Question

1. Explain in your own words why regulation is important. I would like you to use 2 examples, one from human communities and one from the human body in your explanation. Make sure to include how regulation is enabled in each case (i.e. how is communication occurring?).

I will give you an example, so that you know what I am looking for. When you drive a car and approach an intersection, you will receive a signal (communication) that tells you if it is okay to proceed or you must stop. At a lighted intersection, we all know that green means go and red means stop. If you ignore the signal or if there is no signal, cars would be crashing into each other and people could be injured or die. If there was no regulation of intersections throughout a city, chaos would ensue. Here is an interesting thing to consider in this situation: if you were unable to tell red from green (red/green colorblindness) and the red and green lights were randomly placed in the vertical sequence on the semaphore, imagine how confusing the incoming information could be!

For your example of regulation in the human body, describe what would happen if the receiving cell couldn't appropriately receive a signal or the sending cell couldn't appropriately send a signal. These problems lead to disease/homeostatic imbalance.

Answer 1

Regulation is basically means or methods in order to control the way in which something is done in the right manner. Regulation tells us what to do or what not to do at that particular time.

A more regulated human communities are with less chaos. Lets consider that today is the date of election and everyone, baby, child, teenager and an adult go to the pooling booth. Now can a baby or child or teenager have enough knowledge to elect someone as there leader and what would happen if a single person start giving more than one vote. This would lead to a problem in the regulation of the country. That's why we have voter ID that shows who is eligible to vote. This voter ID is basically the regulating agent that helps in organizing the whole procedure of voting. Now only adults with voter ID can vote but only once and elect a candidate to run a country.

The same things happen into our body. Cells communicate with each other not with a spoken language but with chemicals or agents. The four ways of chemical signaling are paracrine signaling, autocrine signaling, endocrine signaling and signaling by direct contact. Now if body is in the need of thyroid hormone, then first the pituitary gland secrete thyroid stimulating hormone in the blood stream. This thyroid stimulating hormone on reaching the thyroid gland, signal it to secrete thyroid hormone that is required for maintaining the basal metabolic rate of the body. This signaling process of cells help them to communicate with each other for the regulation of the body functions.