There’s more DNA-dissing is going on, this time in a piece in Aeon arguing that it is bad for society and for biology to think of the cell as an assembly line of molecules controlled by a “boss” in the nucleus. The cell, after all, is more socialistic!
Author Charudatta Navare, whose short bio is given below after his name, advances his thesis that the cell is NOT an entity “controlled” from the top down by the capitalistic nucleus, as if the cell were a “factory” with its sweating workers—the contents of the cell—lashed by the whip of the nuclear DNA. To Navare, that’s simply an invidious capitalistic/patriarchal/classist metaphor. Instead, the “workers”, including everything in the cytoplasm like the ribosomes, mitochondria, vacuoles, vesicles, endoplasmic reticulum, and ribosomes, are independent entities with their own heredity, all cooperating in a genial manner to make the cell function smoothly. As Navare asserts, “the nucleus is only a tiny subset of the hereditary material.” The cell, it seems, is more like a collective farm than a car factory.
The message, which Navare repeats at length, is THE CELL IS NOT A HIERARCHY. The motivation for the misguided view that the Big Boss Nucleus controls the workers is, consciously or not, to read into nature the hierarchy of modern patriarchal society. To Navare, the hierarchical view of the cell not only buttresses a maladaptively structured society, but, most of all damages biology by distorting our understanding.
Navare’s big mistake is this: the nucleus, which contains the genes, really is the boss. Even the mitochondria, which replicate themselves and contain their own genes, interact intimately with the nucleus to perform a number of functions. (The mitochondria, as you may know, are derived from original endosymbiotic bacteria that have, though evolution, been integrated into the cell as an essential organelle. Chloroplasts, essential for photosynthesis, have a similar origin and interact with the nuclear in the same way.) But both of these organelles can function only with the help of nuclear genes. And they’re the sole exception to the notion that prganismal DNA is the recipe for the cell and the organism.
The rest of the organelles in the cytoplasm, then, ultimately derive from genes, as does the spatial organization of the egg that helps set off development. This is not to say that random factors, like chemical concentration in different parts of the egg, can influence development, but at bottom, yes, everything in the cell save the mitochondria and chloroplasts ultimately come from the DNA in the nucleus. Without the Nuclear Boss, the workers lose their jobs and the factory goes kaput. Figuring out how this all evolved, of course, is a difficult issue. But evolve it did, via changes in the DNA.
Click below to read the article in Aeon:
Here’s the thesis (Navare’s words are indenteed):
In short, the textbooks paint a picture of a cellular ‘assembly line’ where genes issue instructions for the manufacture of proteins that do the work of the body from day to day. This textbook description of the cell matches, almost word for word, a social institution. The picture of the cytoplasm and its organelles performing the work of ‘manufacturing’, ‘packaging’ and ‘shipping’ molecules according to ‘instructions’ from the genes eerily evokes the social hierarchy of executives ordering the manual labour of toiling masses. The only problem is that the cell is not a ‘factory’. It does not have a ‘control centre’. As the feminist scholar Emily Martin observes, the assumption of centralised control distorts our understanding of the cell.
A wealth of research in biology suggests that ‘control’ and ‘information’ are not restricted at the ‘top’ bu
t present throughout the cell. The cellular organelles do not just form a linear ‘assembly line’ but interact with each other in complex ways. Nor is the cell obsessed with the economically significant work of ‘manufacturing’ that the metaphor of ‘factory’ would have us believe. Instead, much of the work that the cell does can be thought of as maintaining itself and taking ‘care’ of other cells.
Why, then, do the standard textbooks continue to portray the cell as a hierarchy? Why do they invoke a centralised authority to explain how each cell functions? And why is the imagery so industrially loaded?
It’s capitalism and the patriarchy, Jack! But in fact, the textbooks make DNA the boss because it is the boss. But wait, I’m getting ahead of myself:
All of this coded information in the cytoplasm leads us to ask: why do modern textbooks, which are supposed to present the standard, well-accepted knowledge of the day, continue to portray the cell as hierarchical in structure? Why do science journalists continue to refer to the codes and programs of genes in the nucleus when discussing how life develops and evolves?
I believe that the hold of the centralised view comes from how it resonates with the human social order. The nucleus providing instructions and the cytoplasm performing the labour of ‘nurturing’ sounds ‘natural’ and even ‘obvious’ in a patriarchal society. The central nucleus ordering its ‘underling’ cytoplasm to actually carry out tasks sounds obvious in a class-stratified society.
. . .The reason we find centralised functioning everywhere is not necessarily because it is everywhere. It just appears to be everywhere because of the lens through which we view the world. When scientific narratives, using all the authority of science, project the social hierarchy onto nature, they can reinforce the same hierarchy as ‘natural’. The centralised model from cells to animal social groups suggests that everything in nature is centralised, and that centralisation works. The ‘truth’ about nature is influenced by our values, and this ‘truth’ can then play a role in doubling down and reinforcing the same social values in the world.
. . . I believe that the hold of the centralised view comes from how it resonates with the human social order. The nucleus providing instructions and the cytoplasm performing the labour of ‘nurturing’ sounds ‘natural’ and even ‘obvious’ in a patriarchal society. The central nucleus ordering its ‘underling’ cytoplasm to actually carry out tasks sounds obvious in a class-stratified society.
And this metaphor, says Navare, damages our understanding of biology. I can’t think of how, since scientists have been beavering away at understanding the cell, and I haven’t sees them impeded by a bad metaphor. Perhaps they have, but I can’t think of one example. Navare keeps saying that the view is an impediment, but gives no examples of how. Here are more of his lucubrations:
How science conceptualises the cell also gives us insight into how we think of scientific objectivity. We often think that, when values interfere with science, the quest for truth and accuracy is put at risk. Scientists are supposed to leave their values and beliefs outside their labs. However, research in feminist science studies suggests otherwise. One does not necessarily need to be free of values to do good science, but denying their influence undermines the quality of scientific work. Instead of denial, reflecting on values and biases would help researchers steer clear of the pitfalls. Self-reflection can help scientists identify how their values are shaping their science, and think of better experimental designs that could ‘catch’ their assumptions before they compromise results.
. . .But the trouble with doubling down on this kind of metaphor as a stand-in for science is that assumptions about how a cell ought to function prevent us from understanding how the cell really functions. What is more, when science projects social hierarchies onto the cell, it also reinforces the notion that social hierarchies are ‘natural’.
In fact, Navare says that there are other metaphors that could serve equally well:
. . .Unfortunately, the centralised and hierarchical metaphor, so pervasive in textbooks, is often the only one for the internal workings of the cell.
One alternative metaphor for the cell nucleus, I tentatively suggest, could be a ‘collaborative notebook’. The cell keeps this notebook, and all the cell’s components use it to keep track of their activities and help maintain the cell. The cell ‘writes’ in the notebook, writes in the ‘margins’ and ‘refers’ to its own notes. Cellular organelles sense each other’s needs and take ‘care’ of each other. While the ‘factory’ metaphor attributes control and information to the nucleus, the ‘nucleus as a collaborative notebook’ shows agency on the part of the cell. While the factory metaphor makes the cell seem obsessed with ‘production’, alternative metaphors can highlight the mutual aid among the cellular components and the labour of maintaining the cell.
Try as I might, I fail to see how the Notebook Metaphor is more helpful than the “factory”metaphor, but of course it fits right into the Kropotkin-esque tendency to see mutual helpfulness (one could also see it reflectiong socialism). But truth be told, I’m not that enamored of the factory metaphor, either. All I care about is how the cell works, and you can’t do that without appreciating the overweening effects of genes whose action produces almost everything in the cell, influences how the organism develops, and is, in the end, the result of the selection among genes. Every adaptive aspect of development, including cell structure and function, depends on adaptive changes in the DNA put in place by natural selection (this holds also for how the mitochondria and cytoplasm interact with nuclear DNA).
Here’s how Navare minimizes the effects of genes.
The nucleus, of course, does make some hereditary contribution, and we understand it in great detail. But the nucleus is only a tiny subset of the hereditary material. If we don’t even search for hereditary information in the egg cell – if we never describe that information as hereditary – we will keep propagating the idea that biological inheritance is restricted to the nucleus alone.
Now this is not to say that the construction of a cell or an embryo doesn’t require anything other DNA, but it does require the products of DNA. For example, how does a fertilized egg know which end is going to be the head end and which the tail? And given that, what about the back from front? (Once these are determined, of course, left versus right has already been specified.) It is because the mother’s DNA makes RNAs that are distributed asymmetrically in the egg, and those differential distributions of RNA, via the proteins they make, are what starts the anterior-posterior and dorso-ventral axes from forming. Now these RNAs are moved through the egg cell by microtubules, part of the “cytoskeleton”, so the microtubules must also be there in the egg. But ultimately, it’s the DNA that contains the recipe for these microtubules—and of course the axis-forming RNA.
And all of this has evolved by natural selection causing the differential proliferation—of genes. In the end, everything save some parts of the mitochondria and chloroplasts, is the product of evolution, and that means of changes in DNA. In both evolution and development, it’s DNA all the way down. Even the response of an organism to its environment, like cats growing longer hair in the winter, is an evolved response based on changes in genes in the DNA. The environment is the cue, but the response lies in the genome.
One more example of gene-dissing:
We are told that the genes contain blueprints to make proteins. However, genes do not contain all the information needed to make proteins. They only specify a one-dimensional protein chain; the three-dimensional structure that the proteins take, which is vital for their function, is determined by the cellular environment as well. Further, the way proteins behave also varies with where they are in the cytoplasm. The genetic ‘information’, on its own, is nowhere near enough for the cell to function.
No the proteins largely fold on their own once they are made. But does Navare not realize that the information that makes the linear structure of a protein into a three-dimensional structure rests largely already in the linear arrangement of amino acids, which creates the linear structure of a protein? Once that’s made, the proteins largely fold spontaneously into the appropriate three-dimensional structure, which is of course crucial for enzymes to work and proteins like hemoglobin to function. But without the correct linear structure, specified by the DNA, the right spontaneous folding won’t happen. So again the DNA is largely the boss, and has evolved to produce proteins that fold up the right way. The DNA is even more bossy because sometimes proteins are helped in their folding, or retain their folding, through their interaction with enzymes. What are enzymes? Proteins made by DNA. Again, it’s DNA all the way down.
That aside, Navare manages to get in a timely word for how DEI can help our understanding as well:
Science is undoubtedly a human endeavour. The feminist philosopher Donna Haraway describes science as a conversation between partial perspectives that each individual gets from the vantage point of their position. As Just’s science shows, people with different life experiences might have different perspectives and may ask different questions. [JAC: E. E. Just, one of the only well known black scientists working in the early 20th century, made notable contributions to understanding the cell.] Admittedly, the connections between scientists’ backgrounds and their work are not always so direct. But the social position of scientists can still serve as one of the factors that influence their work. We often say science is self-correcting. We think that science changes its views when new information comes to light. But this new information doesn’t emerge from a vacuum. It doesn’t emerge only from new techniques. It is also generated when diversity and representation are important in their own right from the perspective of equity, diverse perspectives would benefit science most of all. Objectivity is not an individual burden but a collective one. While diversity and representation are important in their own right from the perspective of equity, diverse perspectives would benefit science most of all. Objectivity is not an individual burden but a collective one.
And clearly class has conditioned our view of the cell as well:
Historically, the majority of scientists have been male, upper class, and belonging to the dominant castes and races. It is possible that the social position of scientists helped them relate to the notion of a nucleus that continues discharging instructions while taking for granted the knowledge and skills required in actually doing the work. The Nobel laureate David Baltimore described genes as the ‘executive suite’ and the cytoplasm as the ‘factory floor’. The executive suite appears more valuable and deserving of more remuneration, while the toiling masses on the factory floor are thought to be merely executing the instructions, undervaluing the wealth of explicit and tacit knowledge and skill.
Poor Baltimore, bamboozled by a view of the cell. I guess it was all the dosh that comes with a Nobel Prize that has warped his viewpoint.
There’s a feminist point of view, too, one that presumably sees the cell as more cooperative than a patriarchy would make us think:
Science is often described as objective and value-free, but philosophers of science have pointed out that values can guide the questions that scientists ask, the hypotheses they make, and the way they interpret their results. The field of feminist science studies, in particular, has called into question the sole role of the nucleus where heredity is concerned.
. . . . How science conceptualises the cell also gives us insight into how we think of scientific objectivity. We often think that, when values interfere with science, the quest for truth and accuracy is put at risk. Scientists are supposed to leave their values and beliefs outside their labs. However, research in feminist science studies suggests otherwise.
There are no references for either of these statements. My own view is that we need to draw scientists from throughout society (giving everyone equal opportunities to suceed), but concentrating on merit, which also includes the ability to “think outside the box”. That said, with one exception I haven’t seen fruitful sex-, class- or race-specific ways of approaching biology. The one exception my feeling that women evolutionists helped us concentrate more on female preference as opposed to male traits in sexual selection.
Finally, Navare issues a dire warning of the dangers inherent in a metaphor that, in the end, is only a metaphor. (Bolding is mine.)
If we are unable to conceive of the cell, the basic unit of organisms like ours, without coercive hierarchies, we will never fully appreciate the complexity of nature. If we fail to imagine society without a centralised authority, we will find it difficult to understand or empower the oppressed. Unless we reflect on our assumptions, our science will be loaded with so many landmines it may never unravel all the mysteries of life.
In the end, Navare manages to connect the “factory” view of the cell with oppression in society. We can only free workers from their chains if we free our view of the cell as having a DNA Boss. This, of course, is music to the ears of “progressives”.
Sorry, I can’t agree. If you can find one example of how our understanding of life has been impeded by the “factory” metaphor—which after all isn’t something that biologists hold in their heads as a controlling mantra while they do research—do let me know.
Dammit. Now my Golgi apparatus is demanding equal pay to the nucleus. How am I supposed to afford that?
LOL!
Jesus wept! The Party Line is back.
Lolwut? What is this idiocy?
Next thing we know, someone will object to the term “Central Dogma” because it’s too dogmatic and does not account for Other Ways of Knowing.
Not to mention too heavily skewed in favour of dogs. Central Catma?
My impression is that people have already taken the term “Central Dogma” and run quite wild with it, e.g.: dogma = restrictive & narrow, stifling — to the point where Crick felt misunderstood about the phrase. I think there may be references on this.
Ironically Navare’s thesis seems to be a fine example of values interfering with science. I was kind of hoping that India and other parts non-western would save science from our ideologues. Now I may have to pin my hopes on AI overlords.
My education in cell biology ended when I was 18 but I thought the nucleus just had the DNA in it and was more like a library full of recipes to make things rather than some sort of controlling entity.
Is there also some sort of machinery in there deciding what parts of the DNA are to be transcribed into RNA and sent out to manufacture proteins? I guess there must at least be the machinery to do the transcribing.
The real problem, I think, is argument by analogy. The fact that you can pull out some properties of a system and ma them to equivalent properties of another system doesn’t necessarily mean that the two systems are similar in all – or any other – respects.
Yep, and that machinery is coded for by—the DNA. Your questions about the “machinery” is really asking how development works–how different genes are turned on at different times and in different places. And that’s a textbook in itself.
Now that you’ve mentioned it, I think it would nice to review the “latest” textbook level material on the subject. Do you have any recommendations for graduate-level textbooks that would be good (and that would be available from Amazon)?
“the nucleus just had the DNA in it and was more like a library full of recipes”
That’s … pretty good, IMHO.
Maybe instead of “a”, it should be “the”… or “a copy of libraries”…
And now I hit the limit of metaphor quickly. It’s fun though!
Turns out my mitochondria are all kulaks and I should deport them but I don’t have the energy.
LOL!
[ reads post in email ]
Inner monologue:
“Huh – must be a satire website I accidentally subscribed to. There’s just no way…. OK, though, fine, let’s see what this is about…”
[ looks at WEIT ]
O_o
Where was this published? It’s not clicking all the way, perhaps…
I guess all I’ll do now is what I’ve been doing a lot the past few days :
Science, Politics, and Gnosticism
Eric Voegelin
1968, 1997
Regenery Press, Chicago;Washington D.C.
When I saw this show up in Aeon, I felt a twinge of annoyance and passed it by. Now I have no choice but to engage with the article—at least indirectly through the excerpts above. It met my expectations. Thank you Jerry for your patience in working through the piece. It needed to be rebutted.
I used to go to Aeon regularly until I came to realize that most of their science-oriented articles are written by humanists using lots of words to attempt to say deep things about topics they know only superficially. (I know. I’m not being very charitable, but I will go back to the site again. They occasionally have something worth reading.)
So what Navare is apparently telling us is that the cell is like a kibbutz.
+1!
And this: “using lots of words to attempt to say deep things about topics they know only superficially” Just so — obscure words, words with ambiguous meaning. “big” words. Deep thoughts by….
Then it would be Israeli and they would call it a nazi. This is science after all.
Some cells are in fact very much like factories (e.g. those in glands), most others (of the couple hundred different cell types in humans alone), not so much.
But no examples are given of the benighted textbooks supposedly inculcating students with this nefarious capitalist metaphor.
My strong suspicion is that none of them designate the nucleus a “boss”. The phrase I recall is “control center”.
The opening scene of the first episode of The Three Body Problem is appropriate for today’s audiences. Probably one of the reasons it has been so heavily criticized.
^^^ keen observation.
The physics professor was teaching relativity – a product of (here comes the personal identity part) : Albert Einstein, which led to (here’s the problematics intertwined with the personal political identity ) the atrocities of the atomic bomb. Friend or Enemy of The People?
Mao’s dialectical political warfare, in a nutshell.
I didn’t realize it has been criticized…I just started watching because I always watch new SciFi shows. I’m on episode 4 and am enjoying it. Though a bit miffed they killed “Samwell Tarly.” (Sorry for spoiler.)
And yes, I can see how that scene would get under the skin of the wokerati.
Not just the wokerati, from what I understand some folks in China were upset with it.
I’ve not read the novel(s) so I’ve no idea how the show compares to them, but I thought the show was quite good. My wife was upset after we watched the final episode of this first season, since she has to wait a year to find out what happens next.
I liked the casting too. First time I’ve seen Chief Obrien’s wife (Keiko?) in anything else. She did a good job. Speaking of her, I saw it coming a mile away.
One thing I’m left wondering though. Given the ability to interfere with things on Earth that the aliens have demonstrated they have, why don’t they just knock us back to the stone age?
Aha, perhaps many in China don’t know about Mao’s Cultural Revolution? I have no idea what kind of history is taught there.
Yeah, I’ve always loved Rosalind Chau. She was in the Joy Luck Club in the nineties, but not much else I remember (other than her Star Trek role). I agree about the good casting.
If they knocked us back to the Stone Age, it couldn’t be an 8-part, multiple-season series. 😝
Of course!
This is a bad thing. It prevents us from understanding what’s really going on. We need to “reflect on our values and biases” to catch assumptions which compromise results and not feed into the Naturalistic Fallacy.
THEREFORE—
Here’s a value-laden bias I like better. No way it’s going to distort results. Even better, people who look to nature to see what the right and true natural order for humankind is will see what they ought to see, so will be justified in doing that.
It’s the If You Can’t Beat ‘Em Join ‘Em School of the Naturalistic Fallacy (aka the Reverse Natural Fallacy per PCC)
Many thanks for this interlude of comedy, JAC. It took me back to the 1970s, when I first observed a few pop-Marxists in a Biology department. One, in the UK, liked to refer to DNA as the cell’s capitalist and ribosomes as the proletariat, no kidding! They gathered around a “theoretician” who viewed Biology through the “lens” of abstruse mathematical models somehow related to the regeneration of tentacles in hydras. Most of them preferred the lens of a neighborhood watch committee meeting in revolutionary Cuba—and today, Navare’s new lens is a DEI committee meeting in academia.
It is worth noting that Navare’s degree is not in a specific field of Biology but in Biology Education. His references to a “feminist philosopher” and to the cell as a “conversation” would make that obvious in any case. The only cliché missing in Navare’s lens is the sex “spectrum”, but perhaps that will be included in another article.
^^^ again, we see this – from today’s nooz – the professor of mathematics education.
Reminds me of The Office : manager Ricky Gervais’ assistant keeps saying he is “assistant manager” and Gervais keep correcting him “assistant to the manager”.
In other words, Navare is someone who can’t do actual science but contents himself by telling scientists what to do.
Thank you for this blog. Another winning post.
Many varied metaphors have been used to describe the human genome and its contents. Several years ago, I published an article in the journal “Science” offering a lighthearted and somewhat tongue-in-cheek proposal for another such evocative metaphor. Interested readers can find this article at: https://escholarship.org/content/qt3cg75279/qt3cg75279.pdf.
A splendid essay, although you missed the opportunity to call the intergenic regions a “midden”, historic term for an ancient and informative rubbish heap. You correctly use the word “metaphor” for what our wokies always call a “lens”.
I am sure this would not be publishable today, clever though it is. The reference to “foreigners” alone would bring down the wrath of the editors on you!
Yes, I’m sure you’re right. It’s a far different era now (both scientifically and socio-politically) than it was in the heady days near the turn of the century when the very first human genome was sequenced and this article was published! Still, some of its central tenets remain valid.
Apologies for length.
“Charudatta Navare is a science writer and a science education researcher.”
Our university Faculties of Education have a lot to answer for. The most significant is the dumbing-down of discourse by EdD holders masquerading as scientists and pretending to understand scientific data, models, and analyses.
Navare criticizes the metaphorical structure of our understanding of cells. His concern is that we lack additional metaphors for cell function other than the metaphor of the factory (and top-down control and patriarchy and capitalism).
Why is this metaphorical language a concern? Because Navare himself has only a metaphorical understanding of how cells work. Because he’s not actually one of the scientists who use these simplified clumsy but helpful metaphors as shorthand. Real scientists don’t think that the chromosomes are actually the factory overseers, and that the mitochondria and ribosomes are the wage slaves who are told what to do by the transcript messages sent to them from the central office of the nucleus blah blah. But journalists and EdDs do think this way because they have no other way to conceptualize or organize their limited superficial understanding.
This is increasingly the type of discourse that seeps into Science and Nature and PNAS and Cell and American Naturalist and all our other professional organs and organizations: journalism-level understanding of complex ideas and phenomena, using simplified metaphorical language (the only accessible way for a journalist or EdD to understand these things).
The trick is to problematize the metaphors as inadequate to capture the nuances of the subject — nuances that the journalist himself doesn’t actually understand but perceives to be deep and complex.
The journalist or EdD then accuses actual scientists of having the same superficial and metaphorical understanding the subject, and proposes to solve the problem via a radical alteration of the language used to talk about the subject. Almost always with the goal of flattening some imagined hierarchy, or uplifting some presumed downtrodden or marginalized group, but rarely with the goal of making some new discovery more widely known or pointing to some new discovery that still needs to be made.
“This is increasingly the type of discourse that seeps into Science and Nature and […] using simplified metaphorical language (the only accessible way for a journalist or EdD to understand these things).”
That is part of what is meant by Inclusive.
Quite so. I started reading the article a couple of days ago and was quite happy to consider whether or not the factory metaphor was useful or misleading.
I soon realised that the first sentence of the subhead was true: “Scientific narratives project social hierarchies onto nature.” – and that the author was projecting his own social narratives into his own scientific narratives and hence onto other scientific metaphors.
But I think you have to make and justify stronger arguments to replace one lens with another. Something that good science does as a matter of course.
Apologies for overcommenting :
“Something that good science does as a matter of course.”
Ah – you have successfully revealed the targeted imperfection. Something to do with lenses if science. The formula for transformation is, necessarily, Historical – namely, dialectic.
The project would be application of the perceived rules of Historical transformation by dialectic – Hegel’s Hermetic transformation.
A long comment that’s worth the read.
How dare he assume the sex of the nucleus to be male. It could be a matriarchal system 🤣
How dare you even write “the sex of the nucleus to be male”? Surely we all realize now that the nucleus is on the spectrum?
And it is in a conversation, or possibly comparing notes in a committee meeting, with the cytoplasm. Ask those “feminist researchers in science studies”.
Yeah, but the mitochondria derive from the female gamete, and they’re providing all of the energy, so clearly a patriarchal system.
… so I’ve got trillions of bosses running my show (average male 36 trillion cells) all co-operating to keep the lower classes down and taking Kelcey’s fun point, some are going to be female, male, trans, gay, even! That’s a perfect world, no wonder I haven’t collapsed into bit of blubber… yet.
I wonder how much ATP this author’s mitochondria burned to waste time, writing an article about the cell’s “problematic hierarchy”, when he could have devoted that time, writing an easily accessible public summary about the blue whale’s genome finally being sequenced.
Does Navare even show examples of how texts use the claimed top-down hierarchy? Or is a reader just to believe what this person claims about cell biology text books? I have read cell biology texts, and I don’t recognize this narrative. I suppose a children’s book about cells might put out the spin that the nucleus is the boss, but that should not count. So I think Navare is simply making sh*t up in order to get an article out.
From any text on cell biology, we are told that a cell is a highly interactive system with inter-dependent connections through-out. No component controls everything, and every component depends on myriad others in order to do anything. The analogy that a cell is a collective of sorts is not terrible, but it is also not a new analogy.
For its part, the nucleus stores information but in fact it is as passive as one can imagine. DNA is inert. Un-reactive. It literally does nothing on its own while proteins continually enter the nucleus to draw off RNA information from DNA, repair, and sometimes copy it.
My thoughts while reading this went to considering cancer as a metaphor for leaderless organelles run amok. But then, I am kinda weird.