Today's science tells us that our bodies are filled with molecular
machinery that orchestrates all sorts of life processes. When we think,
microscopic "channels" open and close in our brain cell membranes; when
we run, tiny "motors" spin in our muscle cell membranes; and when we
see, light operates "molecular switches" in our eyes and nerves. A
molecular-mechanical vision of life has become commonplace in both the
halls of philosophy and the offices of drug companies, where researchers
are developing "proton pump inhibitors" or medicines similar to Prozac.
Membranes to Molecular Machines explores just how late
twentieth-century science came to think of our cells and bodies this
way. This story is told through the lens of membrane research, an
unwritten history at the crossroads of molecular biology, biochemistry,
physiology, and the neurosciences, that directly feeds into today's
synthetic biology as well as nano- and biotechnology. Mathias Grote
shows how these sciences not only have made us think differently about
life, they have, by reworking what membranes and proteins represent in
laboratories, allowed us to manipulate life as "active matter" in new
ways. Covering the science of biological membranes in the United States
and Europe from the mid-1960s to the 1990s, this book connects that
history to contemporary work with optogenetics, a method for stimulating
individual neurons using light, and will enlighten and provoke anyone
interested in the intersection of chemical research and the life
sciences--from practitioner to historian to philosopher.
The research described in the book and its central actor, Dieter
Oesterhelt, were honored with the 2021 Albert Lasker Basic Medical
Research Award for his contribution to the development of optogenetics.
