Emerging Technologies for Nutrition Research: Potential for Assessing Military Performance Capability (1997)
Chapter: 15 Noninvasive Measurement of Plasma Metabolites Using Near-Infrared Spectroscopy
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Discussion
GILBERT LEVEILLE: This is just a reaction. I thought it was a very exciting day. For those of us who have been away from the bench for a long time, it is exciting to see what is happening. The intriguing things to me are how the technology is evolving, and the tremendous number of things we can do with much greater efficiency than we could ever do them before.
Still, the issue that remains is the basic fundamental question that one poses to be answered with the new technology. It is interesting to look at the basic biochemistry that we are now able to explore in noninvasive ways, or at least with minimal invasion. But we still are playing the same tracer games when we chase a few carbons around a metabolic cycle, this is still fun, but I think it still leads us back to what questions we really want to ask.
Someone raised the question of whether what we really need to look at is what is happening at the membrane level and what impact that is having at the total organism level. Clearly that is an important question that we have not addressed, and we need to get to it.
