Secret_History

92 The Secret History of the World
Getting back to the single molecule receptors on cells, we can understand from
the bonding principles that these receptors have very particular shapes — as well
as “shells wanting to be filled” that define precisely what other molecule will be
attracted to them for bonding. We can understand that there are atomic forces
which cause one molecule to be attracted to another. Receptor molecules on the
cell respond to these energies by, “wiggling, shimmying, vibrating and even
humming as they shift back and forth from one favored shape to another”.
Receptors are attached to a cell, “floating” on its surface, like a lotus flower on the
surface of a pond, with roots extending into the interior of the cell.
There are many types of receptors on the surface of the cell, and if they were
color coded, the cell surface would look like a wild mosaic made up of at least 70
different colors. The numbers of “tiles” in the mosaic are staggering — 50,000 of
one kind, 10,000 of another, 100,000 of still another, and on and on. A typical
neuron can have millions of receptors on its surface.
Another interesting analogy that scientists use to describe neurons and receptors
is that they are like a “tree with buds”. In fact, the visual correspondence is so
striking that the terms used by scientists for the growth of neurons include
“branching” and “arborization”. Using this analogy, the bark of the tree is
analogous to the neuronal cell membrane, the “skin” of the cell. However, unlike
the bark of a tree, which is hard and static, the cell membrane is a fatty, flexible
boundary that keeps the cell as an entity.
Tree of Life, anyone?
Ligands
Now, what do these receptors do? Well, we already know that they “attract”
other molecules and respond to the atomic/chemical forces of various kinds of
bonds, but what is important is that receptors function as sensing molecules —
scanners — just as our eyes, ears, nose, tongue, fingers, and skin act as bodily
sense organs, the receptors do this on a cellular level. They cover the membranes
of your cells waiting to pick up and convey information from their environment
that consists of a reality flooded with other vibrating amino acids, which come
cruising along, diffusing through the fluids surrounding each cell. Researchers
describe receptors as “keyholes”, although these keyholes are constantly moving
and dancing in a rhythmic, vibratory way. The keyholes are waiting for the right
chemical keys, ligands, to swim up to them through the extra-cellular fluid and to
mount them by fitting into their keyholes, a process known as binding.
When the ligand, the chemical key, binds to the receptor, entering it like a key in
a keyhole, it creates a response that causes a rearrangement, a changing of shape,
until INFORMATION enters the cell.
In a certain sense, a ligand is the cellular equivalent of a phallus! Ligand comes
from the Latin “ligare”, or that which binds. The same word is also the root of
“religion”. Curious, yes?
A more dynamic description of this very miniscule process would be that
relating to “frequency”. The ligand and the receptor combine their identical
frequencies — striking the same note, so to say — which produces a sufficiently
strong vibration that more or less “rings the doorbell” to cause the doorway of the