Rhythm 'n' biology: what happens if cell biology and techno music meet?

Abstract

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Peering down a microscope, what a layperson may regard as strange fuzzy structures could be an exciting discovery for the trained scientist. On the other hand, while the scientist might only see useful information, the layperson may marvel at the hidden beauty of the microscopic world. To watch bacteria swim towards a food source or an amoeba slowly crawl toward and digest an unfortunate bacterium does hold a certain fascination of watching life taking place at the smallest level. By granting access into these minute worlds, the scanning electron microscope, for instance, has not only allowed scientists to study the surfaces of many cells and organisms at high magnifications, but has also produced many of the images that have graced the covers of or have been featured as full‐page illustrations in non‐scientific magazines. > The colourful patterns from immunofluorescence or confocal laser scanning microscopy also have a striking beauty that goes beyond the scientific content Similarly, fluorescently tagged antibodies and the green fluorescent protein (GFP) have revolutionised light microscopy, and many biological publications today contain familiar images of brightly labelled intracellular structures. And it does not stop at simple pictures; conferences on microbiology or cell biology feature an increasing number of presentations that rely on movies of cellular events. But the colourful patterns produced by immunofluorescence or confocal laser scanning microscopy also have a striking beauty that goes beyond the scientific content they represent. This awareness led some scientists to develop a new concept of depicting their work: a form of multimedia presentation that relates a biological story through text, animation, sound, video and even music such that the speaker is redundant. This approach was demonstrated to the auditorium of the Cinema of the Cell session at this year's ELSO conference, organised by …