How do we measure what proteins, and other biomolecules, are actually doing in a native context? For tracking where proteins are in the cell: sure, we can pop GFP onto anything we’d like, but now we have a protein that’s lugging around a ~20 kilodalton tube on its back. That’s got to be skewing that protein’s behavior somewhat.
Cell signalling as needing a true name. Biologists talk about cell signalling all the time, but the physical mechanisms by which information is propagated in a cell seem incredibly variable. In a lot of mechanistic-style biology, the processes by which signals are transduced are generally handwaved away. I haven’t seen a lot of useful explanations on why certain modes of signalling are selected for in different contexts.
I think biologists who are working on ways to characterize what the cell is like as a physical environment are going to make a lot of progress on some of the intense variability we see in various phenotypes. Topics like biological noise, phase behaviors within cells, weird poly-/omni-genic phenotypes, all seem really promising to me.
A few for cell biology:
How do we measure what proteins, and other biomolecules, are actually doing in a native context? For tracking where proteins are in the cell: sure, we can pop GFP onto anything we’d like, but now we have a protein that’s lugging around a ~20 kilodalton tube on its back. That’s got to be skewing that protein’s behavior somewhat.
Cell signalling as needing a true name. Biologists talk about cell signalling all the time, but the physical mechanisms by which information is propagated in a cell seem incredibly variable. In a lot of mechanistic-style biology, the processes by which signals are transduced are generally handwaved away. I haven’t seen a lot of useful explanations on why certain modes of signalling are selected for in different contexts.
I think biologists who are working on ways to characterize what the cell is like as a physical environment are going to make a lot of progress on some of the intense variability we see in various phenotypes. Topics like biological noise, phase behaviors within cells, weird poly-/omni-genic phenotypes, all seem really promising to me.