Scale Shifts, Complexities and Comprehensive Knowledge: Exploring the Construction of the "Aging Erythrocyte" as a Biomedical Object

Maria Strecht Almeida
University of Porto, ICBAS

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     Last modified: June 15, 2005
     Presentation date: 07/14/2005 9:15 AM in MACK 236
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Abstract
At some point in the search for deep mechanistic understanding regarding living systems a call for a scale shift towards higher levels of description and explanation will probably arise. Actually, an important characteristic of contemporary biology lies in the tension between two opposite approaches: the molecular reductionist and the systems trends. The recent development of multi-scale modelling methodologies, for instance, illustrates the acknowledged importance of articulating knowledge produced by those two kinds of approaches.
We are interested in a particular object – the “aging erythrocyte” – and the way it became a biomedical entity, in relation to different spatial and temporal scales. Living systems are both functionally and structurally conceived in multiple and simultaneous levels of organization. This hierarchical multi-scale nature of the living respects both length and time dimensions. A brief review of the published specialized literature shows that the study of the changes that occur during the life span of the human erythrocyte – including physical parameters such as microviscosity –, as well as the study of the renewal of the erythrocyte population in blood, led to the study of the aging process of this cell in elderly individuals. In this way, the range of scales encompassed by those studies crossed fifteen orders of magnitude in time and nine orders of magnitude in length.
Studies on the phenomenon of aging of erythrocytes are rooted in research, undertaken in the early 1900s, on the life span of human erythrocytes and pointing towards a better understanding of the basis of hemolytic anemias as well as the advancement in related medical practices. The expected need for blood transfusions during the First World War also triggered research on this cell and particularly on the conditions for blood preservation. From the initial suggestion of mechanically induced cell destruction in the bloodstream, and later the metabolic failure hypothesis through the decay of some key enzyme – also likely during erythrocyte storage –, by the years 1980s studies were focused on the identification of a specific entity in the cell surface that would be responsible for the removal of old erythrocytes from the circulation. The scale shift implicated in this new understanding is obvious. The present paper aims at the characterization of scale shifts and complexities that followed the dynamics of erythrocyte aging studies, from their early times to the present, when the concept of the (singular) “erythrocyte apoptosis” allows us to imagine the possibility of manipulating the erythrocyte life span in different pathological conditions or when the potential biotechnological application of erythrocytes in drug delivery, using knowledge from cell aging studies, is considered.

Session Title: Knowing, Interpreting and Engaging with New and Old Biocomplexities

Multiple Paper Session:
Other papers in this session:
Life course origins of chronic diseases: How to reconcile the contributions of competing epidemiological approaches
The(unruly) complexity of carcinogenicity, or, how Helicobacter pylori 'causes' cancer