The Digital Human: 20 - 023 Sonic Hedgehog Protein

No you have not suddenly come across a gaming blog post nor have I as the author of this post lost the plot. Believe it or not it is one of the processes that occurs in what has been termed the hedgehog signalling pathway. The Hedgehog signalling pathway is a signalling pathway that transmits information to embryonic cells in support of cell differentiation. The cell signalling pathway is the communication between cells. The importance of the term signal is that it is potentially digital information. It’s a message transmitted from one cell to another. This message is generated by a Biological Programming Language. So let us first make it clear that this is a real chemical mixture which has been defined by the SHH gene. Just to complicate matters there is the Desert Hedgehog protein defined by the DHH gene and the Indian Hedgehog protein defined by the IHH gene that also exist within the hedgehog signalling pathway.

Firstly these were not derived from studying hedgehogs but flies. But because the larvae used in the experimentation looked like a hedgehog it acquired this name. So let us look briefly at the Sonic Hedgehog Protein.

The Sonic Hedgehog Protein is called a morphogen. Now the author as an Information Technologist gets really excited by the fact that Alan Turing in his paper “The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis” predicted a chemical mechanism for biological pattern formation decades before research showed this to be a real physical biological process. To the author the building up of the embryo from a single cell and the ongoing maintenance of the human body had to have some design plans. How else would you know to put five fingers on the end of the palm within the design of a hand. Or an ear on each side of the face. Being a cell at the end of a palm how do I know the next cell will be part of a finger and not another bit of palm. Somehow these patterns have to be stored and progress in the making of these patterns recorded so you know how far you have got in the construction process. So I am the last palm cell now make a finger cell. This applies to the bone structure, artery structure, muscle structure and the skin wrapped over them. There must be coordination between them to build things in the right sequence. Sequence is indicative of a time element with this step having to be completed before that the next step. So the bone creation step by step. Then possibly around it the muscle creation step by step. This interwoven with the laying down of the blood pipework (arteries) outgoing and the return pipework with these inclusive of their own pumping muscles. Finally for this to be wrapped with a layer of skin.

This as a subject goes beyond the realms of just analysing the chemical make up of a human body. It moves us into the process of how the human body is made and then maintained.

References

Read up on Sonic Hedgehog

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_hedgehog

Read up on Desert Hedgehog

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_hedgehog_(protein)

Read up on Indian Hedgehog

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_hedgehog_(protein)

Read up on the Hedgehog signaling pathway

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedgehog_signalling_pathway

Read up on the Cell signaling

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_signaling

Read up on Morhogen