Simple Science SummaryThe cells in our body follow a 24-hour cycle, the circadian clock. Disruptions of this cycle, for example by working night shifts, can cause disease. In recent years, it has become clear that the clock can be disrupted in individual organs or tissues. To study and potentially cure problems with the clocks inside our cells, Dutch and Japanese scientists created a compound that will elongate the 24-hour cycle and that can be activated or deactivated using light. They showed that it is possible to change the 24-hour cycle in cells or tissues to a 28-hour cycle by activating the compound. After deactivation, the cells and tissues returned to a near-normal cycle. The compound can be used to investigate the clocks inside our cells and may eventually be used to treat diseases that are caused by a disrupted clock.
© Illustration Issey Takahashi
Reversible modulation of the circadian clock using chronophotopharmacology. Using light to interconvert two isomers of a photo-responsive small molecule, it is possible to pace cellular time. While irradiation with violet light extends the normal 24-hour clock to 28-hour, green light switches off this effect and brings the clock back to normal.
Reversible modulation of the circadian clock using chronophotopharmacology. Using light to interconvert two isomers of a photo-responsive small molecule, it is possible to pace cellular time. While irradiation with violet light extends the normal 24-hour clock to 28-hour, green light switches off this effect and brings the clock back to normal.
Life on Earth has evolved under a 24-hour cycle; of light and dark, hot and cold. 'As a result, our cells are synchronized to these 24-hour oscillations,' says Wiktor Szymanski, Professor of Radiological Chemistry at the University Medical Center Groningen. Our circadian clock is regulated by a central controller in the suprachiasmatic nucleus, a region in the brain directly above the optic nerve, but all our cells contain a clock of their own. These clocks consist of an oscillation in the production and breakdown of certain proteins.
Comment: For the universe to be 'capable of learning' implies some kind of intelligence. Right there, these scientists are on the cusp of acknowledging 'supra-consciousness', intelligence(s) other-than-human, and thus a break with the Scientific Materialism ushered in by Darwin and others.
The theory of intelligent design expounded by Michael Behe and others similarly proposes non-human intelligence 'behind' or informing matter. A 'machine-learning' universe is at least in small part an acknowledgement that dogmatic materialistic theories like Darwinism - in which everything happens randomly and without any purpose or order - have had 'their day in the Sun'.
Now is the time for religion and science to step together into the light of a Universe we term Divine Cosmic Mind. The Universe isn't just 'learning as it goes along'. It sees all - past, present and future...
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