Table Of Content

Membranes to Molecular Machines Synthesis A series in the history of chemistry, broadly construed, edited by Carin Berkowitz, Angela N. H. Creager, John E. Lesch, Lawrence M. Principe, Alan Rocke, and E. C. Spary, in partnership with the Science History Institute Membranes to Molecular Machines: Active Matter and the Remaking of Life Mathias Grote The University of Chicago Press :: Chicago and London The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2019 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637. Published 2019 Printed in the United States of America 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 1 2 3 4 5 isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 62515- 7 (cloth) isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 62529- 4 (e- book) doi: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226625294.001.0001 Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Grote, Mathias, author. Title: Membranes to molecular machines : active matter and the remaking of life / Mathias Grote. Description: Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identiﬁers: LCCN 2018044853 | isbn 9780226625157 (cloth : alk. paper) | isbn 9780226625294 (e- book) Subjects: LCSH: Molecular biology— Research— History. | Membranes (Biology)— Research— History. | Biotechnology— Research— History. Classiﬁcation: LCC QH506 .G768 2019 | DDC 572.8— dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018044853 ♾ This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso Z39.48- 1992 (Permanence of Paper). To my parents, who taught me to look at small things d’alembert: [ . . . ] Si c’est une qualité générale de la matière, il faut que la pierre sente. diderot: Pourquoi non? d’alembert: Cela est dur à croire. diderot: Oui, pour celui qui la coupe, la taille, la broue et qui ne l’entend pas crier. Denis Diderot, Entretien entre Diderot et d’Alembert, 1769. Contents Preface xi Introduction: The Molecular-Mechanical Vision of Life 1 Descartes among the X- ray machines? Mechanisms, molecular machines, and the epistemology of science 11 Life and matter— another history of the molecular life sciences after 1970 16 Constitutive and exemplary: Bacteriorhodopsin, membranes, and the rise of molecular machinery 20 A note on people and places, times and sources 22 Outline of the book 23 P art One: Taking Membranes Apart, Isolating a Molecular Pump 1 What Membranes Can Tell a Historian and Philosopher of the Life Sciences 29 The cell’s elusive boundaries and the molecular age 33 Neglected dimensions: Membrane structure 35 “The riddle of surface action”— membrane dynamics 39 Membranes as black boxes 41 CoNtENtS viii Pumps and transducers— metaphors in search of a substrate 44 Receptors and transducers, or materializations of cellular communication in the cybernetic age 46 Proteins and the promise of molecular mechanisms 49 The membrane frontier 52 Conclusion 54 2 Active Matter 56 From membrane images to membranes as Stoff— Rockefeller University, 1960s 58 From Stoff to molecule— San Francisco c. 1970 62 Purple to yellow— an active membrane material 66 The chemistry of material activity 68 Membrane structure rendered tangible 72 The new biology of membranes 75 Nature’s pleasant clue on membranes 78 Mechanical matter— Munich, 1970– 1974 79 From color change to molecular mechanism— optical spectrometry 81 Cells in action— toward bioenergetics 84 Plugged into the circuit— a “molecular electric generator,” Moscow 1974 92 The pump takes shape, Cambridge 1973– 75 94 Material bricolage 97 Data instead of images— a new electron microscope 99 Contouring the pump 101 Visualizing molecules and mechanisms 104 Toward cryo- electron microscopy 105 Conclusion– from Stoff to molecular pump 107 Part Two: Remaking Membranes and Molecular Machines 3 Synthesizing Cells and Molecules— Mechanisms as “Plug- and- Play” 113 Making cell simulacra in the test tube— liposomes 116 Reconstituting the bioenergetic cell— Efraim Racker, liposomes, and molecular machinery 119 From chemiosmosis to molecular mechanisms 124 CoNtENtS ix A plug- and- play— biology 126 Remaking life’s molecular inventory 129 Synthetic molecular biologists— making molecules in retorts and by machines 130 Making and unmaking molecules for structure and mechanisms 135 Molecular infrastructures— convenience genes 138 Mastering and playing with molecules 139 Conclusion I: Plug- and- play, mechanisms, and the integration toward the molecular life sciences 142 Conclusion II: From making molecules and cells to synthetic biology? A genealogy of practices in between chemistry and the life sciences 145 4 Biochip Fever: Life and Technology in the 1980s 149 Alternative computing 152 Beyond silicon— lifelike electronics 155 Membranes and proteins as biological technologies 159 Cloning a computer— the ultimate scenario of recombinant DNA 162 Molecular bionics: Self- organization, evolution, and adaptation 164 From protein to prototype: Materializing a “molecular switch” 169 Biotech and molecular electronics in West Germany 171 Visioneering versus upscaling— materializations of molecular devices 174 Conclusion I: Assemblers, Cartesian molecular machines, and active matter 178 Conclusion II: After the fever pitch— a more inclusive history of biotechnology 181 Conclusion 185 Matter, activity, and mechanisms at the interstice of the chemical and the life sciences 186 Molecular machinery in past, present, and beyond 193 The bigger picture— membranes and molecular machines in the history of the life and the chemical sciences 196 Beyond life? Places and scientists after molecular biology 201