Proteins are the wonderful Bio-Hardware which realize biological structures, transduction devices, mechanisms to implement and execute the archive based intelligence with incredible integrity, consistency, repeatability, robustness, adaptability, evolution and resilience that life forms in animal kingdom exhibit.
Protein Structures:
Basically, proteins are helical spring like macro molecules which could have choice of one of twenty periodic “beads” to have different localized properties at the string level.
- Beads could be just acting as spacer or blank
- They could impart varying degree of mechanical rigidity / reinforcement
- They could provide tendency of bending and forming elbows
- They could form chemical and hydrogen bonds with the adjacent macromolecules
- They could have a residual electric charge and can respond to or create electrostatic fields
- They could impart a tendency to oscillate / vacillate with Benzene ring kind of jiggling bonds
Primary helical chains can form twines and pleated sheets or they could form designer globules in 3D
Important fact is the primary sequence of Beads could be encoded and archived on DNA and archive itself could be replicated and passed on to the daughter cells for oncogenesis where the archived sequence and physical structures could be replicated.
In engineering terminology the wonder architecture of Proteins could do the following diverse multiple functions:
- Fibre, rope or string for binding, tying, hauling, navigating or carrying message sequence to other cells
- Relatively rigid structural column / filament
- Mechanical Spring
- Force / energy and motion transfer like lever and shafts
- Spring where tension could be modified through chemical / ionic media
- Stereospecific shape and size , possibly as coded message carrier agent
- Stereospecific globule for identifying specific shapes and sizes coming at cell surface
- Transducers – sensors and motors for micro actuation at molecular level; for opening and closing valves and ionic channels
- Media for flexibly modelling and encoding physical inter-spaces and electro-chemical surroundings within and outside cells for archiving
- For replicating encoded cellular interspaces , electro-chemical surrounding as per archived document
Can engineering fraternity ever replicate a hardware media and system design that is as multifunctional and intelligence compatible as Proteins in a cell?
AVINASH KHARE