| Guenter Albrecht-Buehler | |
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Moderated Chat Event ISCID is pleased to announce a live online chat with cell biologist Guenter Albrecht-Buehler. The chat chat will be titled: Cell Intelligence. and will take place at 2pm Eastern on Tuesday August 26th, 2003. Enter the chat here. You should test out the chat system prior to day of the chat. |
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Guenter Albrecht-Buehler Guenter Albrecht-Buehler is the Robert Laughlin Rea Professor of Cell and Molecular Biology at Northwestern University. He received his Ph.D. in physics from the Technische Universitaet, Munich in 1972. Subsequently, Dr. Albrecht-Buehler did post-doctoral work on cell motility at the Friedrich Miescher Institute, Basel Switzerland from 1972-1973. Guenter Albrecht-Buehler's work for the past two decades has centered around what he calls cellular intelligence. When they first started, his lab published the argument that the geometric design of centrioles was consistent with their putative function as cellular instruments to locate microscopic light sources around the cell, and that the most likely range of light detectable by cells is contained in the near infrared. |
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Indeed, they found that 3T3 cells and CV1 cells were able to detect microscopic, pulsating infrared light sources at a distance, and that the centrosome was the location of the detection device. More interestingly, the cells were able to locate weak signal sources next to strong ones as if they were able to 'see' different objects. Therefore, they described the phenomenon as a form of rudimentary 'vision' of cells. In independent experiments they showed that BHK cells on one face of a thin glass window were able to respond to the orientation of other BHK cells on the other side. Therefore, one may suspect that cells normally emit pulsating infrared signals and that the described infrared 'vision' is used by cells to detect each other at a distance. Such a capacity of cells would imply that their behavior is controlled by very complex data integration systems that are, so far, unknown to biology. Most recently, his group has found that the pulsation frequency altered the motile behavior of the cells. At present they are searching for the emitters of pulsating near-infrared light signals inside cells or in their natural environment. Preliminary data suggest, that the natural emittors are the mitochondria.
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