Refine
Document Type
- Article (2) (remove)
Language
- English (2)
Has Fulltext
- yes (2)
Is part of the Bibliography
- no (2) (remove)
Keywords
- Stoffwechsel (2) (remove)
Metabolism has long served as a broad organizing concept in Russian and Soviet culture for the exchange of material and energy between organisms and their environment. The Russian term 'obmen veshchestv', literally meaning "exchange of substances", semantically ranges beyond the Latinate 'metabolizm' (metabolism) and provides a framework for reflecting on bodies and material objects as open systems engaged in a constant process of transformation. 'Obmen veshchestv' appears in public discourse in mid-19th century Russia as a calque from the German term 'Stoffwechsel' (or 'Wechsel der Materie'). Its usage in Russia reflects the enduring influence of German science. In this entry, I will explore the development and expansion of this concept of material and energy exchange between organisms and their environment in Russia and the Soviet Union. In the course of a century, metabolism migrated from discussions of plant nutrition into physiology, thermodynamics, and ultimately into the Soviet practice of state economic planning. This entry will therefore pay particular attention to the early Soviet period when existing debates on metabolism took on new urgency as tools for praxis on every scale, from the body of the individual worker to humanity's future collective management of planetary material and energy flows.
Current metabolomics approaches utilize cellular metabolite extracts, are destructive, and require high cell numbers. We introduce here an approach that enables the monitoring of cellular metabolism at lower cell numbers by observing the consumption/production of different metabolites over several kinetic data points of up to 48 hours. Our approach does not influence cellular viability, as we optimized the cellular matrix in comparison to other materials used in a variety of in‐cell NMR spectroscopy experiments. We are able to monitor real‐time metabolism of primary patient cells, which are extremely sensitive to external stress. Measurements are set up in an interleaved manner with short acquisition times (approximately 7 minutes per sample), which allows the monitoring of up to 15 patient samples simultaneously. Further, we implemented our approach for performing tracer‐based assays. Our approach will be important not only in the metabolomics fields, but also in individualized diagnostics.