Atlas of Cell Organelles Fluorescence PDF

Preface

The idea of an atlas on fluorescence of cell organelles was first inspired by Professor Feroze Nevroze Ghadially's Ultrastructural Pathology of Cells and Matrix. This unique book describes the ultrastructural makeup and alterations of cell organelles in the context of over a thousand pathological conditions. It became somewhat of a challenge to build on the foundations of images obtained from dead and fixed cells an equivalent body of images obtained from living and functioning cells under various physiopathological conditions and in the context of treatment with carcinogens, xenobiotics, chemotherapeutic drugs, and photosensitizers.

The idea of pursuing such studies was born out of the perspectives envisioned by another giant in the field, Professor Albert Policard, one of the first proponents of microcompartmentation. The links of the research expounded in this book are an odyssey of collaborative visits, travels, and interactions. Historically it passes from the thresholds of the Laboratoire de Pathologie Cellulaire, Kremlin Bicêntre run by Marcel Bessis to the Laboratoire de Photobiologie, Muséum National d' Histoire Naturelle in Paris, and then finally to the Papanicolaou Cancer Research Institute and University of Miami.

In the historical context, Professor Bessis and Bo Thorell, my professor at the Karolinska, Stockholm, were quite good friends from their prime years. Another link in this chain of research is that Thorell and Britton Chance, my professor in Philadelphia, were lifelong friends. Thorell's dream was a dynamic pathology of the living cell. Chance"s own dream, and the object of my work in his foundation, was the synthesis of biophysics and cellular pathology. In my sabbatical year I planned to retrace this parable which justiÞably should be called "My Scientific Odyssey from Philadelphia to Miami through Paris and Stockholm."

The endpoint of the vision projected by Policard leads to the birth of three new disciplines in cellular biology: microecology, the science of microecosystems; microethology, behavior in microscopic systems; and microrheology, the science of microcurrents or microcirculation in living cells. All these interactions and visions are not without their symbolism. The chain extends from Policard to his student Bessis and Bessis' students Giuliana Moreno and Christian Salet. I would like therefore to introduce some memorabilia of my French connection. In his conversations, Bessis often used to say "Mon maître Policard avait dit..." Thus I have found it appropriate to include here a facsimile of Policard's book cover and his dedication to Moreno (Figure I and Figure II). In the last year of his life, Bessis attempted the realization of one of Policard's dreams, the founding of a center for microecological studies, as documented by the letter announcing the news of his untimely death (Figure V).

At this juncture it seems pertinent to recall a very special tradition in the life of French academicians: the award of an academic sword to new members of the French Academy of Science on the occasion of their joining this august assembly. As expressed in the address at the occasion of this award, the academic sword carries the aura of aristocracy: the aristocracy of talent and spirit. As the emblem of a certain spirit, the sword expresses ornamental prodigality, beauty of material, voluptuousness of form, and artistic creativity. Scientific friends and colleagues of the recipient from all over the world are asked to contribute components that are then artistically combined in the design of the sword (Figure III, Figure IV).

Policard has been the innovator and the promoter who started this unbroken chain of scientific endeavors. The path goes from cellular ultrastructure to cellular pathology, imaging of organelles in living cells in the dynamic context of physiopathological processes, to the triple disciplines of microecology-microethology-microrheology. The current book of fluorescent cell organelles is a precursor that should lead to further questions and works, leading to subsequent books on cellular pathology and cellular pharmacology.