Cell Biology: A Love Affair

Abstract

Having debated and struggled during my sophomore year at Bryn Mawr College to choose between chemistry and English literature, and having come from Iran, a country that has had a love affair with poetry for 2500 years, my metaphor for “form and function” is often a poem. Here is one from Yeats (“Among School Children”): O Chestnut tree, great-rooted blossomer, Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole? O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we tell the dancer from the dance? Mina J. Bissell How indeed? I fell in love with cell biology after chemistry, bacterial genetics, and virology. The field appeared mysterious, complex, and sexy: it was also messy and bumpy around the edges! It was a road “less traveled.” Being adventurous by nature, I took the one less traveled and never looked back. When you are in love, you know it: I felt we could find the “how” through cell biology. To me, cell biology is where all disciplines converge; it is like the shore where land and sea meet. It is rich and contains the secrets of our evolutionary past: cell biology provides the means to unravel these secrets. I think of molecular biology, biochemistry, genetics, and even biophysics and bioengineering as means to do cell biology. It is where a sense of wonder keeps the arrogance at bay—or it should! It lets your imagination soar, lets you let your hair down, and if you can somehow be patient, persistent, and yet rigorous and ambitious, it will bear beautiful and at times even exotic fruit. Imagine the mysteries inherent in how >10 trillion cells were choreographed through millions of years of evolution to make you YOU. Imagine how cells, all with the same genetic material, are programmed for myriads of tasks within our organs. This feat in particular fascinated me: how do cells talk to and influence each other to form uniquely functioning tissues and organs? How do they remember all through long years to retain tissue specificity? What happens when and if cells forget? Do diseases such as cancer or aging reflect “forgetting”? Can we use our knowledge of cell biology to make them remember? In the middle of the revolution in molecular biology and discovery of oncogenes, I took the time to go back to the old cell and developmental biology literature and I was fascinated in particular by two books: Nucleus and Cytoplasm (Harris, 1974 ) and Tissue Interaction and Development (Wessels, 1977 ), both of which alerted me to the fundamental roles of context, extracellular matrix (ECM), shape, and tissue architecture as stars in the evolutionary drama of “dynamic reciprocity” between the ECM and chromatin. I felt the same excitement when I read “Molecular ‘vitalism’” by Kirschner et al. (2000) , their ode to 21st century cell and developmental biology—look it up! Although cell biologists have at their disposal many modern tools, including genomics, proteomics, molecular microscopy, and vital imaging, ultimately to understand human physiology and disease we must integrate and interpret new information at the level of the cell within the context of the tissues. What an opportunity for the young to discover the beauty of science and of cell biology. We still know very little about the cells' secrets. Cell biology, represented by its society, the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB), remains vibrant precisely because it welcomes the young. The future belongs to the students and fellows. Indeed, as ASCB president in the 1990s, together with one of my fellows at the time, Sophie Lelievre, we organized one of the first “postdoctoral societies” in the United States at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and then took the idea to the ASCB to form what now has become a standing and productive committee. The ASCB and its members know that fundamental cell biology remains relevant today, because the cell in context is both the “dancer and the dance.”