bright iridescent patterns. These researchers suspect these UV patterns could be used by the females for mate choice. Larger males, who consequently have larger UV patterns, also produce more seminal fluid. Older males reflect less UV than younger males due to wear and tear on the ridges of their wing scales. Moreover, an older male is more likely to have mated recently. Female butterflies avoid mating with a male, which has mated recently because they produce 60% less sperm and seminal fluid. The quantity of seminal fluid is important not only for reproductive success. The females also absorb nutrients from it! It is therefore possible that the females use the intensity and size of UV patterns to judge the reproductive quality of an approaching male. We use UV spectrophotometers in laboratories to study chemical compounds. This instrument design is based on our knowledge of optics, electronics, and physics. It beats me how butterflies can do all that.

The bats use a sophisticated echolocation system sandwiching long, constant signals between brief, frequency-modulated pulses. The bats compare the frequency of the emitted pulse with the echo frequency and determine the Doppler shift. What a physicist this bat is!

Let us look at the acoustic capabilities of animals. The human ear can perceive a sound producing a pressure of 0.0001 micro bar (0.0001 dyne per sq.cm). This pressure displaces the cochlear membrane by hardly 1/100,000,000,000th of a cm. Compared to the dimensions of the hydrogen atom, it is not even one thousandths of its diameter!

About two decades ago, Karl J. Niklas and colleagues at Cornell University, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Arizona and the Fair Child Tropical Gardens in Coral Gables have found that many plants are aerodynamically designed to filter larger amounts of pollen from the air. Pine tree is an excellent example of the influence of a plant's aerodynamic design on its ability to snare pollen from the wind.

Pine trees are bisexual. Yet, they rely on cross-pollination to fertilise 95% of their eggs. The male reproductive organs of these conifers are small cones that usually grow in clusters. After the complete growth of a cone, the pollen forming chambers rupture and release the contents into the air. Karl J.Niklas and his group suspected that the scales and bracts of female cones are constructed in such a way as to obstruct the flow of air and deflect the pollen towards the oddly placed ovules.

To seek an answer to this query, a larger than life mode of a pinecone was placed in a wind tunnel. The airflow disturbances around the model were visualised by releasing helium filled bubbles in to the wind. The trajectories of these bubbles were recorded with stroboscopic photography. A camera illuminated the bubbles at pre-set intervals. The images were analysed in a computer, to yield the speed and direction of the wind in various tiny regions, in the microenvironment around the cone. Results showed that the wind turbulence generated favoured the collision of air borne pollens into the micropyles where the eggs are contained. This enables the pollens to fertilise the eggs.

Another question that had to be answered was what would happen if the pollen grains of one plant were deflected on to the ovules of plants of another species. Subsequent studies showed that most of the cones were able to 'filter' their own type of pollen from the air but not that of other species. This is made possible by the unique shape of the cone produced by each plant species resulting in characteristic airflow patterns around the cones. These patterns are influenced by factors like length and diameter of the cone, the number of cones attached to the central axis, their shapes, and the angle at which each scale meets the axis and the speed of the wind. Pollen also has a characteristic size, shape and density depending on the plant species. Presumably, many varieties of cones generate wind flow patterns that best suit the pollen of their species. It was also found that the leaf clusters surrounding a female cone are also typical and have effect on the aerodynamic influence on pollination. They can decrease the speed of the air, showering the cone with pollen grains. Obviously, nobody expects the plants to employ so much aerodynamic principles but that is the fact of reality in nature.

A team of researches from the Cambridge University in the U.K and Rutgers University in the US set out to find out how the Bumblebee flies. We all know that it flies. We know that there are thousands of types of birds and insects, which can effortlessly fly. Life forms fly with abilities they evolved over millions of years. Man flies with abilities that he acquired using scientific principles. Nobody can deny the fact whether the bird flies or the machine flies, the aerodynamic principles have to be the same. There is nothing like aerodynamics for biological systems like birds or insects and a separate type of aerodynamics for our aeroplanes.

The team of researchers who set out to study bumblebee flight wanted to know how the tiny creature is able to produce more lift than wings of an aeroplane can. Their studies with reference to current theoretical predictions led to what is called the bumblebee paradox. The paradox is that the bumblebee should not be capable of flight, according to our cherished aerodynamic principles. However, it flies. There is something we don't know how to do, which the bumblebee can do effortlessly. How the bumblebee meets the high-power needs of its tiny wings to provide lift remains unanswered.

Flying like the birds and insects is not the only way to move in the air. There are some organisms such as some types of lizards, lemurs and some type of squirpels. They can fly short distances in the absence of any wings. What they have is a loose or ribbed skin along the sides of their bodies. When they stretch out their legs and leap, the skin spreads wide, forming flaps. The flaps turn the animals into little hang gliders.

A type of leaping lizard, called the flying Dragon, lives in forests in South East Asia. While climbing the trees, they use their legs. The return journey down to the earth, or movement from tree to tree is done by gliding. The flying lemurs do the same. They climb up the trees but hang glide impressive distances like 130 meters. What is more, they can take their babies along for a ride! The flying squirrels can glide up to 3 feet long and live in many parts of the world, including North America.

Molluscs belonging to the class _cephalopoda_ can move around by jet propulsion. Octopuses, squid and cuttlefishes come under this group of molluscs. Cephalopods draw in water from the sea by means of slits in the body wall. The water is then drawn over the gills so that the animals can breath. There is a tube called the siphon through which the water is violently pumped out. It makes the animals to move forward by jet propulsion. The animal can change and move in any direction by simply altering the direction of the siphon!

The archerfish lives in rivers, streams and coastal waters in parts of Asia and Australia. It can shoot down a beetle with 'water bullets'. When it wants to shoot, it stops breathing for a moment and takes in a mouthful of water. It presses its tongue against a groove in its mouth, forming a tube. Then it takes aim and fires at the insects sitting on a leaf above the surface of water. The range of the archerfish 'gun' is about 10 feet into the air, which gives it the capability to gun down even insects in flight! Ballistics from a fish is the last thing you expected.

Whales, walruses, and seals are seafarers. They are born in the sea and die in the sea. No wonder they know what it takes to move around in the sea. Often the stomachs of these creatures have been found to contain stones weighing 350-500 grams. The reason is amazing. These mammals have lots of fat on their body, which decreases their mean specific gravity. Therefore, they have a tendency to float and find it difficult to submerge in water. To take aboard some ballast and increase their weight, they swallow stones! Some seals have been found to have as much as 11 kg of stones in their stomachs!

Some insects live in the sea. They are the descendants of land dwelling animals. Although they had moved to water, they haven't made any appreciable change to their respiratory system. They have learnt to live like our aqualung divers! When they dive into the water, they take stocks of air! Their non-wettable hairs hold the bubbles in place. Because the air bubbles are attached near the opening of the respiratory system, they are able to extract oxygen out of it!

Even spiders, such as the silver spider, live under water. Even they have the same problem as our deep-sea divers and aquatic insects i.e., how to breathe under water? The spider has a waterproof fluff covering its body and small air bubbles become attached to the fluff. The spider also sticks the end of its abdomen out of water and grasps a larger air bubble. The web built by the spider under water is initially flat. It gradually assumes the shape of a thimble as the spider places air bubbles under it. A miniature 'caisson' is thus formed to accommodate the spider. Even eggs are laid and hatched in this caisson. The concentration of oxygen in air bubbles carried by insects decreases as the insects breathe. When it is less than 16%, oxygen dissolved in the water starts diffusing into the water bubbles!

What do sea fish and sea animals do for drinking water? Do they use seawater as such? On the other hand, do they 'desalinate' the seawater? The latter seems to be the case. The blood and interstitial fluids of fish and other sea living organisms contain quite low amounts of salt, in spite of high salt content of the surrounding seawater. When the marine predators eat them for food, they also get a good supply of drinking water. The fish have a distilling device located in the gills. Salts contained in the blood are trapped by special cells and removed together with the mucus. Sea birds living far from the seashore, like the stormy petrel and albatross, find it difficult to get fresh water. They come to the land only once a year to breed. Some other birds like cormorants, guillemots and various sea gulls drink plain seawater, despite the fact they live close to the shore. How do these birds desalinate the seawater?

The sea birds and reptiles can distil the seawater with what is known as the salt gland. This gland can remove salt from seawater and discharge it into the nasal cavity. In other sea reptiles, like the turtles, snakes and lizards, the salt gland opens into the eye. The fluid dripping from the eyes of the crocodile is not tears but the salty excretions! When somebody pretends to cry people call it crocodile tears because it is not real tears at all!

Electric eels live in the swamps and small rivers of South America. During conditions of drought, there are only shallow pools of water and the competition for the oxygen dissolved in the water becomes greater. The electric eel is not troubled at all. How does it get its oxygen? The electric eels can employ principles of 'electrolysis' which literally means lysing or breaking something into its constituents using the power of electricity.

This description unfortunately reads as if the electric eel is running a laboratory or something of that sort. What it can do is generate up to 600 volts electric discharges, which breaks water into oxygen and hydrogen. Not only the water outside its body but also the water inside its body is lysed. It uses oxygen and leaves hydrogen out as bubbles. Other fish in the vicinity are drawn to the place where eels are because of presence of oxygen near eels. One disadvantage for eels is the fishermen looking for them easily spot them. The hydrogen bubbles give the eels away!

Reptiles have sense organs capable of feeling temperature. These sense organs are present on the snout, a little below the eyes in the reptiles. It can detect changes in temperature of the surroundings even when the change is as low as 0.002 centigrade. A snake can detect an object by the reception of heat radiation. Even when the temperature difference between the object and surroundings is only 0.1 centigrade, the snake is able to identify it. It can make out whether the hiding prey is a mouse or a frog simply by taking the reading from its in-built thermometers! One of the modern military technology tools is the infrared-guided missile, which tracks down enemy targets such as planes by sensing heat emitted by them. It is surprising that the snakes have been able to evolve a similar capability. In fact, the mosquitoes and other blood-sucking insects use heat-sensitive antennae to locate their prey like us!

Megapodes or moundbirds are found in Australia & New Guinea. They use mounds of rotting plant debris as egg incubators. The decay of the organic products leads to liberation of heat energy, which raises the temperature. The birds actually need a temperature of around 33 degrees centigrade. The male bird's beak is the thermometer. It plunges its beak periodically into the debris to measure the temperature. If it is greater than 33 degree centigrade, the cock begins to rake the mound so that some heat will escape. On the contrary, if the temperature is lower than 33 degree centigrade, more plant debris are brought and added!

Mammalian sperms navigate by sense of smell, according to a team of US biologists led by Solomon Snyder of John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. The sperms have the same kind of molecules found in the smell receptor cells of the nose. This suggests that the sperm may use these molecular smell receptors to detect chemicals given off by the egg cells. The smell receptors pass on the information to the sperm's engine room, the mitochondria, which power the sperm to the egg.

Army ants are totally blind. However, they can organise foraging raids that will pale our military manoeuvres. They can find their way through dense jungles like a walk in the park. How do they do that? Ants of the genus _Aenictus_ , from the jungles of South Asia, use chemicals to leave trails for ants behind them to follow. Scout ants, which lead the way, mark a chemical trail for other colony members to follow. They set up temporary camps on the way and spend the nights as they go about devouring the unlucky insects and small animals that come across. David Morgan and Neil Oldham of Keele University, working with Johan Billen and his group at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, have found that the ants use methyl nicotinate and methyl anthranilate as the chemical trail substances.

A little while ago, I mentioned about the butterflies with the UV vision. Even kestrels have that capacity. They use this ability to home in on their prey. Voles are small rodents, which have the habit of navigating through familiar territory by leaving urine trails. This also helps them communicate with one another. A team of Finnish researchers led by Erkki Korpimaki of the University of Turku has found that these marks are visible in UV-light. It remains to be studied how the kestrels detect UV light. Kestrels in captivation have been shown to detect UV light.

A leech is a tiny organism. It has a very primitive nervous system with about 40 neurones. With this simple nervous system, the leeches can bend, crawl, and suck. It can respond to touch. Bill Kristan and John Lewis of the University of California at San Diego have studied the way the leech nervous system functions.

The idea of studying leech nervous system was to understand how the neurones interact to produce behaviour. Being small, the leech nervous system is easier to study the basic strategies that networks of neurones use to store information and compute. It is the hope of these researchers that this will throw light on how our brain, with billions of neurones, functions.

Kristan and Lewis have discovered that, incredibly, the leeches can perform the equivalents of mathematical calculations using only 40 neurones. Prod a leech with your finger, and it will bend away. Behind this bending lies the ability to locate the position of touch with mathematical precision. When you touch the leech at an angle of , the corresponding neurones fired at a rate proportional to the cosine of . The leech neurones are able to do simple trignometry as if they are silicon chips in a calculator. To bend away from touch, the leech has to trigger strongly those interneurones that will pull more or less away from the point of contact, and only weakly in other directions. The factor cos φ- achieves this task.

Neurones that calculate sines and cosines have been seen before in other organisms, even in monkeys. This is the first time anyone has managed to show a neural system actually making use of it. Grigori Orlowsky and his colleagues at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm have revealed a similar three-layer network of sensory neurones allowing the mollusc Clione limacina to do rudimentary mathematics.

John Miller and his colleagues at the University of California at Berkeley showed in 1991 that the cricket does similar calculations too. Their experiments probed the way a cricket's nervous system detects tiny currents of air and uses them to work out the location of a nearby predator or mate.

Rhinoceros beetles are built like miniature armoured vehicles. Gram for gram they are thought to be the world's strongest animals. Rodger Kram of the university of California at Berkeley had studied the American species called _Xylorctes thestalus_ , and found that the beetles could still move when carrying around 100 times their own weight. When laden with a modest 30 times their body weight they could maintain their usual walking speed for more than half an hour. Kram concludes that the beetles use less energy and oxygen than normal, when working so strenuously, so that they can keep up long periods of work!

Let us look at the ways man finds power to run his machines. He uses electrical energy. Bio systems have always relied on electricity too! Is that true? Yes, life systems use the energy associated with movement of electrons i.e., electrical energy, to power them. The electrons present in the food molecules are plucked by an elaborate biochemical set up known to the biochemists as the Kreb's cycle. The plucked electrons are captured by oxygen. The arrangement of electron plucking molecules inside the mitochondria is such that there is a step=wise of transfer of electrons from one to another till it is finally accepted by oxygen. The motive force of the electrons in motion is nothing but electricity. In fact, the biosystems capture more energy from their fuels than we do. Their energy efficiency approaches 45% which means they let only 55% energy go as waste. Our machines work with energy efficiency of up to 20-25% only.

Man uses nuclear fusion energy. He generates them by fusing hydrogen nuclei to form helium capturing the energy released during the process. This technology was made possible only in the latter half of this century thanks to the advances in quantum physics. It is difficult to believe that the Sun is a perfect thermonuclear reactor doing the same for over 500 million years! In fact, all our planetary life depends on this power.

The plants are photochemical machines. They capture the energy of the sunlight just like our photovoltaic cells and solar energy panels! The amount of energy captured and stored by plants is many times more than annual energy production of man. The best thing about the plant's way of making energy is it is renewable. All the plant needs is sunlight. The chlorophyll molecule in the plant works like a 'light harvesting' antenna. A team of researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana Chambaign has succeeded in mimicking this structure of plants thought it works poorly compared to photosynthesis. Alfred Holzwarth and his team at the Max Planck Institute for Radiation Chemistry in Mulheim, working with Japanese colleagues at Ritsumeikan University in Shiga have also come up with self-assembling, light-capturing structure.

Elias Greenbaum and his colleagues at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee are studying photosynthetic reaction centres of spinach leaves to see if they could be adapted to power nanoscale electronic devices. They are only six nanometres across, take only 5 to 10 picoseconds to start working, and are easy to extract. They can produce a potential difference of as much as 1 volt and can be powered by light. The problem will be finding ways of attaching ultra thin wires to these natural tiny generators.

Quite often people look down on microbes. They think that they are primitive and infinitely less sophisticated. Nobody realises that being small and single is an evolutionary solution that has been selected and retained. It is easy to show that microbes are 'technologically' very advanced. Sometimes we find that we can't match it at least in certain things. For instance, the nitrogen fixing bacteria take up nitrogen from the soil and make Ammonia (NH3) by combining the nitrogen atom with hydrogen atoms. This reaction is the most important reaction, as important as the photosynthetic reaction, for biosystems because all amino acids on this planet need ammonia for their formation. Without ammonia, there is no amino acid. Without amino acid, there is no protein. Without protein, there is no life form.

The nitrogen-fixing bacteria accomplish ammonia synthesis with incredible ease. It happens at room temperature and normal atmospheric pressure and even in presence of oxygen. We humans artificially make about 80 million tons of ammonia every year around the world. It is made for use as a fertiliser. The chemical process for making ammonia industrially is known as the Haber process. Unlike in bacteria, the Haber process for making ammonia needs a high temperature of 400-500 degrees centigrade and around 250 times the atmospheric pressure and oxygen has to be excluded! How do the single-celled bacteria make it so easily at normal temperature and atmospheric pressure? Is microbial technology superior to our own?

Occasionally you come across life systems, which possess extraordinary gadgets and powers. For more than fifty years biologists have known that knife blades cut neatly if they vibrate. Based on this principle an instrument called vibrotome was developed and pathologists use it for making thin slices of biological tissues for microscopic examination. Jurgan Tautz and colleagues at the University of Wurzburg have found that leaf-cutting ants employ the principles of vibrotome for nibbling off leaves, flowers or stems. They have been doing it for millions of years. The leaf-cutting ants emit chirps during which the ant and leaf vibrate at a frequency of about 1000-hertz. This vibration seems to make soft leaf tissues temporarily more rigid, allowing them to be cut more evenly. How extraordinary!

Certain bacteria grow tiny bar magnets inside their cells from chains of iron oxide crystals that lie in the same direction. The magnets, about a twentieth of a micrometer-long, allow these magnetotactic microbes navigate in the earth's magnetic field by acting as compass needles!

Limpets have abrasive teeth made of the iron oxide geothite. Geothite is very hard which enables limpets to graze on algae that are embedded deeply in rock. The teeth or limpet scrapes roughly across the rock and collect the algae. The teeth are organised on a sort of conveyor belt, which transport the algae in.

Some microbial organisms such as _stephanoeca diplocostatia ellis_ , a species of fresh water plankton, can make about 200 curved rods of hydrated silica crystals within tiny elongated vesicles bound by a membrane. Later, glass-like rods are taken outside the cells and are quickly woven into a basket-like structure. This structure is used as a minute silica basket to catch bacteria and other microbes! Crystal engineering at its best! Even we don't make such beautiful tools to catch fish! The point is such small organisms have come up with purpose built tools!

Small does not mean lack of sophistication. In the early 1990's, 'nanomania' caught the world. People talked of tiny steam engines, electrostatic motors, and tiny robots cruising through blood vessels and doing repairs of defective parts of the body. Nanotechnology, the science of making miniature devices _,_ is still hot. Tiny hollow needles of carbon, known as buckytubes, are hailed as the nanoscale material of the future for electronics and catalysis.

The computer chips are getting smaller and smaller. We are always trying to build smaller things. From the electronic point of view, there are so many advantages in being small. Is this the reason behind nature's persistence with small organisms?

Can man ever hope to build a nanomachine that is smaller than a living cell with so many incredible capabilities? For that matter, we have even molecules, powered by chemical energy, inside our cells doing mechanical functions. Muscle contraction, which is the basis of all your movement, is made possible by the proteins called actin and myosin that slide past each other like tiny motors. Power for their action comes from ATP which, as I said earlier, is the energy quanta we get out our food when it reacts with oxygen we breathe.

I said that the energy production inside our cells occurs in the mitochondria. Electrons from food molecules are plucked and the energy of their movement down a gradient is used for generating the proton current through a molecular motor called ATP synthase, which is the actual location where ATP is synthesised. Molecules working like power factories!

In fact, all our cells have invariably one or more molecular pumps, which control the movement of atoms across cell membranes. The common example would be the sodium potassium pump on every cell membrane in our body.

The mobile cells in our body, like the red and white blood cells, can do so many functions at precise locations. One of the attractions of nanoscale devices is its application to medicine where tiny motors, can be despatched to cruise through blood vessels and repair defects or faults that develop in some diseases. That is already happening in our body. Isn't it?

White blood cells can precisely reach points of infection. The platelets can reach the precise points where blood is leaking so that the leak can be plugged. Is there a hope for science to get the better of nature? I know that man is only trying to supplement natural cellular technology but there is no escaping the fact that his solutions mimic that of nature. That is the point that interests me.

In fact, researchers are now looking into the possibility of using strands of DNA to create nanoscale constructions. Paul Alivisatos at University of California at Berkeley is hoping to create ultra small electronic circuits that self-assemble in a beaker on scaffolds of DNA. This only means that scientists are willing to take cues from the natural nanotechnology!

Man takes pride in his cityscapes and high-rise buildings. No other animal lives such a cosmopolitan life style. Is it true? Wait a minute. Some new evidence in the past few years has shattered this myth.

'Cityscapes' like ours have existed on earth for billion of years, built and populated by plain, humble bacteria, such as _E.coli_ and _Salmonella_ , wrote Andy Coghlan in an issue of New Scientist a few years ago. He calls it slime cities. More properly, they are known as biofilms or mucilages which we see everywhere. They can be seen with naked eye in water pipes, kitchens, as slippery and green coatings.

90% of all bacteria live in biofilms. Studies havr shown that biofilms are permeated at all levels by a network of channels through which water, bacterial garbage, nutrients, enzymes, metabolites and oxygen travel to and from **.** It appears that bacteria are not the only inhabitants of the Slime City. Fungi, algae and protozoa add a cosmopolitan look to it. Protozoa have been shown to hunt for bacteria just as large animals hunt down smaller prey!

Bio-films are less like colonies of self-serving automatons and more like cells of tissues of multicellular organisms. There is communication, cell co-operation, cell specialisation and a basic circulatory system as in plants or animals. For example, he says, the biofilms in cow's rumen contain five types of bacteria necessary to digest cellulose in a co-operative manner.

The inhabitants of these slime cities communicate by means of chemicals. Once inside this social network the individual bacteria no longer need to have tough cell walls. Therefore, made to shut down synthesis of proteins needed to make cell walls. This makes it difficult to kill them using antibiotics and chlorine-based disinfectants. This is because these agents generally work by targeting the cell walls and what can you do if there is no cell wall? The dwellers of these cityscapes need to contribute to making molecules needed for building the cityscape more firmly. It is a trade off between individual and collective needs that governs all good cities and societies!

If you didn't have mitochondria in your cells, you don't need oxygen because you can't use them anyway. In other words, you don't have to breathe. You can live a life of anaerobiosis, a life without oxygen. How do mitochondria help in our life as far as oxygen utilisation is concerned? How does the oxygen utilisation capacity help us?

Oxygen that you breathe is taken in through your lungs and passed on to individual cells in your body through transport molecules called haemoglobin present in red cells. Ultimately, this oxygen proceeds straight into the mitochondria because that is the only place oxygen is used. It is used for energy production out of your food molecules by a process called oxidative phosphorylation. Energy capture occurs in tiny quanta called ATP, which powers all biochemical reactions in your body.

I am going to talk about this mechanism of energy production in mitochondria now. The electrons captured from the food molecules flow into a chain of electron conductor molecules. The electron conductors act like a 'biological wire'. Movement of electrons from one point to another will be possible if the compound at the end of the wire is more avid for the electrons thereby exerting a pulling effect. The electron transport chain is organised such that the electron affinity of the components progressively increases. Oxygen is the find acceptor of electron because it has the highest electron affinity. Every physics student knows electron movement from one point to another is nothing but electrical energy. Human civilisation uses it for practically every single activity. Little did you know that the same form energy is being generated inside every form of life form for its own biological needs. How incredible?

Whether it was a McDonald's burger or a juicy steak, the same electron only provides the energy. A millionaire may be eating the choicest of foods. His ways of capturing energy from them will be the same as a poor man. It is rather disappointing that your body does not recognise the care you have taken in arranging your meal, the hefty bill you paid in the restaurants, or the time you spent in cooking it. Your body will treat it just the same way as a slice of bread. Metabolism is a great equaliser. In my view, it is a better equaliser than death because it shows the equality when you are alive. They say beauty is skin-deep. Food is taste bud deep.

Organisms differ in their food preferences. Many types of bacteria live on simple chemical elements like hydrogen sulphide, iron, and sulphur. They are the chemosynthetic bacteria. It is a bit disheartening that even these bacteria do the same electron transfer with their food. They shuttle the electrons from one atomic element to another in an oxidation-reduction reaction and the energy liberated during this reaction is used.

In fact, all the organisms do the same. Even plants use this electron flow strategy to harness sun's energy using the chlorophyll pigments. That is what happens during photosynthesis. The energy of sun is used to make organic compounds and this is the basis of all food on earth.

Will you please enlighten me as to how organisms such as microbes, plants, animals uniformly employ similar energy capture methods? Why does the human society rely so heavily on electronics for its high-tech life style? Whatever might be the primary mode of energy generation, whether it is hydro-electrical, coal-based, or nuclear, ultimately it is all transformed into electrical energy. Any gadget you can think of needs this electricity.

In certain cells of your body (like retina, red blood cells, cornea etc) and in some cells during oxygen shortage (in muscle cells during exercise) energy can be produced without oxygen. You get 18 times less energy because this process is inefficient when compared to oxygen-dependent mechanism. Oxygen utilisation dramatically increases the energy that we obtain from our food.

In the early earth, as I said some time ago, there was no oxygen. All primitive life forms that existed at that time were anaerobic. They were unable to produce abundant energy. Consequently, organisms had to remain small and unicellular. There was not enough energy to power the huge organisms. In a way, human race was unsophisticated to start with. Isn't it? The early human settlements were small. They couldn't really take off, in terms of technology, until they found the use of fuels like petrol & gas. Do you agree? Did you know that these fuels need oxygen to combust them just as in the case of food molecules? What an incredible repetition of motifs?

Appearance of oxygen on the planet paved the way for more efficient energy capture and the possibility of large quantities of energy generation. I described in an earlier chapter how, interestingly, organisms evolved to utilise the newly appeared oxygen. Such an organism was the mitochondrion. The capacity to make more energy out of the foods distinguished the 'mitochondrial organism' from the low-tech organisms, which used inefficient methods of energy capture. It must have been similar to the situation when man made to transition to electrical energy. People had only oil lamps prior to that. Once electricity appeared, people quickly adapted to use it. The organisms probably did a very similar thing. They learnt to use the oxygen technology. In fact, they forged a 'partnership' with the organism that could use oxygen, the way our companies agree to transfer the technology!

Tell me what would your company do if a critical technology is desperately needed and finds that another company has it already? Don't you think there will be some sort of technology transfer? Your company may buy the right to use it. Alternatively, you may buy the company itself and merge it with yours!

# 7. DEATH AS A CHANGE OF FORM

This chapter is about a theme that all of us find mystifying and frightening. I have tried to explore the concept of death and its implications to nature. Death is not what we think it is. I have tried to highlight the fact that we all have a very poor understanding of the phenomenon of death from a biological perspective.

Death is a part of the growth spectrum. Death is not an end in itself. It is just a step in the continuum of change.

Death in one form is the beginning of some other form. That is the essence of my thought.

I have tried to show the concept of death is applicable to a whole lot of things other than life forms. It is seen to happen in the case of even non-living systems such as organisations, civilisations, institutions etc. Death here is a change of form and structure. It is not an end.

When a bio-system dies, we say it is no more. When John dies, who ceases to exist? John is no more but the molecules and atoms that made John are still 'alive'. They continue the journey inside other microbial life forms that consumed John's dead body. The collection of molecules that was John does not exist as one unit any more. That is why he is unable to manifest the emergent properties of life that we called as John. The dispersed molecules obey the orderly influences of the new environment i.e., the body of the new organisms. They take part in the life functions of the new carrier.

We don't know why a precious life system is disbanded. We do not know why it is assembled in the first place.

One of the incredible facts of our life is the continuous death of our body cells day in and day out. Cells of your body keep dying all the time though you continue to live. Your blood cells such as the red and white cells die within a few days of their birth. Their birth and death are not synchronised to your own birth and death. The same can be said of your skin cells, gut cells etc. They all have a short life span. You may live 70 years but most of your cells don't even last for more that a few tens of days. The white blood cells die in approximately 15 days. The red cells live for about 120 days. The hair cells, the cells lining the gut and your skin cells live for 2-3 days only.

It is puzzling why cells of your body die before you. It is a wonder how you continue to live even though what was part of you has disappeared. It is true the dead cells are replaced by new ones. This means you are not the same you that you were yesterday. Doesn't that sound incredible?

For a moment it appears as if the cells have lived inside your body as free-living, independent organisms that died at the end of their life span! What does it mean to your own life and death? Did you weep over the death of your cells? May be, I guess you didn't know a part of you keeps dying on a continuous basis. You don't know that it keeps happening all the time. Did you?

For a country, it is not important whether it is John or Jones who does a job. The job needs to be done. It does not matter by whom. The collective action of all individuals makes the country. The problem will arise when the population growth does not keep pace with death rate. Such scenarios may arise as we see in the western world where the old live longer and the birth rate is falling. Or, it can arise locally due to some natural disasters like epidemics or war that wipes away significant numbers of people.

That is the same case for an organism too. The biochemical action is what matters and not whether it was done by the same cell or molecule. The sum total of all biochemical and cellular actions has to be maintained at an acceptable level for survival to be possible. This is very well achieved by new cells that replace the dead ones. This is all done so smoothly and automatically that you do not even know it.

I said that our cells continue to die on a daily basis irrespective of whether you are living or not. This by itself is a shocker. What I also want to add now is another shocker: even molecules keep dying!

Do we all continue to hold onto the same set of molecules that we received at birth? That is far from true. We do not retain the same molecules even for a short time, let alone until our death. The molecules of our body have their own life spans. In other words, they 'die' at the end of a fixed amount of time, which is variable depending on the molecule.

Studies with radioisotope-labelled molecules have changed our concept of the longevity of molecules in bio-systems. The principle of these studies is to administer a radioisotope-tagged molecule to an individual. Then his body is checked at periodic intervals for the quantity of radioisotope-tagged molecule remaining in the body. It is found that the concentration of the radioisotope-tagged molecule steadily decreases over time. This is because they are lost in the excretions or simply broken down into other forms.

New molecules are synthesised to replace the lost ones. The body continues to have the roughly the same number of molecules but they are not the same ones. It is exactly like what happens with respect to the population of a country. The population of a country may remain the same but the individuals are not going to be the same all the time. People die all the time. The newly born babies replace the dead. The total number of individuals tends to remain the same. Do you see what I mean?

Protein molecules in the liver have a life span of about 10 days. Hormone proteins in the blood have a very short life span of about a few minutes only. Proteins in the muscles live for about 180 days! They are the longest-living molecules inside our body. The turnover phenomenon applies to every molecule in our body, including water molecules! Even water gets replaced! Don't you keep drinking new water every day while also losing water as urine and sweat!

It has been calculated that on an average all the molecules in our body are replaced once every 23 days. This means you change chemically every 23 days. A new person is born every 23 days though we keep claiming that we live for 60 years and 70 years and things like that.

The molecular turnover is not only seen at the level of the individual organism. Living matter of the entire biosphere can be renovated every 8 years on an average. The matter of land plants is renewed once every 14 years. The entire mass of the living matter of the ocean alone can be replaced in 33 days. The plants of the sea have their molecules turned over once every day.

Atmospheric oxygen is replaced in several thousand years whereas carbon di oxide once every 6.3 years. The global cycles of nitrogen, carbon, and phosphorus last millions of years.

The molecular jugglery is an inevitable part of the existence of living systems. The amino acids that come into your body today may have been a part of a chicken, goat, or pig yesterday! Tomorrow it will be temporary property of lowly microbes or other animals!

Why does an entity change form and structure every now and then? Growth and death both involve change of form. How do you distinguish between both? Is death a part of the growth process?

The life of subatomic particle ends when it forms an atom. The life of an atom ends when it forms a molecule by joining with other atoms. The 'birth' of a molecule is the 'death' for the atom!

I think the human body offers an ultimate example of the growth process. Right from the stage of conception, the human foetus shows what growth and change is all about. You see that growth and death go hand in hand. Cells of the growing baby continually die, to be replaced by new ones. The cells are genetically pre-programmed to die after a definite period. They call it 'Apoptosis'. The baby goes through continuous change in its appearance right until its death. There is hardly any resemblance in the appearance of a fully-grown adult and the baby he or she was, not long ago. Yet, both are one and the same. Here the death of cells and change of appearance was not called as death. It is only growth. When does it become death then?

When the person ceases to function as a whole, he is said to have died. As a growing baby, when his cells kept dying around, he still had that continuity of function as a whole unit, capable of exchanging matter with the environment. From the thermodynamic point of view, growth is an uphill task. You have to work against the second law of thermodynamics in order to prevent equilibrium from setting in. The state of equilibrium is that state in which a system is most stable but least useful. In the state of equilibrium, nothing useful happens. Reactions simply go forward and backward without any benefit to the system. A gets converted to B, and B gets converted to A. This happens forever. What use can it be to anything?

Growth involves getting B to change to C. It also involves feeding in more of A to push the reaction forward. When death has occurred, they don't happen. That is the difference between growth and death. By changing to C, new changes are brought about in form and function, which may not constitute death. However, this can't go on forever. Systems invariably reach a point when they make that quantum jump into death. We see that in human lives. We defy the second law of thermodynamics by eating food and excreting. This exchange of matter with the environment makes us open systems capable of avoiding meaningless reversible reactions. We are able to direct the growth in the forward direction like water flowing in a tap.

This probably applies to all growing systems whether it is a life system, a civilisation, or an organisation. A system in equilibrium would be allowing water to flow in both directions, which is why I said it is useless. In the case of biological systems, this is avoided by feeding in new matter. In the case of non-living systems, the addition should come in the form of creative ideas and information that help prevent sloppiness and inefficiency. The ideas should give a sense of direction to the growth. That is where leaders and statesmen come useful for nations. They act as 'Social Catalysts' mediating the process of change. A society crumbles when it can't find them.

It is interesting to note that you can't go on living despite your readiness to eat and excrete. Errors start creeping in. Moreover, accumulation of errors interferes with the vital functions necessary to defy the second law. If only they don't happen, we would all be alive forever, and so will be all of those who were born millions of years ago. This applies to all animals too.

'Programmed cell death', a phenomenon that has caught the fascination of Cell biologists in the last couple of decades. In simple terms, it means our body cells have genes that control when they are going to die. No matter how much nutrients you give them, they will die. They are programmed to self-destroy. We have come to accept that if a biological phenomenon has been evolutionarily selected then it must have some survival value. I know it is getting a bit paradoxical here because I am saying that death has survival value. I guess there is no confusion if we clearly understand that death of individual organisms is of survival value to the species.

Oswald Spengler, author of ' _The decline of the West'_ believed that civilisations are born, ripen and die like living beings. In ' _A Study of History'_ , Arnold Toynbee says civilisations collapse when the genius of a creative minority has gone.

Where is Indus valley civilisation now? Where are the Egyptian and Roman, civilisations now? They are not present today in the same form they had existed in the past. They have been transformed into the modern societies of today. This does not mean that these civilisations have disappeared without trace. They are still there but in a different form.

Great men don't live forever but their teachings remain. The knowledge they left behind continues its journey. The social knowledge gets to be transmitted down the generations just as gametes transmit hereditary information.

Whatever little evolutionary development occurred in an organism is passed on to the off springs in the form of the DNA contained in the germ cells. Evolution is a chain linked together by the gametes. The social knowledge behaves much the same way. It can be transmitted.

Memory is the relic of our experiences. They live after the experience is over. They keep up the continuity without which we would not be able to remember who we are every moment.

All systems leave behind relics to show that they were there not long ago. The Cosmos is said to be permeated by energy radiation with a value of 3? Kelvin. It is said that it is the relic of the Big Bang, the infinitely powerful explosion that triggered the universe into being.

Meteorites are remnants of processes that went on before the Solar system existed. We can derive a lot of information about what went on around that time by studying them.

Fossils are evidence of ancient life. We know what they were. Even the coal and oil are one form of fossil because they too formed out of organisms that lived in the past.

Archaeological remains help us peep into the past. I wonder why systems always leave behind a trail. Is it a part of their existence?

# 8. THE BRAINLESS TEACHER

Man is always looking for an idea or two to solve some of his problems. Quite often he struggles to find a way out of his problems. Occasionally, he gives up. Surprisingly, he is increasingly turning to other systems in nature to see how they have solved the same or similar problem. It is puzzling that the systems he looks up for help don't have a brain. Worse still, some systems don't even live.

Unilever, one of the largest consumer goods companies in the world, had placed an advertisement in a science magazine some years ago, calling for applications from adaptive computation researchers with experience in one or more of the following: neuro-fuzzy systems, neural networks, evolutionary systems, adaptive agents, genetic algorithms, landscapes or machine learning. Why would a manufacturing and marketing company need people with knowledge of evolutionary systems, adaptive agents & genetic algorithms? What is the use of all these biological concepts in an industrial set up?

The truth is even financial institutions have learnt to use the biological rules of natural selection, sexual reproduction and mutation, upon which genetic algorithm computer models are based. They use it to manage billions of pounds of investments. Wall Street firms have used genetic algorithms to invest money in stock markets. Richard Bauer, a business professor at St.Mary's University of San Antonio in Texas, has even written a book ' _Genetic algorithms and investment strategies'_ _!_

It all started in the 1960's when John Holland, then working at the University of Michigan, carried out research on what was to become genetic algorithm. He believed and showed that similar techniques to those observed in Darwinian evolution could be used to solve problems very different from surviving on planet earth.

Genetic evolution offers a life system the best chance of survival by shuffling, mutating or exchanging gene characteristics. If a life system had a string of characteristics A to Z, it can change its characteristics by exchanging some of the characteristics with its mate during reproduction. It can also undergo mutation, which changes the gene characteristics at one or more points. If some of the characteristics are more attractive then organisms with such characteristics are selected. That is they survive better. Ultimately, a successful life system may have a set of characteristics, which has been arrived at by selection, exchange and mutation.

What Holland believed was these principles should be applicable to other systems as well. The other systems could be many other things. He considered genetic algorithm as an adaptive search towards optimisation.

The whole point of all this discussion is the simple fact that we have only a limited capacity to use the brainpower to solve problems. We need to find solutions by learning from other systems in spite of the fact that those systems use those solutions for totally different purposes. This is a clear sign that man has always endorsed the view that all systems are alike in their functional & structural motifs. Therefore, if a solution is found in nature it should be possible to find similar solutions in other systems being employed for a similar purpose. It is a question of looking.

I showed how genetic principles help man to solve problems not directly related to them. Here I would like to bring up another issue that I find worth pointing out. We all know that one of the high points of scientific advances of the human race is the ability to manipulate genes, commonly called as 'genetic engineering'. Genetic engineering has fascinated man ever since it came into the scene in the 1970s. Common man has always shown awe and disbelief at what genetic engineering can do. He sees it as something approaching the domain of 'God'. Genetic engineering has always attracted public attention and that is reflected in the media coverage it gets.

Modern medicine has benefited greatly from the potentials of genetic engineering. People still talk of grand therapeutic possibilities that are in the offing. Surely, man's scientific abilities have touched the heights of success with genetic engineering. Would it surprise you if somebody like me told you that genetic engineering has been happening on the earth, unaided by man, since the origin of life about 3 billion years ago! Living organisms have always modified their genetic material by a number of mechanisms involving a number of strategies. We human beings also do that during our reproduction.

Meiosis, the cell division involving gametes, incorporates exchange of bits of genetic material between the mother and the father cells.

Bacteria can take up pieces of DNA from the surrounding environment. This free DNA comes from the disintegrated, dead bacteria. This is called Transformation.

Bacteria also can acquire new genetic capabilities from other fellow bacteria. This occurs in situations such as Drug resistance. Some bacteria are resistant to the antibiotics we use while others are not. Resistance to medicinal drugs is a question of survival to the bacteria. As I said before, antibiotics are fungal compounds and resistance to them is bacteria's counter-offensive strategy to them. Bacterial expertise to beating the antibiotics occurs in the form of a tiny segment of DNA-encoded information. This DNA piece can be freely transferred across bacteria, a process much similar to our own genetic engineering.

In fact, our technology of genetic engineering was made possible by learning from the microbes how to manipulate the DNA. The single most important tool in Genetic engineering is the enzyme called Restriction endonuclease, which helps cut and paste pieces of DNA as if they are 'molecular scissors'. This enzyme comes from the bacteria. Bacteria make them for manipulating their DNA as I just described a little while ago. We have literally infringed on the technological expertise of bacteria. We use the enzymes obtained from the bacteria. We use them as they are.

In addition to using the tools of bacteria, we also use the bacteria as our production factories. We attach pieces of DNA coding for important human molecules and make the bacteria to manufacture them in large quantities. It is a bit disheartening to know that one of the landmark advances of the human race is not unique to man at all. The technology has been around for as long as three billions of years! Our practice of genetic engineering came about based on principles of genetics we learnt from nature. Molecular biology, the hottest branch of biology, is all about understanding the tricks of genetics as found in nature.

Let me move on to another topic. I will show you now how architects are taking cues from the lowly termites as to the best way of designing big buildings.

An office building and a termite mound may seem to have little in common. Just like humans, termites prefer to work in a controlled climate. The compass termites are found in Western Australia. They live in an environment in which the external temperature can vary between 3 degrees centigrade and 42 degrees centigrade, in winter through summer. Day or night, winter or summer, these termites maintain the temperature to within one degree of 31 degrees centigrade inside their mounds! We need to air condition our offices to maintain such tightly controlled temperatures!

There is some amount of evidence gathering up, which suggests that it is a bit unhealthy to remain long hours in air-conditioned buildings. According to a 1992 report of the Health & Safety Executive in U.K, up to 55% of people working in air-conditioned offices in Britain are affected by the so-called 'sick building syndrome'.

This is characterised by sore throats, eye irritation, headaches, and lethargy. Ozone, build up of dust mites and consequent allergies, poor lighting leading to headaches are some of the causes which have been suggested to be responsible for sick building syndrome. Though there is no general agreement on prevalence and causes of sick building syndrome, more architects now consider naturally ventilated building as safe and desirable. What is more they look up to the termites for design of office blocks!

Termites regulate the temperature of their nests by control of airflow through them. Blocking and un-blocking of channels help termites regulate airflow. Architects are taking cues from termite-inspired ventilation systems! Engineers have built computer models of the building structures that can simulate the effects of small changes in each of the factors, including the weather that affects airflow through a building. However, the computer simulations are not powerful enough to model the airflow through the shape of some rooms. Obviously, if the predictions are inaccurate, there is a danger of over heating or under heating. Paul Lyndon, at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge, has developed a scale model using a technique called the saline fluid model test, which designers can use to cross check the computer predictions. How do these lowly termites manage without all predictive capabilities like ours? It is 'insulting' that we should learn a few tips from the termites. Should man accept the truth that he is just another living species on earth and nothing more? If one takes the view that man is special and is the centre of the earth then be prepared to get insulted!

Man is a particularly privileged animal. If only he is interested, he has limitless opportunities to learn from nature. His intelligence makes him a good learner fortunately.

The US Navy, as any other country's Navy, is interested in building a submarine that can remain clandestine in its operations. They hope to come up with highly sensitive processing software so that information can be obtained from low amplitude pulses under water. It would also help the Navy if they can find a way of searching for and disarming underwater mines. Clearing underwater mines from the cluttered, turbid waters is so difficult that the navy considers it easy to avoid mine-infested coastal waters altogether instead of trying to clear it. During the 1991 Gulf war, the Allied forces ruled out a marine invasion of Kuwait because the coastal waters could not be adequately cleared of the mines. The resolution of most sonar systems is too poor to identify many underwater mines, which can be less than a metre across. Sound waves are distorted and the signals are reflected many times between the sea floor and the surface. Sound waves can be bent by turbulence, changes in temperature and salinity. That is why the Navy is interested in developing an effective way of spotting the underwater mines.

The US Navy is now studying the Dolphin's sonar system with a view to characterise their underwater signals. The dolphin can pick fish the size of a golf ball even when it is 70 meters away in utter darkness and even when water is cluttered with debris. The Dolphin can listen, plunge into the muck and come up with its target. How does a dolphin pick and separate reflected sound from its prey and the ocean floor or its contents?

Dolphins send out narrow beams of sound, which they generate by blowing air back and forth through a set of nasal passages. It can direct the sound where it likes by focusing the sound into a beam with a fat-filled cavity in the dolphin's head called the melon. The dolphin does not waste energy elsewhere as it directs more intense sounds on interesting targets by putting out a narrow beam. Probably to save energy the dolphins don't send out sound continuously but as a series of short pulses or 'clicks', in a frequency range between 20,000-120,000 cycles per second, which is beyond the hearing range of the human ear. Listening for echoes needs fancy equipment for the dolphins. The dolphins selectively listen to the echoes that they want to hear by using its jaws. There is a thin acoustic window in the lower jaw of the dolphin, a region where the bones are thinner and transparent to sound. The sound then follows a fat-filled canal to the inner ear.

Patrick Moore of the Naval Command, Control and Ocean Surveillance Centre in San Diego is involved in studying the dolphin's ability to pick & identify objects under water. The U. S. Navy hired Jim Kadtke, a theoretical physicist at the University of California at San Diego, to crack the Dolphin's secrets. A physicist to study mammalian biology! What can you do if your object of study employs such hi-tech physics? Kadtke, an expert in Chaos theory, was expected to apply his mathematical methods to search for hidden order in the routine clicks of dolphins. It seems that the key to understanding the dolphin lies in the weird and sophisticated mathematics of non-linear dynamics and Chaos theory. The US Navy is hoping to mimic the dolphin's strategy though in an elementary way! With some more help from mathematicians, the US Navy will one day be able to apply what it has learnt.

The eye of the lobster is the inspiration for a remarkable X-ray telescope being developed by astronomers from Britain, Australia and the U.S. The lobster eye teams come from the University of Leicester and Melbourne, Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and the Goddard Space Flight Centre in Green Belt, Maryland. The lobster eye telescope will look for soft X Rays in the energy range 0.1 to 3.5 Kilo electron volts. X-ray binary stars in our galaxy and the violent nuclei of active galaxies mostly produce these X-rays. The advantage of the lobster eye telescope is that it will enable us to observe a quarter of the sky at any given time, allowing surveys to be done in weeks that at present take years to complete. The X ray telescopes of today have a small field of view in front of it. The eyes of lobsters have thousands of square tubes with smooth inner walls that reflect light onto the retina. Roger Angel of the University of Arizona, in 1978, thought the lobster eye design could be copied to make better X-ray telescopes. This design has been adopted with great technical difficulties in manufacturing and was on one of the NASA's small explorer satellites in 2001.

A composite ceramic material inspired by the humble snail's shell could reduce pollution from jet engines and gas turbine generators. Bill Clegg and his team at the University of Cambridge's Department of Materials Science realised that the shells of molluscs such as clams and snails are composed of a very brittle material, crystalline calcium bicarbonate. The shells are made tougher by alternating layers of the carbonate with thin layers of protein. The material should be ideal for components such as turbine blades, which have to work under stress at very high temperatures. Conventional turbine blades are made of metal alloys. At high temperatures of 1800-1900 degrees centigrade, the nitrogen and oxygen in the air combine to form polluting nitrogen oxides. With turbine blades made out of the new composite material, there would be no need for cooling the air, so nitrogen oxides would not be formed this way.

The mathematicians are helping biologists to understand how insects control the movements of their many legs. This could allow scientists to design better insect-like robots. Scientists now believe that the rhythms behind insect gaits are similar to the mathematical patterns generated by symmetric networks of oscillators, such as weights on interconnected springs. How does the simple nervous system of an insect control complex movement? This knowledge can enable engineers to use the same ideas to control walking, multi-legged robots.

Conventional vehicles are not suitable for tasks such as de-commissioning a nuclear power station, or surveying the surface of Mars. Robots with legs are an attractive option because they can move across very uneven terrain. Subramanian Venkatraman of the Jet Propulsion laboratory and the California Institute of Technology designed a hexapodal robot that is about 36 cm long. He is exploring the possibility of using a complex system of coupled oscillators to co-ordinate the stepping movements of this mechanical cockroach. Daniel Koditschek and colleagues at the University of Michigan have built robots that can juggle balls, a task of similar complexity to walking!

Computer scientists have always been interested in computers that can do many tasks simultaneously. This is certainly better than computers that do one task at a time in a queue. Many types of parallel processing computers have been attempted so far.

Researchers at the University of Liverpool are now creating a computational version of the liver, which they hope will be the inspiration for more efficient parallel processing, as well as adaptive computer systems. Why have they chosen liver as a model of parallel processing? Because, liver is so adaptable and carries out so many tasks simultaneously like secretion of bile, detoxification, biosynthesis of tens of proteins, glucose, storage of glucose etc. How does the liver cell handle data reaching it, in order to initiate specific tasks? Ray Paton of Liverpool University's Computer Science Department thinks that this kind of information processing system that is capable of dealing with the kinds of fuzzy data that today's computers struggle to deal with. It should help in image recognition or spotting trends in huge databases as well as leading to more efficient operating systems for parallel processing machines.

Animals living in freezing climatic conditions are evolutionarily adapted to the extremely low temperatures. The wood frog, found in Canadian ponds, literally is frozen. Its blood freezes and so is its body. As the temperature becomes warm in spring the ice melt from its veins, the heart begins to beat. Within a day of thawing, it is ready to mate. We human beings never can tolerate freezing of our tissues. We are not adapted to it biologically. We, instead, use heating and clothes to prevent freezing.

As we all know we find perishable foods last longer if you put them away in our fridges or freezers. That is because the low temperature slows enzymes that would otherwise have degraded the foods. That is why the Astronauts who will be sent to faraway stars and planets will have to be frozen so that their body doesn't undergo ageing and degradation. Once they reach the destination they can be thawed back to life! However, this is all science fiction now.

Man faces the need for preservation of tissues & cells for medical reasons. Freezing organs like liver or kidney for long periods can help the science of organ transplantation. Unfortunately, these organs last only a few hours in the current forms of preservation. Sperm banks store sperm in liquid nitrogen at -196? C. Freezing kills a third of cells. Embryos have been frozen successfully. Cancer patients have their own bone marrow frozen for replacing cells destroyed during radiation or chemotherapy. If only freezing whole human beings was possible that would make it possible for somebody to go to a frozen state on natural death and get thawed back to life when medical technology is ready to assist him for another life! This is pure science fiction stuff again.

Freezing damages human cells because the growing ice crystals cut and damage cell membranes. Kenneth Storely of Carlton University in Ottawa and others have been studying fish and frogs with a view to learn how they tolerate freezing and how this knowledge can help us preserve our cells and tissues for medical purposes. Antarctic fish keep the ice crystals from forming by the use of a simple sugar coated protein called the anti-freeze protein. This protein lowers the freezing temperature of blood. In other words, in presence of anti-freeze molecules it takes lower temperatures than otherwise to freeze fish's blood. The wood frogs adopt a different tactic. They increase glucose concentration in their bloods and their cells when temperatures are lowering. This prevents the dehydration of cells normally seen during freezing. Some animals use glycerol for the same purpose. Arctic brine shrimp and many cold-tolerant insects use a sugar called trehalose, which is even better at lowering freezing temperature and stopping dehydration than glycerol or glucose.

Lots of research is going on to take cues from the animal world as to how human tissues can be stored for long-term medical use. We are becoming better cryogenic experts, thanks to the fish and frogs and insects!

_Ormia ochracea_ is a parasitic fly. Its larvae are known to parasitize crickets. _O. Ochracea_ is able to listen to chirps and clicks the crickets make to communicate with their mates. On locating the crickets these flies zoom in on them and deposit their larvae on the cricket's back, which will then consume the cricket alive. Most animals are acoustic experts. They have to be that way because in the cold dark nights sound is the only way to communicate. They have to work out where the sound came from by calculating the difference between the arrival times of sounds at each ear. As far as we are concerned, our scientific theories require the ears to be several centimetres apart for this to work. How can a fly do this when its head is only a few millimetres wide? Ron Hoy, a Professor of Neurobiology and Behaviour at Cornell University in New York, is studying the hearing mechanism of _O. Ochracea_. He collaborates with Ron Miles, a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Binghamton University in New York and Daniel Robert of the University of Zurich. They believe that by mimicking the exquisite design of the fly's hearing apparatus they will be able to build a hearing aid that works dramatically better than those available today!

Mimicking natural molecules and processes is a perennial obsession for chemists. Steven Zimmerman and his colleagues at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have managed to make a hexagonal molecule build itself, by 'stealing' some tricks from nature. They have managed to make a simple viral coat protein assemble itself though, in nature, things are more complex.

For over half a century chemists have been trying to make cellulose, which is the world's most abundant natural polymer. Cellulose is nature's pre-stressed concrete and researchers in Japan's Kyoto University have synthesised it in the lab, which should allow than to make a range of cellulose based designer polymers.

Science has seen certain fundamental principles in physics discovered based on mathematical predictions. It is curious that mathematical ideas relate to the real world. Mathematicians also borrow ideas from one field to help them describe concepts in another. When chaos theory was developed some of the ideas needed to explain it were borrowed from a branch of mathematics dealing with information and how to transmit it. At that time nobody had any idea that chaos could be used to communicate. Now physicists have already demonstrated the feasibility of communicating with chaos. How curious!

It is believed that the brain may hold information and transmit it through the nervous system by using chaos to encode and transmit data. Paul Rapp, a neurophysiologist at the Medical college of Pennsylvania says that mathematical models of the way neurones work can exhibit chaotic behaviour. Steven Schiff, a neurosurgeon at the Children's National Medical Centre in Washington, D.C, has shown that the electrical signals in the spinal cord and the brain sometimes exhibit patterns that are similar to those of chaotic attractors. If and when this neural code is cracked it would be possible to restore lost functions in the brain, by generating commands outside the body in a way the brain will understand. As of today, there isn't a way of doing it now. How can an idea in mathematics have potential applications in the real world? Scientists in U.S are further using this principle to develop chaotic transmitters for more efficient and reliable radio broadcasts!

# 9. THE SIMILARITIES EXPLAINED

Man would never easily accept the fact that he is not special. As I have repeatedly pointed out, we do things the same way as other systems. Science capability does not seem to make a difference. This might be difficult to swallow but, as always, truth is bitter.

More than belittling man, the idea of this book is to let the readers know nature's way of doing things is as sophisticated as our own and I am just marvelling at nature's creations.

Man has an innate sense of art. We look for patterns & aesthetics in every thing. Our brains are designed to pick out patterns & meanings underlying the incredible maze of nature. Man has used science to understand the complexities of the world and construct simple laws to help explain what he has observed. Physics has helped to describe the infinities of the universe with simple mathematical laws proposed by Einstein, Schrodinger, Newton and other great scientists. In other words, the best of the human minds have always acted on the tacit assumption that systems are alike and should come under the same governing principles. The fact that science can compress truth, breaking down systemic barriers, means that entities are related to one another in the way they function.

In the biological world, it is becoming clear that just one principle sweeps across everything. It is the Darwin's theory of natural selection. It succeeded in explaining how organisms evolved to fit their environment, irrespective of what organism it is. The motif of survival of the fittest is all there, whether it is a unicellular organism like bacteria or huge creatures like us! What is more, people increasingly see Darwin's principles holding well in other systems as well. Gerald Edelman claimed that brain development involves Darwinian schemes operating amongst the neurones! Daniel Dennet, in his book, _'Darwin's dangerous idea: evolution and meanings of life',_ thinks the cherished virtues of humanity, like ethics and morality, are the outcomes of Darwinian evolution.

Darwin's all-pervasive influence extends into the social domain of man as well. In my opinion, nothing escapes the clutches of fitness rating in our social life.

Every organisation is interested in employing the fittest person amongst the applicants. A Company manufacturing a commodity has no chance of remaining in business unless its product is good enough to compete with products of other companies. If you take science, or philosophy, the fittest theory or hypothesis alone survives, the rest falling off like extinct species. This applies to the hypothesis of my book as well.

In his book, _'Consilience'_ , E.O.Wilson announces a new age of synthesis based on reduction and causal chains. He takes his title from the 19th century philosopher William Whewell, who believed that 'the consilience of inductions takes place when an induction, obtained from one class of facts, coincides with an induction, obtained from another different class'. Wilson's sub-title for the theme is 'The Unity of knowledge', a universal causal interlocking of humanities and science. For Wilson there is only one class of explanation. It is the perception of a seamless web of cause and effect.

The point I am driving at is the fact that nature's ways of doing things can be represented by a handful of motifs. The success of a few physical laws and biological theories in describing nature at different levels of organisation bears testimony to this truth considering the infinite diversity that exists out there. Man has always believed in simplifying our understanding of complexities of nature and that is the essence of science. In my eyes it looks like man has always hoped to find connecting similarities between systems that will help the simplification of knowledge about them.

In the previous chapter, I pointed out many situations where man has turned to other systems to find answers to his problems. What do you make of that? In medical research much of the beginnings are made with studies on animals such as rats, mice and rabbits, which are unlike us in many ways. Why do you use them as 'guinea pigs'? Because you know that deep down, they have a similar metabolism and if it works there, it should work here too! Researchers also use isolated cells for doing their experiments. People work with isolated molecules too.

Many of the modern researchers come up with hypotheses and theories based on their observations made on a tiny part of the whole. It is an isolated molecule, a cell or just one species. For example, support for a theory such as natural selection of groups as a whole, as if they were super organisms, is made based on observations made on just one or two species. It is quite commonplace in science to find such things. Obviously, such claims will form the focus for further testing on other species until it is credited or discredited. The point here is the researcher who comes out with the original proposal has a gut feeling that there is a possibility that his observation will hold good for the system at large or even other systems. In most cases, the theories succeed. For instance, we saw how Darwinian principles come out clean when you look at systems other than individual life forms. There are so many other examples where big and fundamental truths began as simple observations on a tiny fragment of nature.

Physicists have tried to find out why galaxies cluster together in filaments, which is referred to as the 'cosmic strings'. How can you know about the early events in the origin of the universe, which happened about 15 billion years ago?

One way is to recreate the processes that could have led to the formation of cosmic strings. You can't obviously do it inside a lab. As usual, the alternative would be to find a scaled down version of the process or turn to another system. That is what physicists have managed to do. They chose to look at a system that shares mathematical characteristics with the early universe, though it is physically very different. It is the super fluid helium contained in a beaker! Why would some body want to deduce the processes of early universe by looking into a beaker?

Super fluid helium and liquid crystals can undergo phase transitions abruptly, which transform the liquids into a different state. In super fluid helium, liquid crystals and the early universe, these phase transitions convert the system from a symmetrical state to one that is less symmetrical, a process called symmetry breaking. Wojciech Zurek, a physicist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico found, in 1985, that the mathematical theory that described the formation of cosmic strings in the early universe applied equally well to the formation of topological defects in super fluid helium, as it cooled through the transition from the normal liquid state to its super fluid state. The difference between normal liquid state and the super fluid state is that atomic motions become coherent in the super fluid state. Different parts of the super fluid choose to move in different directions as the liquid cools through the transition and this generates topological defects. Little whirlpools, rotating vortices, are created with a tiny thread of normal, non-super fluid helium at their centre. Zurek's theory says that the lines of such vortices are the cosmic strings in the universe.

A number of researchers have tried to create the above said experimental situation and it is still a long way to go before we can 'prove' that galaxies were strung across the sky by cosmic strings. My point is how readily man, especially scientists, who are the torchbearers of human knowledge, has accepted the fact that the mechanisms of the universe as a whole could be found at such low levels of organisation.

Are there any scientific theories that explain why systems are similar? Is there any mathematical framework, which can account for this phenomenon?

There is indeed a recognised concept called 'fractal geometry' which goes as far as suggesting that systems are self-similar as you go up or down the scale. This idea emerged from Benoit Mandelbrot, then a researcher at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Centre. What fractal geometry means is very simple, yet profound. Basically, it started off as a means of describing irregular structures in our world like clouds, mountains, coastlines, craters, cauliflower, ocean waves, glaciers, blood vessels, trees etc. As we all know, conventional geometry is useful for neat structures like triangles, squares, circles and rectangles but it cannot help study irregular structures. There had to be a way of describing them in a mathematical way and that is where fractal geometry fitted in.

'Fractal' literally means a 'broken stone'. If you look at a stone, it is irregular. If you break a bit of it and examine, it looks similar to the whole stone though only smaller. In other words, as you go up or down the scale the features of the stone (or any irregular structure) will remain the same. This is called scale-invariance.

Another example is a tree. Every branch of the tree is exactly similar to the whole tree except in its size. The branching structure and the leaves are alike in a scale-invariant way. The features are self-similar if you look at the whole tree as a system, or if you care to look at the branches as separate systems.

The science of fractals is meant to describe the physical features of the systems. I have found that fractal concepts can be extended to the functional domain of the systems as well. The same themes of patterns, organisation and behaviour are evident at any level of nature's hierarchy you care to look at. It is quite apparent that nature is organised in a hierarchy beginning at the lower extreme with sub-atomic particles and going through the level of atoms, molecules, cells, organs, organisms, societies, planets, stars, galaxies and ending with the universe. What I am trying to say is that if you find certain features at one level, they will be seen at any level of this hierarchy.

Let me illustrate it with a simple example that I have mentioned in one of the earlier chapters. A nation is a cluster of diverse societies. It has certain structural and functional motifs such as a territory, a head of state, a government, a set of ministers, a set of departments to take care of different functions, a way of communication, defence etc. If you look at any institution within a country, such as an educational or financial institution or anything for that matter, it will have the same features too. It will have a, head, a manager, who is equivalent to the head of state, different departments within the office taking care of different functions like ministers in a government etc. It is just a difference of size and scale.

For that matter, a human body has all the characteristics of a human society. As I said, an organism is a 'society of cells'. It has its leader in the form of the brain. It has several organs to take care of functions performed by different departments in our government. It has a boundary. It defends itself. All features that you saw in a huge social organisation are present here too.

Surprisingly, a simple cell in your body has identical features too. It has a nucleus to take care of its managerial functions, a power plant in the form of mitochondria, a recycling plant in the form of lysosomes, a manufacturing plant in the form of ribosomes, a barrier in the form of a cell wall, a complex information department in the form of messenger molecules. As I said before, it is a miniature version of any other human organisation. The fractal concepts perfectly fit in here.

Every system needs to find effective ways of existing in the universe. As I have pointed out in the previous chapters, the needs of even dissimilar systems are alike. Surprisingly, their solutions to solving their needs are strikingly similar, irrespective of the nature of the system. Whether the system is of the living or non-living status does not seem to matter. Most bafflingly, the presence or absence of a brain does not matter either!

Is intelligence a totally new phenomenon for our earth that coincided with the emergence of man? Did the evolution of brain make any difference to a system as far as its capability to organise itself and function intelligently? If non-biological systems exhibit phenomena not entirely unlike that of life forms, especially a thinking organism like us, how do you interpret it?

It could well be that every action that a system performs is a result of order that emerges in a complex system. The order could be an inescapable result of complexity. What happens in an orderly state within a system could well be identical to any other system. Order is a physical state. The word order implies coherence between components of a system. A system, arising as a result of aggregation of its constituents, behaves in a different way from a simple sum of its constituents. Left alone the constituents of a system can behave, as they like. Each constituent member of a system, until they form a system, does things in a haphazard manner with no correlation to other constituent members. However, once a system is organised, the complexity that arises ensures order within the system, which means that the constituent members act in a co-operative manner. Current complexity theories stress the fact that order that arises in a system is a property of systems irrespective of the nature of the system.

There are some extremely interesting observations, which seem to support my hypothesis that organisational and functional motifs are repeated again and again in totally dissimilar systems for some strange reasons.

Leo Kadanoff of the University of Chicago observed 3 decades ago that, in many dissimilar systems, the interactions between domains or molecules extend only over a short range, from one unit to its closest neighbours. These interactions manage to link up with one another and propagate order all the way across the system in the 'critical state'. According to Kandanoff, it is a peculiar linking up that is important and not the details of the interactions themselves. To put it in another way, details of the particular system are obliterated at the critical point in a universal organisation. It does not matter if they are molecules, atoms, electron spins or magnets. It is not what is interacting that is important. The connectivity between interacting entities is crucial in the critical state.

Why do things that appear to have little in common organise themselves according to the same rules? Under close inspection, the organisation of all these critical states turns out to be, mathematically identical and not just qualitatively! That is amazing! In other words, it looks like the critical state is characterised by a mysterious, mathematical self-similarity. Now we find that fractal self-similarity principle and the mathematical self-similarity of the critical state adding further weight to my observations of similarities in structural and functional themes of diverse systems.

What is a critical state? The critical state is that point when a system is poised to make the transition from one state to another. Physicists refer to a change from one state to another as phase transition. It may be a bar of iron that exists in between its magnetic and non-magnetic states. It may be water that is caught at the edge of its transition from the liquid to vapour phase. It may be a superconductor that is just at the dividing line between its superconductivity state and one that is not. It is said that it can be any system that you can think of. If so, would that explain my observations of repetitiveness of motifs in nature?

Let us see what we know about the critical state of iron between its magnetic and non-magnetic state. A bar of iron is made up of millions of microscopic domains, each one of them a tiny magnet. These domains will be aligned to one another in the magnetic state. However, at the critical state, which is the border between the magnetic and non-magnetic state, the domains align with one another only in localised clumps that all point in different directions. Though outwardly it looks like a random organisation, deep inside there is something astonishingly beautiful. The fractal self-similarity is seen here. Cut out a small piece of the iron; magnify it and you find that it is indistinguishable from the whole!

It is said that even abstract mathematical models will behave the same way. When modelling a system in a critical organisation there is no need to accurately represent how every component interacts with its neighbours!

In fact, it may be applicable to a huge number of co-operative systems such as flocks of birds, colonies of bacteria, or an economy. How individual units of these systems interact is irrelevant which makes modelling and understanding complex systems like these a lot easier.

Gene Stanley, a physicist with an interest in critical state organisation, has found evidence of self-similar critical state organisations in the structure of DNA, in the dynamics of human heart, lungs and even in industrial firms. He and a team of researchers including Michael Salinger of Boston University School of Management studied the growth statistics of manufacturing firms and found that certain universal principles can be detected in the growth rates of firms, based on size of the firms, for all types of firms and whatever businesses they are in. The traditional factors that are believed to determine growth rates, such as technology used for production and the products they make, are not as important as size of the firm! The large firms grow at more or less the same pace, year after year, while small firms might double or triple in size in one year and go bankrupt in the next. What is to be noted in this kind of analysis is that a firm, made up of smaller functional units resembling the whole, behave in a certain way, as far their growth rates are concerned, irrespective of the type of business they are in. Identity of individual firms and businesses are lost and only the connectivity principle remains i.e., in this case, the universally similar rate of growth of companies based on size.

Jean Carlson, James Langer and Brian Shaw of the University of California at Santa Barbara studied the way earthquakes develop. Are the geological details of the earth's crust important? Are precise details of how stress builds up in the crust important? They tried to model the origin of earthquakes by deliberately ignoring the geological details of the earth's crust. Despite its crude character, the model's behaviour follows the famous Gutenberg-Richter law that predicts the number of earthquakes that occur over a given period. What emerges out of this study is the striking truth that individual details of interacting units, in this case the earth's crust, are unimportant.

Per Bak of the Niels Bohr institute at Copenhagen and physicists Ricard Sole and Suzanna Maurubia of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia in Barcelona and geologist Michael Benton of Bristol University, reported that even evolutionary dynamics in terms of extinction of species could obey the critical state universality principle.

According to them, extinction can occur without any external impositions in the form of asteroid impact, volcanic eruptions, changes in weather etc. In each evolutionary step the least fit species and its two nearest neighbours go extinct and are replaced by new species of random fitness.

In the real ecosystems that is what happens. Species are dependent on one another within a localised area and extinction of one is likely to cause the extinction of the nearest dependent ones. Over a series of such cycles, this kind of interaction between species makes it possible for extinction to travel across the system as if a disease spreads. The analysis of major extinction events as they appear in the fossil record reveals the dynamics of extinction as showing self-similarity characteristics. Massive extinction occurs less frequently than tiny ones. Secondly, extinction need not be preceded by an external cause at all. It is the organisation & dynamics within the system of multiple species that is important. More than which species interact and how they interact, it is the connectivity principle between species that determines the outcome. A species can go extinct because it is caught in this avalanche far down in the network and not due to any external reason.

In the last few years, a powerful technique has come to the rescue of scientists hoping to study complex systems. Known as the _'cellular automata'_ , it is not a new concept but a combination of an idea dating back to 1950s and the modern computer graphics. Surprisingly, the idea mooted by John Von Neumann, the Hungarian-born mathematician then at Princeton, and his friend Stanislaw Ulam. The idea was actually based on a system introduced by the computer pioneer Konrad Zuse in the 1940s.

The play field for this idea is a board full of squares; each square called a ' _cell_ '. There are arbitrary laws governing the existential state of each square. Any such system is called a cellular automaton because it blindly obeys agreed rules. For several reasons cellular automata principle was ignored for over 30 years. It was resurrected in the 1980s when the science of complexity took off. Studying the interactions between the constituent parts, which result in the emergent behaviours, needed a tool exactly like that made possible by cellular automata. This was aided by the advances in computer technology.

Cellular automata researchers have found, astonishingly, that when modelling complex systems, what matters is the way the different components in complex systems interact. For some strange reason, the way they interact is more important than what they are. The advantage of cellular automata is that it helps you to ignore unnecessary detail about the individual components. It is hoped that cellular automata studies will throw light on the hot issue of emergent phenomena, currently at the cutting edge of science. How do simple rules operating between constituent units result in complex behaviour needs the power of this 'artificial computer world'. It is not possible to study extremely complex behaviour because of the infinite number of interactions involved. Reductionistic approaches of modern science may turn out to be crazily inadequate to do this task. You need to be able find the underlying patterns and ground rules of the game. The scientific laws that we discussed a little while ago did just that. They helped condense data. Now the cellular automata could come to our rescue.

Amazingly, attempts are on way to even model evolution in action! Thomas Ray a Harvard-educated evolutionary biologist, who held a variety of jobs including one at Japan's Advanced Technology Research Centre, has created a _'Silicon Universe_ '. He calls it _'Tierra'_. It is a huge ecosystem into which tiny, self-replicating, software creatures can be released. They are expected to replicate, compete for resources, and mutate. Ray was successful in showing diversity, development of 'parasites', 'immunities' and even rudimentary social interaction. (' _Life and Death in a digital World'_ , New Scientist, 22 Feb 92)

In order to give his creatures more diverse environment for developing complex and emergent behaviours, Ray linked up his computer with 100 other others through the Internet! This gives the software creatures more space to roam about. The program Ray had developed creates digital analogues of variation and competition, which we know drive evolution. No one yet knows how the digital creatures will respond to the variety of ecosystems that face them. It was hoped by the authors then that in the next five years we will know if this strategy is going to yield any insights into evolution or it is yet another computer game.

Computer scientists are also trying to create artificial societies inside their computers in an attempt to recreate lost civilisations and past history! The units of these societies are thousands of independent agents representing either individuals or families. By programming the families to behave as they might have behaved, based on what we know by the archaeological evidence, the researchers are finding that they can grow whole civilisations on the computer. By changing the behaviour of these agents, they hope to change the ways these civilisations expand or collapse. It is hoped that this will throw light on how we can save ourselves.

Archaeologists George Gumerman and Tom Kohler at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico are modelling the spread and collapse of an early society of native Americans, the Anasazi. Another group in Rome, consisting of Domenico Parisi, is re-creating the Assyrian Empire on the computer!

At the Santa Fe Institute, another group led by Chris Langdon has developed an artificial life program called the _Swarm_. In this model, the researchers look at diverse groups other than civilisations. They look at swarms of bees, traffic jams, and flocks of birds. A swarm is a group of individuals following a set of rules. The interactions result in patterns and complex behaviour.

_Sugarscape_ is a computer model of the growth of societies, developed by computer scientist Robert Akrell and social scientist Joshua Epstein at the Brookings Institute in Washington D.C. Parisi, Director of Research at the Institute of Psychology in Rome, uses a similar agent-based approach to model civilisations.

He believes that he could reproduce growth of the entire human race over the last 100,000 years. He strongly believes that this knowledge will help us avoid clashes of cultures in the modern society.

What surprises me is the fact people researchers have begun to believe that the human free will and intelligence has no place in the growth of civilisations. This is what I am trying to drive home in the minds of readers. The computer model approach assumes that growth of groups occurs purely because of interactions between the constituent groups. What is that group is immaterial. The way they react is important. That is why this approach is applicable to diverse groups.

Researchers are now applying self-similarity principles to understand landscape formation, traffic jams and behaviour of neutron stars!

To sum up, I think this self-similarity principle has helped condense human knowledge into a simple basis that explains most complex things the way Darwin's natural selection and physical laws did. Such holistic understanding of nature helps us avoid drowning in details and miss the wood for the trees. At some stage, we need to stop acting like the blind men and try to see if we can relate what others have perceived to form a complete picture. The beauty of self-similarity fractal principle has shown that any system is not down to the particles, people or organisms that make it up. Scientists have recognised for years that a complex system such as a molecule is not simply a sum of the atoms. You find some complex function emerging out of the inter-atomic interactions. A cell is not a sum of the molecules. It does more than what can be predicted. An organ is not the sum of cells. An organism is not the sum of its individuals. Somewhere, at the level of an organism, and at the level of the society we find emergence of mind and free will emerging, which is presumably the result of connectivity between components of the system.

Complexity theory predicts that the internal dynamics of complex systems leads to spontaneous emergence of order. This view differs from the conventional evolutionary biology, which sees order as the outcome of adaptation. Brian Goodwin of the Open University, U.K, says that natural selection may simply fine-tune the order emerging from the system. Klinger of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, has been observing peat bogs in different parts of the world and strongly believes that the robust dynamics of succession towards peat land displays the characteristics of a complex system, partly because they promote their own formation but also because they are so similar in fundamental structure in spite of the fact that, in different parts of the world, different peat bogs were derived from different species. Why the convergence on the same physical form as others? Klinger feels that emergence of the same patterns of order is exactly what is expected of complex systems.

Food webs are an emergent property of complex systems according to Stuart Pimm, an ecologist at the University of Tennessee. He notes that there are repetitive patterns in this system i.e., the food web, though one looks at different ecosystems. The repetitive patterns include the length of the food chain and the ratio of predator species to prey species. Every food web system will have to place restraints on the number of species within an ecosystem making it difficult for new invading species, which has been confirmed by computer simulations of ecosystems by Pimm and colleagues. The patterns of a food web are mainly to do with how many species are there overall and how long is the food chain i.e., from top to bottom, how long is the predator-prey chain. One eats the other, only to be eaten by the species higher up. How long this chain goes is determined by the system in a manner that is very similar when you compare different ecosystems.

Complex systems flout a principle which science in the 20th century has tended to adopt. I am talking about the reductionistic approaches to understanding nature. One can't forever break down a system into smaller constituent parts and study them individually hoping to gain insights in to the whole. A vision larger than this is required to put things in perspective, especially when dealing with complex systems and emergent behaviours. Reductonistic approach to emergent behavioural study would be no superior to the task undertaken by the four blind men trying to know the elephant.

My own observations on nature at successive levels of organisation suggest that repetitive motifs in structure and function are not something of a curiosity. They are what to be expected going by the mathematical frameworks of the fractal theory and the complexity theory. The critical state organisation and the emergent self-similarity lend further weight to it.

If you recall many of my examples that I had used to illustrate the similarities between unrelated systems you would notice that there is a hint of intelligence at a level where it is least expected. Before we go further I am going to make myself very clear that I am not going to suggest that systems have minds of their own. On the contrary, what I am going to say is that even man should be viewed similarly and presence or absence of a mind or intelligence does not matter anyway. Why should we claim that man only has a mind and intelligence? Why not we view man and his capabilities as part of nature in a very objective manner? This way we can avoid anthropic theories to satisfy the purists.

My strategy in this argument is to take the stance that man's brain is not a unique development as made out to be. Unfortunately, man always believed that down the ages. There is nothing to distinguish us from what exists elsewhere in nature. I wonder our ego prevents us from accepting this harsh truth.

Scientists, especially the evolutionary biologists, have always vociferously objected to the use of the words 'purpose' and 'plan' in nature's designs. Their contention is that systems other than man do not think. Therefore, any suggestion of a plan in nature's scheme should be talked about in the dull and boring tone of scientific language, refraining from the use of any words that may discredit you as a pseudo-scientist. I have no problem with the tenacity of the scientists in holding onto the stand that natural phenomena should be discussed without implicating any intelligent plan or design by wilful effort. My argument is this tendency has to be extended to our outlook on man's potentials too. We should stop using double standards in our view of man and other systems. Why don't we ever talk about man's actions in the same lifeless tone of the scientific literature? Wouldn't that make science more objective than what it is now?

The discussions so far have clearly shown that the ways of function and organisation of systems are a result of internal order, which does not have any relevance to the nature of the system at all. All of them behave alike. If we are objective in our scientific methods, we should really start giving the status of equality to other systems which we have so far been treating with a bias.

Another outcome of this understanding of nature's way of doing things is something that may help us solve our social problems. We have come to worry about each trivial happening in our society. We look for better and better ways of solving some of our problems in the society though there is no sign of any hope. It would be a lot easier if we took the approach that certain things cannot be avoided however much we try. Certain things in our world will happen the way they are supposed to happen. This attitude may help us become more tolerant towards certain things, which keep happening all the time, but we can't do anything about. In addition, we can draw on ideas from looking at nature for solving our problems.

The purpose of this title is to make an impact on the readers and let them know there are very few ways of doing things in this universe. In fact, one feels a bit let down by the boring repetition of themes underlying the outwardly deceptive diversity of nature.

