Active Clearance Systems

This is AKIRA.
Today, I will be continuing from my previous article (below).

Biological functions are themselves highly sophisticated human body management systems.

Homeostasis

Just as there are systems (like OS) to run computers, there are also systems that support our daily activities and the actions required to stay alive. While we often take these for granted, they are actually overwhelmingly superior to ordinary PCs. The mechanism that allows the human body to function and be operated "as usual" is called
homeostasis, and the functions required to generate energy for movement or to repair damaged parts are also designed with precision and on a massive scale.

We researchers in the life sciences field study these mechanisms of action and physiological/pathological findings through experiments, and systematize them into knowledge through papers and academic presentations. However, even in the modern era, where various research fields are competing and producing diverse reports, the mechanisms of the human body are still not well understood. That is how precise, elaborate, and superior the "construction" of the human body is, and all of that is summarized by the term "homeostasis."

The human body also has compatibility.

However, even such an excellent system is not without its flaws, so a high-resolution understanding of these systems is necessary to control them correctly.

Even with PCs, if you download a program that only runs on macOS to a Windows device, it won't work. Even if the OS is unified, if the version is different (e.g., it works on Windows 7 but not on Windows 10 or later), it will stop working immediately. In other words,
the presence or absence of compatibility also exists in the human body. Determining what factors decide this is quite difficult because it is strictly controlled by various conditions.

Because it is advanced, it is difficult to understand; that is precisely why a systematic understanding is necessary.

As with anything, the more precise something is, the easier it is to break.
PCs are the perfect example of this; they are precision machines where even a slight impact can affect performance.
Naturally, fixing them is also a struggle. Is the hardware bad, or is the software bad?
Knowledge is required to figure that out.

The human body is the same.
Because it is so advanced, fixing it is a struggle.
The difference is that in the case of humans, there is no "replacement." You cannot just replace a broken part and call it a day.However, if you know why it is malfunctioning, you can repair it yourself. That is the mystery of the human body.
That said, advanced knowledge is required to heal it.While the field of "medicine" was sufficient in the distant past, in the modern era, knowledge from life science fields such as "molecular biology," "cell physiology," "genetic engineering," and "biochemistry" is standard equipment.
Without an understanding of the structure and function of the human body, "healing" is impossible.
And please understand first that this is more difficult than disassembling a PC and understanding its internal structure.

Understanding biological functions and pharmaceuticals.

Clearance must also be active.

I previously posted a simple article on the theme of "how drugs are excreted from the body."
As I mentioned there, the metabolism of drugs generally administered in tablet form is carried out by the decomposition by CYP enzymes that humans have in the liver, and they are processed by appropriate excretion mechanisms.

Yes, CYP is an "active clearance system." The reason is simply that
"the side making the drug designs it to be decomposed by CYP."

Using the body's innate functions to decompose administered drugs.
Because that reaction is specific to the drug, if it is administered at an optimal concentration, the drug's efficacy can be exerted without side effects, and it can then be metabolized and excreted.
In particular, this "enzyme-mediated reaction" is a biochemically highly specific reaction.

That is why the "mechanism" that even things introduced into the body from the outside can be metabolized without issue holds true.
I call this clearance through metabolism "active clearance."

There are various control mechanisms.

For example, nutrients and the aforementioned poisons can be metabolized through decomposition by enzymes. Molecules like plastic, unfortunately, cannot be metabolized by humans, so we don't ingest them in the first place, right?
However, there are poisons that cannot be decomposed, such as pufferfish poison (tetrodotoxin). This is because the enzymes humans possess lack the ability to decompose pufferfish poison. Therefore, even if the concentration is lowered, if ingested, the toxicity will still manifest. Perhaps due to an insatiable quest for "food," Japanese people eat pufferfish sashimi, but this is almost unheard of overseas. Well, that is not to say that pufferfish sashimi is dangerous! But avoiding it is proof that a crisis avoidance function based on a system rooted in human instinct is at work.

At the tissue level, for example, hormones. Even if it is difficult to control at the cellular level, it is possible to control blood concentration (feedback control) through the interaction between distant organs. Thyroid hormones (T3, T4) are literally secreted from the thyroid gland, but TSH (thyroid-stimulating hormone), which stimulates this hormone secretion, is secreted from the anterior pituitary gland. In other words, the secretion amount of thyroid hormone is regulated by feedback to the pituitary gland.

At the cellular level, this is gene expression.
If it is a gene (genomic DNA) that the cell possesses, the amount of mRNA transcribed from it or non-coding RNA that does not encode proteins can be regulated.This is because feedback is applied to the genomic DNA.The same applies to protein expression.
Proteins are synthesized because mRNA is synthesized and then proteins are produced from it, but suppressing this mRNA also works because of mechanisms that actively degrade it through cellular expression control (such as RNA interference by miRNA). In other words, it can also be said that
feedback is applied to the RNA.as well.

These are, to varying degrees, excellent regulatory mechanisms of the human body.
The reason whycells can exert control by themselves (actively) is because the genes that exert control are genes recorded on the genome they possess.If you wait for genes introduced from the outside to decay without active control, you will never know when they will disappear.

It is ridiculous not to be able to regulate the expression level by oneself.

Suppose.
A cell cannot regulate the expression level of a gene introduced from the outside by itself.
If there were such a product.

It is half-baked.
You should stop.