How cell membranes patch holes

Cell membranes of our muscle cells can get ripped when we exercise. Ack! But don't shy away from the gym or the great outdoors. Of course our cells have a way to repair the tiny holes. It happens all the time. But we haven't been quite sure how things got patched up. In this article, scientists were actually able to observe the repair of cell membranes of living cells in a living organism. To do this, they used a zebrafish embryo, which is tiny and mostly transparent. They tagged proteins with florescent proteins (a cool technique for seeing molecules which I'll blog about someday) which the researchers knew were involved in repair. Then they burned holes in the cell membrane with a laser and watched what happened under a microscope. Holes in a cell membrane with a laser - wow.

This was done by Prof. Uwe Strähle and Dr. Urmas Roostalu from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and Heidelberg University. Read more about what they observed in the article from Science Daily.

The infamous first post

You know that one where we break the ice, and I tell you why I'm here and what I'm blogging about? That's this post. Sometimes I wish I could be more clever or interesting about these things, but I'm pretty clever about a few other things so it all evens out.

I'm in the middle of writing a book called The Nanotech In You which is under review at an editor's desk. It's a molecular biology tour of your body.

Why? Two reasons. First of all, molecular biology both fascinating and beautiful. Everything our body does is at a basic level an intricate dance between atoms and molecules. Second, if we truly want to understand our bodies and take control of our health, we need to know what's going on under the hood. Our organs work because of what our cells do, which work because of what the molecules inside them do.

I fell in love with molecular biology the day I saw a diagram of a cell membrane. This was a lot more detailed information than just "you are made up of molecules" or even "cells are made up of molecules". This showed what they were, and how they worked. Then I learned about protein creation and the genetic code. The prospect of little computers and little robots inside all of our cells boggled the bigger bio-computer in my skull. Have a genetic problem? It's really a problem with creating some protein you need somewhere. Knowing what that is means we can learn how to fix it.

So, the next post will be about cell membranes. Posts after that may include other explorations of cells, demystifying proteins, bios of dead scientists, cool dead science theories, articles for regular people about current advances in molecular biology and nanotechnology, and whatever other scientific awesomeness takes my fancy.

Mycoplasma mycoides was painted by David S. Goodsell, a fantastic artist/scientist. You can learn more about all of the detail shown in this watercolor here.