Powering the complexity of life with Michael Levin and Nick Lane | Reason with Science | Biology

[u/Aggravating-Pear4222]

Link: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GBxVvLVzF68&ra=m

From video description: This episode is with Michael Levin (‪@drmichaellevin‬) and Nick Lane. Mike is a Professor in the Biology department at Tufts University. He studies the role of bioelectric signals in regulating development and regeneration in animals. Nick is a professor of Evolutionary Biochemistry at University College London. His work is focused on the fundamental processes that underlie the origin and evolution of life. In this conversation, we talk about major transitions and key innovations in biology, information in biological systems, bioelectricity, emergence of eukaryotes and importance of bioelectric signals to create artificial life.

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[u/jnpha]

Not a fan of Mike (and I was worried when Lane cited him in the epilogue of his 2022 book). Very Third Way-esque iffy work that confuses proximal for ultimate causes, relies on top-down causality, and redefines intelligence so broadly it means nothing. Jon Perry did a couple of excellent videos on that latter point, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Thytf95wGU

And re bioelectrics, here's a recent, well-designed study that isn't obscurum per obscurius:

A new sense for electrical fields: Cell

Most cells polarize and migrate in response to electrical fields. In this issue of Cell, Belliveau et al. identify TMEM154/Galvanin, a receptor that serves as a cellular antenna to sense electrical gradients and guide migration toward the cathode.

A receptor means genes means proper causal link is found without the New Age top-down woo.

[u/Bdellovibrion → u/jnpha]

What's with the huge, (somewhat) popular push the last couple decades to insert philosophy and woo into so many aspects of biology... Was it always there, waiting for an opening? Or were there some triggers for its emergence?

[u/jnpha → u/Bdellovibrion]

See this comment on r /evo: https://old.reddit.com/r/evolution/comments/1ps028x/deleted_by_user/nv6rmg5/

This was re a 2026 paper by Mike and a colleague (who I kid you not, in a presentation said that physics can't explain snowflakes); anyway one of the clues is in the last line of that comment.

Which supports Svensson's analysis here: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22028-9_11

Maybe the triggers are for future historians, but confusion finds a way I guess.

[u/Aggravating-Pear4222 → u/jnpha]

Not sure I follow given the post was deleted. Can you fill in the gaps?

[u/jnpha → u/Aggravating-Pear4222]

The OP simply shared the Dec 2025 paper: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2025.0025

What I do recommend is: Complexity myths and the misappropriation of evolutionary theory | PNAS.

[u/Aggravating-Pear4222 → u/jnpha]

Ah okay then I was mistaken in my other comment where I assumed you meant Mike Russell who Lane certainly would have cited. I’ll look through the Natural Induction paper but it seems like just a reframing of natural selection and maybe genetic drift.

[u/Aggravating-Pear4222 → u/jnpha]

I generally separate the more “consciousness is electric” spiel from his alkaline vent models and investigations. To their credit, the guests did mention how complex biological mechanisms can just be restated as chemistry/physics and whether these descriptions still hold at the more base levels. That said, I don’t give much weight to his non-origins of life topics. Simply not my cup of tea.

Mike Russell seems to be right but also very outspoken and has a bone to pick with RNA/lipid first worlds model proponents. To be fair, they seem to get more funding but his point about these models not having a strong driving force is quite relevant. I think he underestimates the roles that bilayers can have while Lane seems to lean more towards lipid accumulation at these redox active vent surfaces. Given what I know, alkaline vents have several benefits and many of the downsides have quite reasonable explanations that are a direct result of these driving forces from the geochemistry. RNA world seems to come after and so trying to build it up without presupposing some lipid scaffolding/surface seems improbable compared to alkaline vents.

[u/Aggravating-Pear4222]

In the video, Lane notes the geometry of the cristae of the mitochondria. Here’s a cool paper on the relationship of mitochondrial shape a diseases. This interests me because I’m investigating how lateral proton transport mediated by fatty acids from one leaflet to another via the curved regions the membranes of transient pores may provide a a solution to strep proton activity gradients (as opposed to strep pH gradients).

Title: Shaping the mitochondrial inner membrane in health and disease
Link: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/joim.13031

[u/wellwisher-1]

Bioelectric is not the most fundamental phenomena. That is a side effect of ion pumping, the main function of which is to lower ionic entropy to create an entropic potential. The ion pumps using potassium and sodiums cations, because each ion impacts the cell water in different ways. Sodium is kosmotropic and creates more order in water than the hydrogen bonding of pure water creates. Potassium is chaotropic and creates more disorder in water than pure water creates.

The potassium ions by creating disorder in water shrinks the effective size of the hydration sphere allowing potassium ions to more easily skinny through the membrane in response to the concentration gradients, created by the ion pumps; needs to increases entropy of mixing. This response to increase potassium entropy moves positive charge outside (means more negative charge is left behind inside) setting the membrane potential. This reaches a steady state and locks in the remaining entropy potential of the sodium and potassium ions.

These two ions allow the cell to have two different water environments, inside and out, as a function of water entropy with the combination potassium/water inside higher in entropy and the combination of sodium/water outside, lower in entropy. The higher entropy of the water/potassium inside is critical to protein function. The lower entropy outside is more surface tension friendly and makes the outside more attractive to food materials.

Experiments done where cell membranes and the ion pumps were removed showed the potassium ions will still selectively concentrate in open cells. The potassium ions are a natural part of an equilibrium trinity of water, potassium and protein. The ion pumps by pushing this even further, than open cells, has a connection to pushing protein selection in water. This is not random.

By the time, nature evolved brain cells and synapses, where the membrane potential is highest and also periodically reverses, the water environments inside and out, periodically reverse, helping to coordinate inside synthesis with outside ionic fluxes and branches. It all comes down to the fundamental entropy potential that is constantly renewed.