Biology in Love

Hello! Maybe you've been reading my blog posts long enough to know that I'm really geeky. I love biology and I'm starting to fall in love with public speaking. Well anyways, even if you don't know welcome to my geeky side.

I think there has been one post (maybe 2) about biology and now this is the newest installment in the "I'm a Geek" series. Maybe I should make that a label too... I was sitting in my biology class and listening to my teacher. We're learning all about mitosis and cell division/DNA replication. Let me give you a two minute factual explanation about the part that I want to expand on.

So the nuclear envelope breaks down and the chromosomes are condensing. The centrosomes are moving to opposite ends of the cell and the microtubules are extending. The microtubules are expanding and shrinking, expanding and shrinking because they want to find and attach to the chromosome. They do because they're at the state of dynamic instability. When they connect to the chromosome at the kinectochore they become stable.

Now here's where the biology "in love" part comes from. You know, how they say that love is blind? Well for microtubules it is. They don't know what any of the chromosomes look like or how much DNA each one of them possesses. They don't look at any of those outward characteristics. The microtubules just know when they're with the right chromosome based on how it feels. Mitosis (anaphase) can't continue if the microtubules aren't connected either. So it's very important for them to find the right one.

I wish I could be like. Well in some cases, we as humans are like microtubules too! Rarely do we get to choose who we end of falling in love with. Sometimes we don't understand what qualities make that person seem desirable and in movies, the most cliched thing ever is to make two enemies fall in love with some weird backstory. Maybe we should get over our preconceived notions of what a good relationship should be. For instance maybe someone with ridiculously high expectations, down to hair color, would find that attaining love is easier if they threw away some of their check list items. Maybe we (I) should just base the success of a relationship on how we (I) feel. How often do we do that? And then we blame random things for our sadness once the relationship is over.

So I propose to you, keep an open mind and be like a microtubule. They all seem to find their perfect match without eyes or brains. Eyes and brains are incredibly important to us but sometimes we need to shut off that integration process and see things as they are. That definitely is true for me. I think way too much about everything and sometimes an innocent wave "hi" becomes "OMG. He took the time to wave to me and I'm so happy and OMG we going to get married."

Biology has a lot of important life lessons packed in there. It's up to us to find them. xx