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I was playing with David Macaulay's pinball science CD-
ROM and my mind wandered to heat in a cellular box.
Just like the pinball follows circuits in the machine, does
heat flow in circuits like weather inside the biological
cell?
Is the nucleus hotter or colder than its surroundings?
I was
thinking there must be heat circuits or currents
because of the organelles size/shape and varying
densities
of cytoplasmic components. I would have thought
mitochondria are going to be hotter than the rest of the
cell because of ATP supplying oxidation reactions.The
scale of this cellular view would probably be an overview
like the thermal imaging of a human showing hot pits
versus cool extremities.
If infrared images were taken over time of a cell with a
thermal camera microscope then it might show the heat
circuits the cell uses. The temperature range would have
to tightly controlled to give definition between parts of
the
cell.
The pictures could be viewed via a large monitor to give
the standard mathmos art.
IR Microscope 1
http://www.kla-tenc...iy5oCFRKLxwodvAoD3Q
[cowtamer, May 20 2009]
IR Microscope 2
http://www.x20.org/...ared_microscope.htm
no cellular examples yet... [cowtamer, May 20 2009]
Almost Baked!
http://www.phy-astr...nfected%20Cells.pdf
Imaging of cell death via IR microscope [cowtamer, May 20 2009]
More Bakeware
http://www.findrsco...0000-1149884477.jsp
Infrared microscopy attachment -- I want to see someone bake this [cowtamer, May 20 2009]
words can have more than one meaning
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathmos
Barbarella reference [wjt, May 28 2019]
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Annotation:
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I must have missed the last episode. |
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we all know that leather men lack fleshy substance..... |
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/leather men/??? Are they like over baked
gingerbread men? |
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When it comes to the tiny, only the ones with the
expensive machines can flesh it out for the rest of
us. |
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what mechanism would you propose hindering the heat to disperse? |
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Actually, studying heat differences in various parts of a cell (nucleus, ribosomes ... even Different ribosomes) sounds intriguing; especially at different times and when different genes are turned on/off. I especially like your idea of moving thermal 'circuits' - (if I understand you correctly) - and how it might effect the (horribly tangled/complicated) folding of proteins. |
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But the Real Nobel question is: does anybody have any idea how this can be done? (Considering that IR waves (heat waves) are generally too long to view inside a cell and higher frequencies are often necesitated; which, of course, destroy the cell, ie: electron microsope.) |
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(BTW: David Macaulay the architect? Big fan of his...) |
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[loonquawl] Different shapes and makeup of
organelles . Fatty surfaces as opposed to volumes
of polar molecules would have different heat
effects.Different areas would have different heats
because of crowding and types of
reactions/collisions.If there are repeated
differentials a current system would be likely. |
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[Speed Razor] Everyone has seen the thermal
imaging of a human. I was thinking this could be
scaled so to see a single cell. The scale probably
would not be molecular, to start with, but rather
the size of organelles just to get an overview. if a
cell was sliced open then, as the heat bled away,
some data could be gleaned.
A whole lot of cells and slices might give a
weather like picture. |
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David Macaulay maybe an architect. This David M.
is an author of kids->adults educational books. |
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This is actually an intriguing idea. The first problem, as
Mr. Razor pointed out, is the long wavelength (>600nm) of
infra-red radiation. Modern optical microscopy can resolve
below the wavelength of the light but, even so, resolution
will be poor compared to the dimensions of a cell (say
10um). One possible solution would be to use an inert dye
which responded to temperature changes by colour or
fluorescence changes, if such a dye could be created. |
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A second problem is that, on the scales under
consideration, I would expect any thermal gradients to be
very, very tiny - I'd be amazed if there was more than a
0.1°C difference between any two points in a cell. This is
going to be very hard to distinguish. |
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However, it is a very interesting idea, so [+] |
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[wjt], to "slice open" a cell without smooshing it all over the place, you'll either need to (a) freeze it first, (b) cut it with a laser, or (c) concentrate your thoughts on it very hard. The first two will tend to mess with your heat measurements; I'm not sure about the third. |
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we are talking about Barberella here, right? |
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with the heat conductivity of water being as high as it is, and it's specific heat also being high, i do not see how a gradient should be established along distances of ~10e-6m. Even if the fatty envelope of an organelle should have an extraordinarily low coefficient of conductivity, it won't matter because the width of a heat barrier goes into the computation, and those are ~10^-8m thick, max. - |
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[loonquawl] reactions and collisions have to
equate their heat throughout the cell somehow so
there must be differentials. Surely the heat would
rather take the easiest path around an organelle
rather than through. |
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[WcW] Yes, mathmos or larva lamp type of cellular
imaginings. |
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So, other than the scale is outside the wavelength
limit, the temp differentials being to tiny and no
way to look inside the cell ..... well it's an idea,
just. |
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How this might be done: Heat can be indirectly imaged via brownian motion. Tiny visible particles jiggle more in warm than in cold areas. Perhaps in a cell that had taken up a large amount of very tiny, dark, inert particles, the motions of these particles in various areas of the cell could be used to gauge temperature. Moving faceted particles would sparkle at a faster or slower rate, and this might be used to help quanity motion. |
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I must say, "cellular mathmos" does not do much for me as a title. "Cellular thermal microscopy" would be better and would attract more outside attention as regards google searches. If you are into that kind of thing. |
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I initially was thinking of light microscopy to visualize these tiny particles. However maybe you could use an electron microscope or something similar to monitor movement of the particles. Ferrous particles, magnetic or not, moving within a magnetic field will generate an electrical signal that should increase as amount of movement increases. This could be tracked with an electron microscope or similar tool. |
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You could use quantum dots - they're the size of small protein
molecules and pretty inert, and also very bright (in
fluorescence). However, I think the errors in measuring
temperature that way will far outweigh the minuscule
temperature differences in the cell. Instead, the particles
would reflect the local viscosity (which has been done). |
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I don't know why this couldn't be done -- I would not be surprised if it has already. |
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I know an optical microscope can resolve mitochondria (around 30 um) and I don't think using IR would mess that up. |
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You probably just need to focus very carefully and have a very good IR detector. Most microscopes require illumination, and the optics of the microscope might need to be re-engineered to not block IR. |
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Experiment with an IR camera hooked up to a microscope at 10x (to see if the optics even work with IR0, and work your way down from there!! |
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[I can just imagine the fragility of lenses made of NaCl ... :) ] |
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// can resolve mitochondria (around 30 um)// |
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That is one mutha of a mitochondrion. |
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Along the same lines of thought is a Jack-O-
lantern . |
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If Xthere wasX a microscope coupled with an
infrared sensing array is used, would it be possible
to
heat an area/position inside the cell to above
average? laser? |
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Hopefully the heat would follow path of least
resistance, plus make a ghostly face pattern. |
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Can a laser, because of its accurate wave length,
be used to generate heat (kinetic vibration) of a
quantum dot? |
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I was thinking that if the wavelength was slightly
miss-aligned with the electron states in the
quantum dot, the bonds would be vibrated as the
electrons tried to change state. |
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//"microsopy?"// Microsophy would mean 'tiny wisdom', which could apply to the early stages of artificial intelligence. |
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Another objection to the title. I had to look up "mathmos".
Apparently it means mathematicians, which doesn't make
any sense. |
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Apologies, [ notexactly] I accidentally deleted your anno.
You were stating that you looked up my mathmos reference from Wikipedia. |
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I was trying for a wider, blurrier, concept capture. Mind map as much loosely relating stuff as possible. A larva lamp is quite beautiful and makes me think that it's contents, the 'mathmos' type stuff, might be a recurring mechanism throughout the scales of space-time. |
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No big deal; I think you were one of the people whose annos I
mentioned having accidentally deleted in my idea against
accidental anno deletion. |
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Larva lamp sounds interesting, perhaps worth its own idea. |
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Regarding similar phenomena appearing in other places, I saw
something like that in hand soap the other week. I had a
cylindrical glass soap dispenser with a little bit of opaque white
soap in it, and I refilled it with transparent purple soap. Turns out
the purple soap is a bit denser than the white soap, so the white
soap mushroomed up through the purple in a manner reminiscent
of a lava lamp or, well, certain kinds of mushroom. |
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Ah, the art in science and the science in art. |
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A larva lava lamp might be possible if there was a bit of a slow chemical reaction in the blob component which itself has multiple components. |
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Looking at IR camera on wikipedia I found out about
hyperspectral imaging, it might cover this pretty well. |
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Also, if you think of less-than-heat (bigger than heat) you
think of jiggling everything from brownian motion to a
mitochondial membrane (wall) vibrating in place a little. |
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So, synchronize microscope vibrations to cells to see
clearer of chracterize natural jiggling motions: |
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I have read about AFM stages that can position with
picometer (!) accuracy. As a new technology, causing the
motionizing of these microscope stages to vibrate at
various <--> and up down frequencies could reveal the
simultaneous vibration direction and amount of cell
structures by making the imaged thing, like a nucleus
come much higher into focus, or go out of focus in a
predictable way from different stage-added vibrations.
This could be used to map the vibration of organelles and
cytoplasmic contents all over a healthy cell and is similar
to, but different than [wjt]s temperature mapping. |
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