Could Some Cells in Multicellular Organisms Be Ineffective?

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A friend of mine says he has formulated a theory about life which suggests that a decent percentage of cells in a multi-cellular organism doesn't contribute to the organism as a whole and merely exists eating away its resources. Generally speaking, not all cells of type x supposed to do some function y for the body do it, he says. For example not all well-developed cells of the islets-of-langerhans synthesise insulin, not all liver cells secrete bile etc etc. I tried googling about this but no website covered this area. Maybe i need to refine the search terms. Can any of you knowledgeable in this field say whether he is right because this is stunning for me! :o
 

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... I don't think he's based this on any sort of truth.
 


kldickson said:
... I don't think he's based this on any sort of truth.
Do you have experimental data to disprove his claim? And he has based this on his theory alone which involves consciousness of individual cells and stuff. Didn't understand it but was able to relate to some consequences of his theory, one among those is this rogue-cell effect.
 


Well, I guess that would depend on your definition of what the function of a cell is. The only clear example of rogue cells that don't have a function to the body and only feed on it are tumor cells.
 


Monique said:
Well, I guess that would depend on your definition of what the function of a cell is.
Does it? Isn't ALL the cells of islets-of-langerhans "supposed" to produce insulin?

The only clear example of rogue cells that don't have a function to the body and only feed on it are tumor cells
All tumor cells are rogue-cells no doubt. But he was talking about a small section of the "supposedly useful" cells that aren't exactly useful.
 


He does seem to be right. I posted this question in a biology forum and they have confirmed it!
http://www.biology-online.org/biology-forum/about16288.html
The thing is that this guy predicted this, lying on an easy chair contemplating on things without the help of a microscope- Sherlock Holmes way. hmm. i guess all my brain cells have turned rogues! :(
 


sganesh88 said:
He does seem to be right. I posted this question in a biology forum and they have confirmed it!
And because someone said in on a forum it must be right, be a little more critical. We are talking about biology here, we are not a 100% efficient machine, so there are bound to be cells that function below the average or that have lost their function. In the case of someone with liver cirrhosis, the liver cells surely don't function anymore like they should. Would you call those rogue cells?

To answer your question on the Islets of Langerhans: it's no. Not all cells in the islets are supposed to produce insulin, the islets are composed of different types of cells.
 


Monique said:
In the case of someone with liver cirrhosis, the liver cells surely don't function anymore like they should. Would you call those rogue cells?
I am talking of normal persons with no identifiable symptoms.

To answer your question on the Islets of Langerhans: it's no. Not all cells in the islets are supposed to produce insulin, the islets are composed of different types of cells.
This doesn't answer my question as my question didn't solely depend on islets of Langerhans. As i said earlier i don't know much in this field and the islets thing was just an example. The general statement was " Not all well developed cells of type x 'supposed' to do a particular function y do it. There is a small percentage which merely exists-though not harmful either"
 


Islets of Langerhans is not a cell, it's a tissue structure that contains many different cells that does different functions, Y Z U V W. Y cell will do insulin, all of Y. Cells that don't do what they are supposed are not normal. There was probably some development problem, or some other problem that caused it to not working.