I don’t know about you, but I never think about my ribosomes. Okay, never is incorrect. I thought of them today, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing about them. I guess I should be thinking about them occasionally. I can’t live without them and the proteins they produce. But they are tiny and inside me, and just like the pistons in my truck engine, when they work, I simply drive. When ribosomes do their job, I simply live.
Cryo-electron tomography at Yale now allows us to “see” ribosomes through some combining tricks that researchers can play on their computers. We can even see ribosomes in whatever color we choose. They kinda look like buttons or gas caps—at least, that’s how I see those ribosomes imaged by Beck et al. (Science , 306, 2004; Nature 449, 2007).* Now, having seen ribosomes up close and personal, I won’t be able to get the image out of my head every time I fill up the truck’s gas tank, and maybe, when I button a shirt.
Was I better off not knowing what ribosomes looked like? I was happy in my ignorance. I wasn’t thinking of them any more than I ordinarily think of breathing (Shoot, just made you think of your breathing, didn’t I?). Anyway, back to my ribosomes, I know they’ve been performing their tasks all my life, but, even having learned about them in biology class, I ignored their essential function and value. They work. I live.
Much of what a society does to hold itself together, to exist, is like the functioning of ribosomes. I don’t pay much attention to the electricity that runs the computer I use to write or the one you use to read. Nor do I pay much attention to the constant functioning of society’s complex interactions and products. When I think of such obliviousness, I realize how truly ignorant and childlike I am.
You might say, “Well, we can’t keep everything in mind constantly, and we can take certain processes and materials for granted simply because they ‘run on automatic’ as far as we are personally concerned.”
Right! If we stop to think about “everything,” we won’t get much done about “something.” So, we choose, and in choosing we ignore. It’s only when what we ignore stops functioning that we pay attention. Garbage workers’ strike? We pay attention. Powerline down? We pay attention.
That brings me to the current buzzword mindfulness. There’s really nothing new in the idea, but it is a call for both self-awareness and other-awareness that every generation considers every so often. Possibly, we are mindful of mindfulness more at this time because we live in, as I have written before, the Age of Distraction. Of course, distractions are relative to circumstances. When one is hungry, there’s little to be mindful of other than the search for food. I guess that means that in a well-fed, affluent society, people are more susceptible to distractions of all kinds. If one is suffering in a war-torn or famine-torn society, the frivolous distractions don’t intrude on mindfulness. But in a society with much, distractions abound.
That begs a question or two from you, “So, what is significant enough to catch my mind? Of what should I be mindful?”
You don’t have to think about your ribosomes. They’ll do their job without your conscious help. Unfortunately, now that I’ve seen them and fixed an analogy, I’m stuck thinking about them every time I go to the gas station and undo my gas cap. But every so often, it might behoove you to think about what you normally don’t think about. And not some big thought! Something small, yet valuable. Something—or someone—you take for granted.
*You can see ribosomes as imaged through data combining plus single particle averaging at https://fassciencecores.yale.edu/sites/default/files/cryo-em_discussion_020315.pdf . Or for a complete article see Wolfgang Baumeister's article at http://www.biochem.mpg.de/275009/01_ContentCEM
Cryo-electron tomography at Yale now allows us to “see” ribosomes through some combining tricks that researchers can play on their computers. We can even see ribosomes in whatever color we choose. They kinda look like buttons or gas caps—at least, that’s how I see those ribosomes imaged by Beck et al. (Science , 306, 2004; Nature 449, 2007).* Now, having seen ribosomes up close and personal, I won’t be able to get the image out of my head every time I fill up the truck’s gas tank, and maybe, when I button a shirt.
Was I better off not knowing what ribosomes looked like? I was happy in my ignorance. I wasn’t thinking of them any more than I ordinarily think of breathing (Shoot, just made you think of your breathing, didn’t I?). Anyway, back to my ribosomes, I know they’ve been performing their tasks all my life, but, even having learned about them in biology class, I ignored their essential function and value. They work. I live.
Much of what a society does to hold itself together, to exist, is like the functioning of ribosomes. I don’t pay much attention to the electricity that runs the computer I use to write or the one you use to read. Nor do I pay much attention to the constant functioning of society’s complex interactions and products. When I think of such obliviousness, I realize how truly ignorant and childlike I am.
You might say, “Well, we can’t keep everything in mind constantly, and we can take certain processes and materials for granted simply because they ‘run on automatic’ as far as we are personally concerned.”
Right! If we stop to think about “everything,” we won’t get much done about “something.” So, we choose, and in choosing we ignore. It’s only when what we ignore stops functioning that we pay attention. Garbage workers’ strike? We pay attention. Powerline down? We pay attention.
That brings me to the current buzzword mindfulness. There’s really nothing new in the idea, but it is a call for both self-awareness and other-awareness that every generation considers every so often. Possibly, we are mindful of mindfulness more at this time because we live in, as I have written before, the Age of Distraction. Of course, distractions are relative to circumstances. When one is hungry, there’s little to be mindful of other than the search for food. I guess that means that in a well-fed, affluent society, people are more susceptible to distractions of all kinds. If one is suffering in a war-torn or famine-torn society, the frivolous distractions don’t intrude on mindfulness. But in a society with much, distractions abound.
That begs a question or two from you, “So, what is significant enough to catch my mind? Of what should I be mindful?”
You don’t have to think about your ribosomes. They’ll do their job without your conscious help. Unfortunately, now that I’ve seen them and fixed an analogy, I’m stuck thinking about them every time I go to the gas station and undo my gas cap. But every so often, it might behoove you to think about what you normally don’t think about. And not some big thought! Something small, yet valuable. Something—or someone—you take for granted.
*You can see ribosomes as imaged through data combining plus single particle averaging at https://fassciencecores.yale.edu/sites/default/files/cryo-em_discussion_020315.pdf . Or for a complete article see Wolfgang Baumeister's article at http://www.biochem.mpg.de/275009/01_ContentCEM
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