School of Biological Sciences, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.
Cell Cycle. 2010 Jun 15;9(12):2330-41. doi: 10.4161/cc.9.12.11911.
Cell population can be viewed as a quantum system, which like Schrödinger's cat exists as a combination of survival- and death-allowing states. Tracking and understanding cell-to-cell variability in processes of high spatio-temporal complexity such as cell death is at the core of current systems biology approaches. As probabilistic modeling tools attempt to impute information inaccessible by current experimental approaches, advances in technologies for single-cell imaging and omics (proteomics, genomics, metabolomics) should go hand in hand with the computational efforts. Over the last few years we have made exciting technological advances that allow studies of cell death dynamically in real-time and with the unprecedented accuracy. These approaches are based on innovative fluorescent assays and recombinant proteins, bioelectrical properties of cells, and more recently also on state-of-the-art optical spectroscopy. Here, we review current status of the most innovative analytical technologies for dynamic tracking of cell death, and address the interdisciplinary promises and future challenges of these methods.
细胞群体可以被视为一个量子系统，就像薛定谔的猫一样，它同时存在于允许生存和死亡的状态。跟踪和理解细胞死亡等具有高时空复杂性的过程中的细胞间变异性是当前系统生物学方法的核心。随着概率建模工具试图推断当前实验方法无法获得的信息，单细胞成像和组学（蛋白质组学、基因组学、代谢组学）技术的进步应该与计算工作齐头并进。在过去的几年中，我们取得了令人兴奋的技术进步，使我们能够以前所未有的准确性实时动态研究细胞死亡。这些方法基于创新的荧光测定法和重组蛋白、细胞的生物电学特性，以及最近的最先进的光谱学。在这里，我们回顾了用于动态跟踪细胞死亡的最具创新性的分析技术的现状，并探讨了这些方法的跨学科前景和未来挑战。
