Abstract : This is a quite a truism to assert that scientific community has been for centuries in an hunger for observing life in any of its details, beginning with an anthropomorphized conception of life : Hartsoecker was seeking for germ of life like homunculi in germinal cells, nourishing the preformationist theories in developmental biology. For decades, animalcule and manikins were sought with the frenzy and curiosity of Brobdingnag inhabitants willing to scrutinize Lilliputians' activities. Frustrations came along with development of microscopy and the restraining of "life" into smaller and smaller entities, though microscopes had been bartered to scalpel in the search of life's sparkles. DNA was the support of genetic data, inert as a modular set of information can be, around which were dancing and swinging enzymes, assuming transcription and translation of genes into proteins, which in turn were involved in all the aspects of cell life (migration, proliferation, differentiation, death). Nevertheless, those enzymatic activities remained mainly addressed in vitro, and characterized in context where spatiotemporal patterns of activities were lost : fixed cells enabling snapshots, lysates & fragmented cells. A supplementary level of complexity arose when post-translational modifications of proteins were found to regulate those enzymatic activities. Still, cellular life in motion was challenging science to get properly tracked and seen. Single molecules tracking seemed far out from hand and life was getting far from being observed at a glance, discerned by a naked eye.
https://hal.univ-lille.fr/hal-03160218
Contributeur : Lilloa Université de Lille <>
Soumis le : jeudi 11 mars 2021 - 09:42:57 Dernière modification le : vendredi 12 mars 2021 - 03:33:23
Pauline Vandame, Dave Trinel, Corentin Spriet, Jean-Francois Bodart. Genetically-encoded Biosensor for Kinases: To See is to Believe?. Biosensors Journal, 2015, Biosensors Journal, 4 (1), ⟨10.4172/2090-4967.1000113⟩. ⟨hal-03160218⟩