From Molecular Biology to Molecular Cardiology ?

Abstract

The medical community around the world is only now beginning to wake up to the slow realiza tion that Molecular Biology has grown out of the laboratory and taken a seat right in the midst 01 clinical Medicine.Suddenly, the whole game is changing. Instead of the decades of slow clinical work and synthesis leading to indirect inferences, the disease states are teginning to be understood by looking directly at alterations at the cell membrane level, the myriads of enzyme systems and characterizat ion ofthe structure of the proteins Envolved.In Cardiology too,Molecular Biology has entered, though a little late, but, in a big way. There great interest in interactions at the cardiac myocyte membrane level, the various receptor charact erization and work on the contractile proteins. The future Internist and the Cardiologist will certainly be much more of a biochemist and physicist than we are. I hope the clinician never dies, to be replaced by laboratory technicians as some people fear. I hope the clinician arms himself with this new knowledge and remains in charge. It would be a pity not to be able to tell the trees from the woods.