On the Recent Findings of Michael Levin's Group

Abstract

It seems that the findings of Michael Levin's group are revolutionizing biology. The Darwinian vision of life as a struggle for existence is being replaced by life as survival based on cooperation, where conscious collective intelligence plays a key role. Control hierarchies are suggestive. The findings also challenge genetic determinism and suggest that membrane potential serves as a control tool of epigenesis during the embryonic stage. The findings suggest that life forms can be artificially created for various purposes: the applications in medicine can only be guessed at. The most recent findings of Levin's group are highly interesting from the TGD point of view. The first finding is that it is possible to generate non-standard phenotypes also in the case of human cells, that structure implies function and there are only discrete number structures. Second finding is that the population of embryos behaves in an unexpected manner: the larger the number of embryos, the better the chances of embryos to recover from external harmful perturbations. One could argue that the communications between embryos based on Ca⁺⁺ can explain this in terms of standard physics. A more radical view is that new quantum physics with long length scale quantum coherence is needed. This view would suggests the emergence of collective intelligence and consciousness.