Autonomy of the Living Cell, Driving Force of Evolution

Abstract

Conventional biologists and medical doctors conceptualize the body as divided into cells. It is construed as a bag of organs, with one of everything down the center, and two of everything down the sides. My alternative view is the body as a community of autonomous living cells whose choreographed cohesion gives rise to the phenomenon we know as the body. Science reduces multicellular life to the biochemical interplay of its components, and systems biology to a concatenation of subunits acting according to the laws of chemistry and physics. Current studies of living cells concentrate on the subcellular components since mitochondria were designated the “powerhouse of the cell” though they can be seen to move, migrate, and respond to stimuli. Although we understand cells in communities and the organelles within each cell, we ignore the lives lived by individual cells as they conduct themselves in heuristic (decision-making) and in motivating evolutionary progress. Here we review original observations on the behavior of living cells and conclude that they are essential drivers of coordinated community cohesion.