The Life of Movement: From Microcinematography to Live-Cell Imaging

Abstract

How do we see life after the century of the gene? This article argues that the post-2000 postgenomic turn was and is a thoroughly visual turn, as well as a theoretical and practical shift away from the central dogma of DNA as master molecule. Live-cell imaging is a rapidly expanding area of scientific visualization of living things whose practice is central in postgenomic biological research and theory. Fluorescent probes enable the visualization of the movement in vivo, over time, of a wide range of vital molecules, for example the movement of motor proteins along the cellular skeleton. Despite its prominence in the life sciences, these moving images have attracted little critical attention outside the scientific community. Comparison with microcinematography of the early 20th century, another time-based medium that also placed the capture of movement at the center of the technique, is used here to frame the emergence of live-cell imaging in the late 20th century and discuss its theoretical significance. This article argues that live-cell imaging was at its origins an animation of a theory of life dominated by the gene. However, focused as it is on the life of proteins, the practice actually facilitated a move away from such dominance, with a rise of a ‘molecular vitalism’: an interest in all cellular molecules as knitted together in a complex moving net in the time and space of the cell. As such, the present moment echoes early 20th-century tensions between the study of structure and function in cellular anatomy versus physiology and puts the focus on molecular movement just as cellular movement was central to earlier practices. Contemporary live-cell imaging does not depict a structure described in a unique moment that explains a life process, but rather visualizes a continuity of movement that constitutes life processes.

Gluing life together. Computer simulation in the life sciences: an introduction

“…Visual representation is fundamental for the processing of data, the analysis of simulation results, and display of complex organic features. Among the technological advancements that most deeply affect the course of twenty-first century life sciences is live-cell imaging (Landecker 2012; Lippincott-Schwartz et al 2001; Miyawaki et al 2003; Papkovsky 2010 ). Live-cell imaging enables scientists to image living organisms over time and under live conditions.…”

The Social as Signal in the Body of Chromatin

“…The proteins that wrap DNA into chromatin, and the ongoing modification of these proteins in relation to the state of the cell and gene transcription activity is a constant set of alterations and shifts. In fact, it is fair to say that chromatin structure is in the process of being rethought as being composed of movement, or to put it another way, a structure is only a frozen moment in the life of molecular flux (Landecker, 2012). For something to change, it has to be undone or closed up actively; for something to last, it has to be maintained actively.…”

DNA portraits: celebrations of the technoself

“…DNA portraits are a form of synecdoche, where parts of creative laboratory production represent much larger and more complex areas of progress and potentials. DNA representations are part of the "postgenomic turn" described as a thoroughly visual turn" that engages with a "continuity of movement that constitutes life processes" [Landecker, 2012]. The perceived simplicity of the image-making processes, and the invisibility of technological histories, simplifies the product, but in the making and remaking of the technoself, only momentarily.…”