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0:00
My name is Eduardo Rios.
I work in the section of cellular
signaling at Rush University in Chicago.
As you can see from this picture
taken in the boundary waters of
Northwest Wisconsin, the title of this
lecture is the cell boundary theorem.
The topic is an idea, actually
a principle of the physics that rules
the movement of solutes between cells and
their environment.
As we shall see later, this idea was
known by many researchers in the field of
calcium signaling, and it was probably in
this field that it was first understood.
Given that calcium was one of the first
signaling molecules to be studied and
thought about.
But it is not solely applicable to calcium
as it applies to all transported solutes.
In the lecture we will make sure
that you keep this in mind.
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I thought of introducing this idea
formally in the literature two or
three years ago,
as I saw how often it was ignored or
just contradicted in published work.
I did it in a short paper published in
the Journal of Physiological Sciences.
In purposely formulating it as a theorem,
I meant to emphasize that it was true,
demonstrable from first principles and
therefore could not be violated.
The concept appears trivial to some, but
to others it feels surprising and
not immediately easy to grasp.
Of approximately 40 colleagues,
faculty and students who attend
the cell Signaling Journal Club in our
section about 10 found the idea trivial.
All others had various degrees of
difficulty with it, interestingly,
so did the three referees that
reviewed our manuscript for
the Journal of Physiological Sciences.
