[HN Gopher] Do fungi lurking inside cancers speed their growth?
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Do fungi lurking inside cancers speed their growth?
Author : LinuxBender
Score : 49 points
Date : 2022-10-08 16:09 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| version_five wrote:
| Sometimes I wonder if we're just giant machines built by
| microorganisms. It would certainly make an interesting story,
| along the idea of a robot discovering they were made by somebody
| else, which I believe has already been explored
| unity1001 wrote:
| > Sometimes I wonder if we're just giant machines built by
| microorganisms
|
| I believe that we were well-organized colonies of bacteria was
| proven long time ago.
|
| We are literally a unified collective of cells.
| astrange wrote:
| Prokaryotes, not bacteria.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-domain_system
| unity1001 wrote:
| Evaluates to the same concept of we being collectives.
| foobarbecue wrote:
| We are all servants of the selfish gene.
| seqizz wrote:
| Reminded me:
|
| > Animals are something invented by plants to move seeds
| around. An extremely yang solution to a peculiar problem which
| they faced. (Terence McKenna)
| adammarples wrote:
| Animals evolved long before plants. What's crazy is that
| plants were arguably evolved by fungi using alga to farm
| sunlight
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| > Animals evolved long before plants
|
| No
|
| underwater: algae 3500MY vs sponges, worms, shells
| 800MY-485MY
|
| out of water: plants 470MY vs millipedes, tetrapod
| 420MY-400MY
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| a nice example of cross evolution, random mutations of both
| life forms + natural selection, tasty seeds and animals
| eating them was a good combo
| redanddead wrote:
| What about underwater plants? Life started in the water first
| didn't it?
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I mean it's a matter of perspective but... we are aren't we?
| pmayrgundter wrote:
| Basically agree.
|
| There is an important part in what is meant by "machine".
|
| Mechanics, strictly speaking, is pervasive in but not
| sufficient to account for the life process.
|
| There's something else going on that looks like classical
| teleos and both the cells and the organism have it.
|
| There's interesting work to get teleos out of mechanics in
| far from equilibrium thermodynamics.. Prigogine, Kauffman,
| Wolfram, Deacon, England even Dennet.
| ip26 wrote:
| In a sense that's very true. However the biggest wrinkle is
| that most of your cells share a single common ancestor cell. If
| your body is a community of microbes, it's _mostly_ a village
| of close relatives, not a symbiote like coral.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Ah, I heard quite differently when including microbiome.
|
| For example: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-43674270 "More
| than half your body is not human"
| pmayrgundter wrote:
| I believe that's incidental. There are abiotic mice which
| seem basically the same but require smth like 20% more
| calories in their diet for same metabolic level.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Well, we are biological machines that would not survive without
| a spectrum of microbes (e.g., gut bacteria). And to your point,
| kinda, I sometimes wonder if they exist for us, or we exist for
| them.
| CSSer wrote:
| I think you're thinking of a Philip K. Dick short story. I'll
| see if I can find it.
|
| Edit: I was thinking of autofac, which is kind of like what
| you're describing but arguably it was only a small plot detail.
|
| People get downvoted for the strangest things on here
| sometimes. In this case it just makes me laugh.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| There's also a short story by Stephen Baxter in _Phase Space_
| (a very excellent collection) called _Dante Dreams_ where a
| researcher becomes aware of the dreaming consciousness of her
| own organelles.
| maxbond wrote:
| Reminded me of The Electric Ant
| https://archive.org/details/PhilipK.DickTheElectricAnt
|
| I have a hypothesis that commenters sometime interpret
| recommendations in this format ("I think you're thinking of
| X") as being presumptive, because it implies someone made a
| mistake in their thinking. I'm not trying to say it is or
| isn't, just that I've seen a pattern of similar posts
| downvoted, and this is my hypothesis as to why.
| klyrs wrote:
| > Sometimes I wonder if we're just giant machines built by
| microorganisms.
|
| Wait 'til you find out that those "microorganisms" are
| themselves machines...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_machine#Biological
| perfecthjrjth wrote:
| Yes, but with a twist: this giant machine worries about its
| future, its kids, its wealth, its financial assets.
| ww520 wrote:
| All those are just for satisfying the urge to reproduce.
| version_five wrote:
| Or tricked into worrying about that as a control signal to
| perform its main task in service of its microorganism
| operators ;)
| hgomersall wrote:
| Which is all subservient to its actual main task of
| increasing entropy. I've found myself cycling down the
| street wondering if my actions were all just an elaborate
| way of increasing entropy more quickly.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Nobody in this thread has read Selfish Gene, apparently.
| That's the whole point of the book: That genes may as well
| have invented all of life to propagate themselves.
|
| In this context, species conflict is like fleets of world-
| ships fighting total war.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| Genes are effectively biological computer programs.
| ok_dad wrote:
| That's an interesting SciFi idea: the real world is
| digital, and digital beings have created a physical world
| to fight battle via genetic biological machines, which
| are effectively concrete data structures.
| redanddead wrote:
| like the scene in Jurassic park
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| my machine just worries about food, and work to get food
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| This reminds me of the brain maggot patient that walked in the
| ER. After being cleaned up, they died the next morning.
| Apparently the symbiosis was healthy albeit disgusting.
|
| Will be interesting if fungi end up slowing cancers and are
| actually fighting for the mycobiome.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycobiome
| Supermancho wrote:
| My introductory biology classes informed me well enough to
| understand that fungal infections can weaken the body's immune
| systems, weaken the tissue, or spread themselves over an inflamed
| area, with unfortunate side-effects of generating pro-growth
| local environments. Any of these may lead to an incidental
| increase in cancer growth. What's more, cancer was such a rare
| occurrence prior to WWI, you wouldn't expect that cancer rates
| would be directly related to pre-existing fungal flora.
|
| I'm pretty sure dissected tumors have eliminated fungal
| infections as integral parts of many (if not most) cancers. If
| it's not integral, fungal is opportunistic and likely unavoidable
| for most cases. I expect that these conceptual models are what
| makes these kinds of studies difficult to prove.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| > cancer was such a rare occurrence prior to WWI
|
| why do you say that?
| frereubu wrote:
| Not quibbling with your general point, but was cancer a rare
| occurrence before WWI on a like-for-like basis? Life expectancy
| was a great deal lower then - it's gone up by around 30 years
| (from just over 50 to just over 80) since then.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| I would theorize that it was less detected prior to WW1, for
| obvious reasons.
|
| That aside, life expectancy, afaik, includes new born
| illnesses, childhood illness and so on, and then as adults
| there were occupational related deaths. Those brought down
| the average then.
|
| Did those who survived all those risks live as long as we do
| today? IDK. But there has to be data to figure that out, as
| the raw life expectancy then v now is likely misleading.
| agumonkey wrote:
| AFAIK fungi are extremely hard to get rid of. This is not a great
| news.
| BirAdam wrote:
| That depends upon just how much you're willing to put yourself
| through. Compared to cancer, fungus is easy to be rid of.
| hnbad wrote:
| Yeah but that's because cancer is basically your own cells
| with faulty programming.
| etiam wrote:
| Very diverse organism group, and often very tough, _but_ at
| least it 's distinct organisms with distinct characteristics
| rather than literally the same organism with some of the
| regulation broken. We have a few chemicals that hurt them while
| mostly sparing us, and more chemicals which hurt both but them
| more badly.
|
| Many species of fungus are quite sensitive to high
| temperatures, which may have been one selection pressure
| favoring warm-blooded animals. Maybe an artificial fever or
| even local tissue heating could be enough to tip the balance in
| favor of the host in some cases.
|
| At the very least it's a fascinating piece of information which
| is better to be in possession of than not.
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| they don't like dryness, but unfortunately our body is wet
| zackees wrote:
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