>>1904352 (PB)
Blood stirs things up with us; it’s a potent trigger for emotions of all kinds, an archetypal symbol that inevitably generates powerful feelings and impulses rooted in archaic brain structures beyond most people’s conscious control. It is an organ that connects almost every cell in the body; it carries nutrients and metabolic waste, oxygen, and carbon dioxide to and from our lungs. It is the transport medium for our immune system, an interlocking complex of signaling proteins and cellular machines like white blood cells and phagocytes—micro machines that engulf and disassemble bacteria and dead cells and that learn, remember, and protect us from disease. The plasma fraction of blood carries vast quantities of information encoded in thousands of proteins; enzymes, hormones, blood factors, and signaling molecules like exosomes and plasmids. Blood is data soup, a rich broth of encoded information that dynamically orchestrates the interaction of every cell and organ system in the body, an intricate liquid network of great beauty and enormous complexity, a continuously flowing, ever changing, interacting, interdependent skein of looping metabolic pathways throughout the body.
https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/201752/beyond-120