(I) Aims and function of the Union

(1) The objects of the International Union for Pure and Applied Biophysics are advancement of education in theScience of Biophysics. In furtherance of this aim the Council may exercise the following powers:

(a) to organize international cooperation in Biophysics and to promote communication between the variousbranches of Biophysics and allied subjects;

to encourage within each adhering body cooperation between the societies that represent the interests ofBiophysics;

to contribute to the advancement of Biophysics in all its aspects.

(2) For these purposes it shall have power:

(a) to set up commissions or bodies for special purposes;

(b) to organize international meetings and conferences;

(c) to collaborate with other scientific organizations;

(d) to act in all ways as a constituent union of the International Council of Scientific Unions in accordance with thestatutes of that body;

(e) to develop any lawful activity deemed helpful to the forwarding of its declared objects.

1. INTRODUCTION 107

2. ORGANIZATION 108

3. THE MAIN GOALS 108

4. SCIENTIFIC ACTIVITIES 109

5. CONNECTION AND COOPERATION WITH OTHER ORGANIZATIONS 109

6. PUBLICATIONS 110

7. CLOSING REMARKS 110

8. HISTORICAL TABLES 111

9. APPENDIX: IUPAB STATUTES (as modified in Amsterdam, 1996) 115

The IUPAB was founded on 2 August 1961 in Stockholm as the International Organization of Pure and Applied Biophysics. The main goal of the Organization was to promote and organize international cooperation in biophysics and molecular biology and to encourage its development and practical application all over the world. Some detailed information on the foundation of the Union was published by A. K. Solomon (first Secretary General) in Quarterly Review of Biophysics.Another summary of the activity of IUPAB was prepared by R. D. Keynes(second Secretary General) in 1976.

Whenever fundamental features of living systems and their molecular basis are reviewed, the problem of timing, of time setting or free open-end running times is only marginally on the desk of research agendas, although the finite ageing as one of the features resulting from time markers is known since long. With the discovery of cellular and most important of cellfree oscillatory processes new concepts and experimental techniques were designed to approach these questions more directly leading not only to a better understanding of timing but strongly contributed to concepts for spatial pattern generation. As given in the list of contents major items in the field of intracellular and intercellular periodic reactions are reviewed in Sections 2–7 in terms of specific properties of various systems and in Section 8 in summing important features common to all oscillatory stems in chemistry and biology. Section 9 draws attention to the problem of patterning in the mesoscopic domains of living systems, which is so basic in terms of the volume dimensions specific for the cellular and subcellular reaction compartments in biology. The last chapter sets some marks on urgent problems currently approached by the combined methods of molecular genetics, biochemistry and computer technologies.

1. INTRODUCTION AND HISTORY 122

2. PERIODIC GLYCOLYSIS: TEMPORAL AND SPATIAL OSCILLATIONS 123

2.1 Cell-free glycolysis 123

2.2 Intact cells 128

2.2.1 Yeast 128

2.2.2 Myocytes 130

2.2.3 β-Cells of the islets of pancreas 131

3. CALCIUM OSCILLATIONS 131

3.1 Temporal oscillations 131

3.2 Calcium waves 136

3.3 Physiology 138

4. MICROTUBULE OSCILLATIONS 140

5. THE MITOTIC OSCILLATOR 141

6. DICTYOSTELIUM DISCOIDEUM 144

7. CARDIOMUSCULAR NETWORK 150

8. GENERAL PROPERTIES OF DYNAMIC SPATIAL PATTERNS 152

9. MICROSCOPIC PATTERNS 156

10. PERSPECTIVES 162

11. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 163

12. REFERENCES 163

Most working proteins, including metabolic enzymes, transcription regulators, and membrane receptors, transporters, and ion channels, share the property of allosteric coupling. The term ‘allosteric’ means that these proteins mediate indirect interactions between sites that are physically separated on the protein. In the example of ligand-gated ion channels, the binding of a suitable ligand elicits local conformational changes at the binding site, which are coupled to further conformational changes in regions distant from the binding site. The physical motions finally arrive at the site of biological activity: the ion-permeating pore. The conformational changes that lead from the ligand binding to the actual opening of the pore comprise ‘gating’. In 1956, del Castillo and Katz suggested that the competition between different ligands at nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) could be explained by formation of an intermediate, ligand-bound, yet inactive state of the receptor, which separates the active state of the receptor from the initial binding of the ligand (del Castillo & Katz, 1957). This ‘binding-then-gating’, two-step model went beyond the then-prevailing drug-receptor model that assumes a single bimolecular binding reaction, and paralleled Stephenson's conceptual dichotomy of ‘affinity’ and ‘efficacy’ (Stephenson, 1956). In 1965 Monod, Wyman and Changeux presented a simple allosteric model (the MWC model) (Monod et al. 1965) that explained the cooperative binding of oxygen to haemoglobin; it was adopted as an important paradigm for ligand-gated channels soon after its initial formulation (Changeux et al. 1967; Karlin, 1967; Colquhoun, 1973).