Michael Levin

Somatic cells just means the cells of your body.

So much just means body, right?

So somatic cells are just the... I'm not even specifically making a distinction between somatic cells and stem cells or anything like that.

I mean, basically all the cells in your body, not just neurons, but all the cells in your body.

They form electrical networks during embryogenesis, during regeneration.

What those networks are doing, in part, is processing information about what our current shape is and what the goal shape is.

Now, how do I know this?

Because I can give you a couple of examples.

One example is when we started studying this, we said, okay, here's a planarian.

A planarian is a flatworm.

It has one head and one tail, normally.

And the amazing, the several amazing things about planaria, but basically they kind of, I think planaria hold the answer to pretty much every deep question of life.

For one thing, they're similar to our ancestors.

So they have true symmetry.

They have a true brain.

They're not like earthworms.

They're, you know, they're much more advanced life form.

They have lots of different internal organs, but they're these little, they're about, you know, maybe two centimeters in the centimeter to two in size.

They have a head and a tail.

And the first thing is planaria are immortal.