ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2015
Critical waves and the length problem of biology.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Mitotic Cdc42 waves encode PI(3,4)PScience advances · 2026Article
- The Min-protein oscillations inPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2018Review
- Rhythmicity and waves in the cortex of single cells.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2018Review
- Chemical waves in cell and developmental biology.The Journal of cell biology · 2018Review
- Dissecting the role of conformational change and membrane binding by the bacterial cell division regulator MinE in the stimulation of MinD ATPase activity.The Journal of biological chemistry · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
It is pointed out that the mystery of how biological systems measure their lengths vanishes away if one premises that they have discovered a way to generate linear waves analogous to compressional sound. These can be used to detect length at either large or small scales using echo timing and fringe counting. It is shown that suitable linear chemical potential waves can, in fact, be manufactured by tuning to criticality conventional reaction-diffusion with a small number substance. Min oscillations in Escherichia coli are cited as precedent resonant length measurement using chemical potential waves analogous to laser detection. Mitotic structures in eukaryotes are identified as candidates for such an effect at higher frequency. The engineering principle is shown to be very general and functionally the same as that used by hearing organs.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.