Biostabilization Program, University of California, Davis, California 95616.
Integr Comp Biol. 2002 Jul;42(3):497-503. doi: 10.1093/icb/42.3.497.
Even though water is required for the maintenance of biological integrity, numerous organisms are capable of surviving loss of virtually all their cellular water and existing in a state known as anhydrobiosis. Over the past three decades we and others have established that disaccharides such as trehalose and sucrose are almost certainly involved in stabilizing the dry cells. We discuss here some of the evidence behind the mechanism of this stabilization. Until the past few years this mechanism has been sufficiently appealing that a consensus has been developing that acquisition of these sugars in the cytoplasm may be both necessary and sufficient for anhydrobiosis. We show here that there are other routes to achieve the effects conferred by the sugars and that other adaptations are almost certainly required, at least in environmental conditions that are less than optimal. Under optimal storage conditions, the presence of the sugars alone may be sufficient to stabilize even mammalian cells in the dry state, findings that are already finding use in human clinical medicine.
尽管水是维持生物完整性所必需的，但许多生物能够在几乎失去所有细胞水分的情况下生存，并处于一种被称为“脱水休眠”的状态。在过去的三十年里，我和其他人已经确定，二糖（如海藻糖和蔗糖）几乎肯定参与了稳定干燥细胞的过程。在这里，我们讨论了这种稳定机制的一些证据。直到最近几年，这种机制一直非常有吸引力，以至于人们越来越认为，在细胞质中获得这些糖对于脱水休眠可能是必要且充分的。我们在这里表明，还有其他途径可以达到糖赋予的效果，而且几乎可以肯定还需要其他适应，至少在不理想的环境条件下是如此。在最佳储存条件下，仅存在这些糖就足以稳定干燥状态下的哺乳动物细胞，这些发现已经在人类临床医学中得到应用。
