Table 2.
Speed and scale of some biological processes. Processes are ordered according to increasing frame rates (f) that are required to image them at a resolution Δx′. We calculated f using a simplified version of Eq. 2, f=v∕Δx′ where Δx′ was taken to be 1∕10th of the imaged structure size. Note how slow processes can require high framerates since f also depends on the required imaging resolution. For example, the motion of broken DNA ends is slow (1 nm∕s, the slowest process in the table) but it ranks fourth according to required frame rate.
| # Fig. 2 | Name | Required frame ratef | Required resolution Δx′ (μm) | Size of structure (μm) | Velocityv (μm∕s) | References |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Somite formation in chicken | 6 fph | 10 | 100 | 1.8×10−2 | (Palmeirim et al., 1997), (Kulesa and Fraser, 2002) |
| 2 | Mesodermal cell motion during chicken gastrulation | 1 fpm | 1 | 10 | 1.7×10−2 | (Zamir et al., 2006) |
| 3 | Neural crest cell migration in chicken | 2.4 fpm | 1 | 10 | 40×10−3 | (Kulesa and Fraser, 2000) |
| 4 | DNA broken ends in mammalian cells | 24 fpm | 2.5×10−3 | 25×10−3 | 10−3 | (Soutoglou et al., 2007) |
| 5 | Morphogen diffusion (drosophila Decapentaplegic) | 72 fpm | 2.5×10−3 | 25×10−3 | 3×10−3 | (Kicheva et al., 2007) |
| 6 | Ribosome translating mRNA (E. coli) | 10 fps | 4×10−3 | 40×10−3 | 4×10−2 | (Berg et al., 2001), (Alberts et al., 2002) |
| 7 | DNA Polymerase T7 Polymerizing plasmidic DNA | 15 fps | 2×10−3 | 20×10−3 | 30×10−3 | (Wuite et al., 2000) |
| 8 | Protein folding | 20 fps | 10−3 | 10×10−3 | 2×10−2 | (Cecconi et al., 2005) |
| 9 | Telomere displacement in yeast | 20 fps | 2.5×10−3 | 25×10−3 | 50×10−3 | (Gasser, 2002) |
| 10 | Flagelated cell | 100 fps | 0.1 | 1 | 10 | (Bray, 1992) |
| 11 | Microtubule polymerization of cytoplasmic extracts from xenopus eggs | 167 fps | 3×10−3 | 30×10−3 | 0.5 | (Parsons and Salmon, 1997) |
| 12 | Kinesin I on a microtubule pulling a bead | 180 fps | 5×10−3 | 50×10−3 | 0.9 | (Nishiyama et al., 2002) |
| 13 | Calcium waves during heart development | 150 fps | 5 | 50 | 103 | (Tallini et al., 2006) |
| 14 | Embryonic zebrafish beating heart | 200 fps | 5 | 50 | 103 | (Forouhar et al., 2006), this report |
| 15 | Red blood cells in the developing cardio-vascular system | 103 fps | 1 | 10 | 103 | (Jones et al., 2004) |