“All that glisters is not gold.”
Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

For the first time in history yesterday, the city of Berkeley upstaged Hollywood and shined glittering, scientific spotlights made of gold onto a mysterious, microscopic stage that has always produced the greatest, long-running human dramas.  Now, the sky itself appears to be man’s only remaining limit.

The name of this legendary stage – the cell – has long been known, having been chosen by one of its founders (Robert Hooke) in 1665, and the members of its talented guild of actors and directors have been submitted numerous times to probing, invasive interviews—whenever they could be cornered successfully outside of the studio walls.

Luke Lee, a professor of bioengineering at UC Berkeley’s Biomolecular Nanotechnology Center, has developed a technique for studying the behavior of life’s most intricate and important mechanisms, without disturbing or destroying the natural functioning of the arena itself.  Lee and his team of researchers virtually “sprinkle” nano-sized gold particles onto selected biomolecules residing inside a single cell, and the light-absorption or plasmon resonance properties of electrons in these gold “markers” allow scientists to literally watch – and possibly soon direct like Steven Spielberg – cellular processes unfolding in real time, under real conditions.  To quote Dr. Lee:

“Until now, there has been no non-invasive method that can capture the chemical fingerprints of molecules with nanoscale spatial resolution within a single living cell.  What is happening inside a stem cell as it develops into a heart muscle instead of a tooth or a strand of hair? To find out, we need to look at the telltale chemical signals involved as proteins and genes function together within a cell.”

In other words, one of life’s greatest questions (How do dey DO dat?), may now finally be revealed.  The magical morphing or differentiation of identical stem cells into things like skin, bones, and blood is nothing less than the Holy Grail of Biology.  Mother Nature’s most jealously guarded secret.   The high-resolution cameras of science have at last been switched on inside the darkened theater of the living cell, and once its hidden scripts are analyzed and understood, humans may soon become gods of their own destiny.

Hollywood... eat your heart out.

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