Your Cells Send Trillions of Messages Every Second Here’s How

Your Cells Send Trillions of Messages Every Second Here’s How

Today, we’re going to learn what exactly a cellular message is, and how cells get messages from point A to point B via the language of chemicals. The message cells send out is a chemical called a ligand and these ligands come in all shapes and sizes. A ligand is simply a molecule that binds to a receptor and a receptor is exactly what it sounds like. Ligands and receptors can be on the outside of the cell or within a cell, and as you can imagine, there’s a time and place to use different ligands and receptors.

Once a ligand binds to a receptor, the chemical message gets interpreted and any number of biological reactions can happen—cellular processes can start or speed up or slow down, often leading to a complex chain of events that makes up many of the important processes in our biology. But in this episode of Human, we’re focusing on how exactly messages are spoken and heard between cells and not necessarily what the cells do with that information.

A ton of functions around the body depend on cell communication to happen in a timely manner and in this Human Patrick takes a deep dive into the complexities of the mode of cell communication and why it is such a crucial part of the human body.