英语科普小知识 细胞如何在电场中移动.docVIP

Like tiny, crawling compass needles, whole living cells and cell fragments orient and move in response to electric fields -- but in opposite directions, scientists at the University of California, Davis, have found. Their results, published April 8 in the journal Current Biology, could ultimately lead to new ways to heal wounds and deliver stem cell therapies. When cells crawl into wounded flesh to heal it, they follow an electric field. In healthy tissue theres a flux of charged particles between layers. Damage to tissue sets up a short circuit, changing the flux direction and creating an electrical field that leads cells into the wound. But exactly how and why does this happen? Thats unclear. ? We know that cells can respond to a weak electrical field, but we dont know how they sense it, said Min Zhao, professor of?dermatology（皮肤病学）?and?ophthalmology（眼科学）?and a researcher at UC Davis stem cell center, the Institute for Regenerative Cures. If we can understand the process better, we can make wound healing and tissue regeneration more effective. ? The researchers worked with cells that form fish scales, called keratocytes. These fish cells are commonly used to study cell motion, and they also readily shed cell fragments, wrapped in a cell membrane but lacking a nucleus, major organelles, DNA or much else in the way of other structures. ? In a surprise discovery, whole cells and cell fragments moved in opposite directions in the same electric field, said Alex Mogilner, professor of mathematics and of neurobiology, physiology and behavior at UC Davis and co-senior author of the paper. ? Its the first time that such basic cell fragments have been shown to orient and move in an electric field, Mogilner said. That allowed the researchers to discover that the cells and cell fragments are oriented by a tug of war between two competing processes. ? Think of a cell as a blob of fluid and protein gel wrapped in a membrane. Cells crawl along surfaces by sliding and ratcheti