title: Challenges and dreams: physics of weak interactions essential to life.
abstract: Biological systems display stunning capacities to self-organize. Moreover, their subcellular architectures are dynamic and responsive to changing needs and conditions. Key to these properties are manifold weak "quinary" interactions that have evolved to create specific spatial networks of macromolecules. These specific arrangements of molecules enable signals to be propagated over distances much greater than molecular dimensions, create phase separations that define functional regions in cells, and amplify cellular responses to changes in their environments. A major challenge is to develop biochemical tools and physical models to describe the panoply of weak interactions operating in cells. We also need better approaches to measure the biases in the spatial distributions of cellular macromolecules that result from the integrated action of multiple weak interactions. Partnerships between cell biologists, biochemists, and physicists are required to deploy these methods. Together these approaches will help us realize the dream of understanding the biological "glue" that sustains life at a molecular and cellular level.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and pchien@biochem.umass.edu gierasch@biochem.umass.edu.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Chien
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Department of Chemistry, Life Science Laboratories, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA 01003.
authors.forename: Lila M
authors.initials: LM
authors.lastname: Gierasch
mesh_terms: D000255:Adenosine Triphosphate / Q000378:metabolism; D001419:Bacteria / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism; D001703:Biophysics; D002450:Cell Communication; D005057:Eukaryotic Cells / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism; D020100:Hydrogels / Q000737:chemistry; D008954:Models, Biological; D044367:Phase Transition; D011485:Protein Binding; D011506:Proteins / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D020100:Hydrogels; D011506:Proteins; D000255:Adenosine Triphosphate