Previously, I posted a video of a neutrophil chasing down a bacterium. The video makes it look like the neutrophil is somehow behaving in an intelligent fashion, as it follows the bacterium like a predator. But this appearance is misleading. What is happening is something called chemotaxis, where the behavior of the cell is more like a reflex arc that is guided by a concentration gradient of molecules emitted from the bacterium. Rather that explain this more clearly, check out another video of the neutrophil sans bacterium:

I don't think the teleological lesson is found in some apparent intelligent behavior of the cell. I think it is better expressed through the perspective of front-loading evolution. That is, it's not that the cell looks animal-like; it's that the animal is so cell-like. In essence, the cell you see is responding to a smell.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 15th, 2007 at 11:44 pm and is filed under Biology, Front-loading. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. The trackback link is: http://telicthoughts.com/the-cell-smells/trackback/