The body is a marvel

For a long time I have admired the human body. Not in a dodgy way, in a geeky scientific way. In Yr 13 I did biology for a bit of fun. At uni I did science as well as engineering, mostly for fun. I did biochemistry and pharmacology in third year and the more I have learnt about the way the body works, the more I have been amazed that more things don't go wrong with it.

Do you know there are sequences in cells that are triggered by a molecule attaching to a receptor on the outside of the cell? The molecule is on the outside, the receptor passes the message through the cell membrane to another protein, an enzyme, and then that one passes it to another and then another - sometimes 10 different proteins can be involved to just pass one message through. If one of those proteins is even the tiniest bit altered, it won't work properly. You're stuffed. But it DOESN'T. In millions of cells, enzyme cascades work just the way they should thousands of times over. Amazing.

Do you know that the enzymes have to be made and all they really are is carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and a few others - all those elements you learnt in high school chemistry? It's just that all the parts have to be in exactly the right order, made of the right amino acids, because they twist up on themselves depending on the charge of the molecule to make the right shapes and charges to interact with other proteins and molecules. Incredible.

A cancer cell is one which has just broken out of the system. The normal controls are no longer there. Cells usually know when they bump into neighbours and they stop. Cancer cells barge on through. Cells usually get old and get tidied up and recycled at the right time. Cancer cells keep on keeping on. You only need one cell to have the tiniest of changes to its DNA and it's forever altered and no longer fits in the finely balanced system that is the human body. I remember being intrigued when learning about cancer because it really is quite interesting. Now I have my practical and I am still finding it interesting.

In Psalm 139:14 King David wrote "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well." I too praise the Lord because I am fearfully and wonderfully made, despite a few renegade cells.