The new architectonics: An invitation to structural biology

The philosophy of art might offer an epistemological basis for talking abou t the complexity of biological molecules in a meaningful way. The analysis of artistic compositions requires the resolution of intrinsic tensions betw een disparate sensory categories-color, line and form-not unlike those enco untered in looking at the surfaces of protein molecules, where charge, pola rity, hydrophobicity, and shape compete for our attentions. Complex living systems exhibit behaviors such as contraction waves moving along muscle fib ers, or shivers passing through the growth cones of migrating neurons, that are easy to describe with common words, but difficult to explain in terms of the language of chemistry, The problem follows from a lack of everyday e xperience with processes that move towards equilibrium by switching between crystalline order and chain-like disorder, a commonplace occurrence in the submicroscopic world of proteins, Since most of what is understood about p rotein function comes from studies of isolated macromolecules in solution, a serious gap exists between what we know and what we would like to know ab out organized biological systems, Closing this gap can be achieved by recog nizing that protein molecules reside in gradients of Gibbs free energy, whe re local forces and movements can be large compared with Brownian motion, A rchitectonics, a term borrowed from the philosophical literature, symbolize s the eventual union of the structure of theories-how our minds construct t he world-with the theory of structures-or how stability is maintained in th e chaotic world of microsystems. Anat Rec (New Anat) 261:198-216, 2000. (C) 2000 Wiley-Liss, Inc.