Every cell is a triumph of natural selection, and we’re made of trillions of cells. Within us, is a little universe.
The cell, over the billions of years of her life, has covered the earth many times with her substance, found ways to control herself and her environment, and insure her survival.
I think it's going to be amazing to see how the world of microbiology, molecular and cellular biology, and human physiology is massively changed by microgravity.
The nucleus has to take care of the inheritance of the heritable characters, while the surrounding cytoplasm is concerned with accommodation or adaptation to the environment.
What you see in living systems, and in genetic systems, is that the genes are already there, having arisen in the course of time, and when they are needed they become activated. If they had to be invented, the time would be too late.
There's a lot of interest from the medical community on how things develop in microgravity, and the hope, later, that is expected to apply to what the changes are in humans as well.
There's a world of insights to be gained into human health and disease by understanding how gravity and space radiation influence biology.
Surely the mitochondrion that first entered another cell was not thinking about the future benefits of cooperation and integration; it was merely trying to make its own living in a tough Darwinian world
