The Song of the Cell by Siddhartha Mukherjee — A reflection:
As Mukherjee shares, how can one define life? Does it stem from something tangible or metaphysical? Can we define life as a species, considering the different shapes and forms life may take? I have mused this question, as have many across millennia, but Mukherjee poses a new conception that is difficult for me to dispute.
Mukherjee introduces Serhiy (“Sergey”) Tsokolov, who was contemplating how we can define, or explain what life is. Ultimately, he argued, “There are hundreds of working, conventional definitions within scientific discourse, but none have been able to achieve a consensus.” (10) What is it about these definitions, adding pieces to a complex conclusion, leaving us shortchanged of a precise articulation derived from seemingly facile ideas? How difficult could it be to define life? Adds Mukherjee “Life’s definition, as it stands now (and maybe forever), is akin to a menu. It is not one thing but a series of things, a set of behaviors, a series of processes, not a single property.” I then must wonder, when does this effort ever end? The seemingly intractable question asks us to come up with never-ending, limitless, growing complexity, statements that may seemingly miss something still. Inevitably, this draws up further philosophical questions, amid a current environment where post-modernism has taken away any end to explanations of problems previously thought to have been concluded. Amusingly, Mukherjee explains how post-modernism has introduced additional problems by arguing about how real cells and genes are:
A Newtonian ball thrown into Newtonian space does follow Newtonian laws. The laws that govern the ball are as real and tangible as they were during the conception of the universe. By the same logic, a cell, and a gene, are real. It’s just that they aren’t ‘real’ in isolation. They are fundamentally cooperative, integrating units, and together, they build, maintain, and repair organisms. (365)
To conclude the introduction of what life may be, consider what an organism that is living must have. An organism MUST reproduce, grow, metabolize, adapt to stimuli, and maintain the self. Consider the difference between unicellular and multicellular organisms. Then complex multicellular organisms… “It is not a coincidence that all these properties repose, ultimately, in the cells, or systems of cells. In a sense, then, one might define life as having cells, and cells as having life.” (10–11)
Based on that introduction alone, I knew asking for this book for Christmas was worthwhile, knowing that it would not be enough to borrow the text from the library. I needed to own and have this book for reference, in case I needed to remind myself (and hopefully my blog reminds you) why should we even care. Could we imagine life not being defined by having cells? What is a cell? This book will discuss this.
Importantly, healthcare providers undertake training during their graduate school curricula to examine cells in many different organs of our bodies. These providers look through slides at extremely high magnification to understand and interpret relationships between cells beside one another, normal versus unusual, investigating prognosis and diagnosis of cellular behavior gone wrong.
In a previous book of Mukherjee’s, “The Emperor of All Maladies,” we learn what cancer may look like and how the condition may manifest. It was apparent to the reader that a *mistake* in the development of a normal cell leads to detrimental health concerns (I did publish a post about how stomach cancer was a virus causing gastric cells to behave abnormally, and kick accelerated cell division into high gear, owing to the great work Barry Marshall and Robin Warren completed years ago). As such, therapies aimed at fixing each mistake would ultimately lead us further into a cure for multiple cancers. Yet, in this book, Mukherjee poses an important question. Why do some cancers appear to be more prevalent in certain body organs, more so than others? Statistically, if abnormal cellular division explains cancer pathology, how come cells in certain organs are more susceptible to developing cancer in our bodies? Importantly, this issue is explored in the book.
Additionally, I find it interesting the progression of books Mukherjee has published over the years. He started writing about cancer, then the gene, and now the cell. I would label a book about genes, a prequel to a book about cancer, or about cells. “The Song of the Cell” is the sequel to a book about genes. Owing to the author’s timeline, one who would not normally have a background in Molecular Biology, would find it puzzling to write these books in the order they were written. But hey, that’s the only complaint I really must share about this book. For someone with limited to no knowledge of biology, aim to read this book as a personal project, since this will be difficult for almost anyone to read. Yet, Mukherjee outlines his thinking in a readable, sometimes absorbing manner, making it all worth it!
As for readers that do have Biology in their background, Mukherjee helps review fundamental molecular biology knowledge as if you were almost rereading a classroom textbook, except in the context of illustrating the history, analogies, and relationships to current technologies in use today, one of which being CRISPR. I will return to CRISPR, in the context of a recent issue back in 2019 for my next blog post.
Frankly, I would not know why anyone who had studied Biology in their undergraduate years would be reluctant to read, much less purchase this book. 60% of the book is a review of information that is expected to be taught in a college university undergraduate class, but the remainder dives through an assortment of different topics, applied from the biological foundation. For instance, Frances Kelsey is chronicled in the 1960s for her activism in denying access to a controversial drug called Thalidomide, specifically targeted to pregnant women who were suffering from increased emotional or anxiety disorders. As part of a long career where she served as chief of the Division of New Drugs, she went about reading numerous case reports detailing the effects. Included were peripheral nerve numbness, severe limb defects, and other unclear reports (143).
Amid this controversy, Kelsey challenged Merrell, the company that in the US, partnered with the original German company, Chemie Grünenthal for proof that the drug was safe. During the back-and-forth battle between Kelsey and Merrell, women prescribed Thalidomide in Britain and France started to notice babies with severe malformations in the urinary, heart, intestinal, and even limbs. Sadly, while Thalidomide, as explained by Mukherjee, binds to proteins in the cell that break down other specific proteins, the drug was still in use for as many as 18 months since Kelsey first responded to Merrell’s appeal (143–144). Some babies born then may still be dealing with the effects of the drug (Grunau).
It was not until 1962, that West Germany instituted the Federal Ministry of Health to examine cases such as this. Quite alarming, considering that this drug afflicted many people born during those years, which may be parents of children who are around my age.
Near the end of the book, Mukherjee references his own research into how he has contributed to osteoarthritis research. “Osteoarthritis is a disease of cartilage degeneration…constant grind between bones eats away at the lubricating lining of the cartilage at the head of a bone” (343). Mukherjee poses a unique perspective on osteoarthritis as an imbalance of a certain cell type: OCHRE cells, or cells that appear on the growth plate, initiate bone growth and are theorized to act as a regenerative reservoir. OCHRE cells are stem cells that function as progenitor cartilage cells. When mice get arthritis, OCHRE cells, still present, would try and regenerate the lost cartilage. In experiments that included deliberately inducing damage on the mouse’s femoral joint, thereby inducing arthritis, transfusing those very same OCHRE cells helped reverse arthritis. Research done by Jia Ng led to the finding that osteoarthritis was associated with the OCHRE cells dying, unable to keep up with cartilage genesis (344). Concluding from several findings, “(Osteoarthritis) isn’t merely a degeneration of cartilage cells, caused by grind and tear. It is, first, an imbalance caused by the death of Gremlin-marked cartilage progenitor cells that cannot generate adequate bone and cartilage to keep up with the demands of the joint” (346).
I am unsure if Mukherjee will compile another book after covering cancer, genes, and cells. If this is the last book he ever writes, then it is a good book to finish his career in writing. What strikes me is how he has not been a mainstream expert or a more well-known figure in the field. Perhaps, we will see more of him publicly speaking, instead of writing soon.
References
Grunau, A. (2021, November 27). Thalidomide survivors still struggle 60 years on. dw.com. https://www.dw.com/en/thalidomide-babies-birth-defects-caused-by-a-harmless-pill-60-years-ago/a-59952155
Mukherjee, S. (2022). The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human. Simon and Schuster.
The Little-known Advantages and Disadvantages of Stem Cell Research. (n.d.). Biology Wise. https://biologywise.com/advantages-disadvantages-of-stem-cell-research
