The Biology of Belief - Bruce H. Lipton [37]
Lastly, I wanted to include in my description the two most common kinds of IMPs. These are the receptors and a class of effectors called channels because they provide the all-important means for the cell to let in nutrients and let out waste matter. I was about to write that the membrane contains “receptors and channels” when I realized that a synonym for receptor is the word gate. So instead I completed my description by writing: “The membrane contains gates and channels.”
I sat back and reviewed my new description of the membrane: “The membrane is a liquid crystal semiconductor with gates and channels.” What hit me right away was the fact that I had recently heard or read the very same phrase, though at the moment, I didn’t know where I had come across it. One thing was for sure; it was not in the context of biological science.
As I leaned back in my chair, my attention was drawn to the corner of my desk where my new, smiley-face Macintosh, my first computer, was parked. Lying beside the computer was a copy of a bright red book called Understanding Your Microprocessor. I had just bought this non-technical paperback guide to how computers work from a Radio Shack outlet. I grabbed the book and found in the introduction a definition of a computer chip that read: “A chip is a crystal semiconductor with gates and channels.”
For the first second or two I was struck by the fact that the chip and cell membrane shared the same technical definition. I spent several more intense seconds comparing and contrasting biomem-branes with silicon semiconductors. I was momentarily stunned when I realized that the identical nature of their definitions was not a coincidence. The cell membrane was indeed a structural and functional equivalent (homologue) of a silicon chip!
Twelve years later an Australian research consortium headed by B. A. Cornell published an article in Nature that confirmed my hypothesis that the cell membrane is a homologue of a computer chip. (Cornell, et al, 1997) The researchers isolated a cell membrane and attached a piece of gold foil under it. They then flooded the space between the gold foil and the attached membrane with a special electrolyte solution. When the membrane’s receptors were stimulated by a complementary signal, the channels opened and allowed the electrolyte solution across the membrane. The foil served as a transducer, an electrical pickup device, which converted the electrical activity of the channel into a digital readout on a screen. This device, created for the study, demonstrates that the cell membrane not only looks like a chip but also functions like one. Cornell and associates successfully turned a biological cell membrane into a digital-readout computer chip.
So what’s the big deal, you ask? The fact that the cell membrane and a computer chip are homologues means that it is both appropriate and instructive to better fathom the workings of the cell by comparing it to a personal computer. The first big-deal insight that comes from such an exercise is that computers and cells are programmable. The second corollary insight is that the programmer lies outside the computer/cell. Biological behavior and gene activity are dynamically linked to information from the environment, which is downloaded into the cell.
As I conjured up a biocomputer, I realized that the nucleus is simply a memory disk, a hard drive containing the DNA programs that encode the production of proteins. Let’s call it the Double Helix Memory Disk. In your home computer you can insert such a memory disk containing a large number of specialized programs like word processing, graphics, and spreadsheets. After you download