{"id":182543,"date":"2024-02-12T13:23:04","date_gmt":"2024-02-12T19:23:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/02\/breaking-the-brain-muscle-barrier-scientists-discover-hidden-neural-network-like-abilities-of-self-assembling-molecules"},"modified":"2024-02-12T13:23:04","modified_gmt":"2024-02-12T19:23:04","slug":"breaking-the-brain-muscle-barrier-scientists-discover-hidden-neural-network-like-abilities-of-self-assembling-molecules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/02\/breaking-the-brain-muscle-barrier-scientists-discover-hidden-neural-network-like-abilities-of-self-assembling-molecules","title":{"rendered":"Breaking the Brain-Muscle Barrier: Scientists Discover Hidden Neural Network-Like Abilities of Self-Assembling Molecules"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/breaking-the-brain-muscle-barrier-scientists-discover-hidden-neural-network-like-abilities-of-self-assembling-molecules.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>We tend to separate the brain and muscle \u2013 the brain does the thinking; the muscle does the doing. The brain takes in complex information about the world, makes decisions, while muscle merely executes. This distinction extends to our understanding of cellular processes, where certain molecules within cells are perceived as the \u2018thinkers\u2019, processing information from the chemical environment to determine necessary actions for survival, while others are viewed as the \u2018muscle\u2019, constructing the essential structures for the cell\u2019s survival.<\/p>\n<p>But a new study shows how the molecules that build structures, i.e, the muscle, can themselves do both the thinking and the doing. The study, by scientists at Maynooth University, the University of Chicago, and California Institute of Technology was published in the journal <em><i>Nature<\/i><\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe show that a natural molecular process \u2013 nucleation \u2013 that has been studied as a \u2018muscle\u2019 for a long time can do complex calculations that rival a simple neural network,\u201d said University of Chicago Associate Professor Arvind Murugan, one of the two senior co-authors on the paper. \u201cIt\u2019s an ability hidden in plain sight that evolution can exploit in cells to do more with less; the \u2018doing\u2019 molecules can also do the \u2018thinking.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We tend to separate the brain and muscle \u2013 the brain does the thinking; the muscle does the doing. The brain takes in complex information about the world, makes decisions, while muscle merely executes. This distinction extends to our understanding of cellular processes, where certain molecules within cells are perceived as the \u2018thinkers\u2019, processing information [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182543\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}