Petty Howard R
Department of Ophthalmology, The University of Michigan Medical School, 1000 Wall Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48105, USA.
Biosystems. 2006 Feb-Mar;83(2-3):217-24. doi: 10.1016/j.biosystems.2005.05.018. Epub 2005 Oct 19.
Biological thought in the 20th century was dominated by the study of structures at increasingly minute levels. For biology to advance beyond structural reductionism and contribute its full measure to clinical care, living biological structures must be understood in the context of their collective chemical processes at the relevant chemical time-scales. Using high-speed fluorescence microscopy, we have studied intra- and inter-cellular signaling using shutter speeds ( approximately 100 ns) that remove the effects of wave motion and diffusion from optical images. By collecting a series of such images, stop-action movies of signal trafficking in living cells are created; these have revealed a new level of spatiotemporal chemical organization within cells. Numerous types of chemical waves have been found in living cells expressing a great variety of physical properties. In this article I will review some of these basic findings, discuss these events in the context of information trafficking, and illustrate the potential implications of this work in medicine.
20世纪的生物学思想主要受对日益微观层面结构的研究主导。为使生物学超越结构还原论并充分为临床护理做出贡献,必须在相关化学时间尺度下,从其集体化学过程的背景中来理解有生命的生物结构。我们使用高速荧光显微镜,通过快门速度(约100纳秒)来研究细胞内和细胞间信号传导,这种快门速度消除了波动和扩散对光学图像的影响。通过收集一系列这样的图像,创建了活细胞中信号传输的定格电影;这些电影揭示了细胞内时空化学组织的一个新层面。在表达多种物理特性的活细胞中发现了多种类型的化学波。在本文中,我将回顾其中一些基本发现,在信息传输的背景下讨论这些事件,并阐述这项工作在医学上的潜在意义。