In every living cell where it has been looked for in human body, we find two molecular pathways in opposition.
One promotes survival of the cell.
The other promotes its death.
By pathway, I mean a series of molecular actions in sequence that accomplish some function. For example: we have a series of steps that lead to the breakdown of the sugar glucose to provide energy for our bodies. These steps are carried out by proteins for the most part.
The survival and death pathways have been battling each other as far back as we can trace multi-cellular organisms. They are found in mouse and man, frog and fish, fly and worm. Traces are even found in the simplest multi-celled organisms – jellyfish and corals.
They can be thought of as the yin-yang of life itself, expressed at the cellular level within every multi-cellular organism. Why yin-yang? If one of these two pathways is nonfunctional, we will die.
So this fundamental struggle in each cell is vital to our survival, but as we will see in non-intuitive ways. Its easy to see why too much cell death would be harmful to the organism, but why too much survival?
NEXT: Survival can be too much of a good thing.
A fascinating topic. I can hardly wait for the next installment.
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