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DOE OSTI · 1591814

Ultrastructural cellular signatures: does cellular form follow function?

Auer, Manfred
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Abstract

In his watershed 1896 essay The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered, protomodern architect Louis Sullivan famously declared that ‘form follows function’. Could this concept also hold true in biology? Have cells, through evolutionary optimization, adopted a 3D architecture (‘form’) that reflects their function? Or, to keep with the architectural metaphor, how does ‘form’ relate to the cell’s ‘intended function or purpose’? Is there an ultrastructural signature that reflects the ‘constraints and requirements’ of a cell’s function in its specific spatial and temporal context?

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Auer, Manfred. 2019-05-16. Ultrastructural cellular signatures: does cellular form follow function?. https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr%2Fnwz057

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