A Holistic Perspective on Living Aggregate

Aggregate is one of the most extensive existing modes of matters in the world. Besides the research objectives of inanimate systems in physical science, the entities in life science can be regarded as living aggregates, which are far from being thoroughly understood despite the great advances in molecular biology. Molecular biology follows the research philosophy of reductionism, which generally reduces the whole into parts to study. Although reductionism benefits the understanding of molecular behaviors, it encounters limitations when extending to the aggregate level. Holism is another epistemology comparable to reductionism, which studies objectives at the aggregate level, emphasizing the interactions and synergetic/antagonistic effects of a group of composed single entities in determining the characteristics of a whole. As a representative of holism, aggregation-induced emission (AIE) materials have made great achievements in the past two decades in both physical and life science. In particular, the unique properties of AIE materials endow them with in situ and real-time visual methods to investigate the inconsistency between microscopic molecules and macroscopic substances, offering researchers excellent toolkits to study living aggregates. The applications of AIE materials in life science are still in their infancy and worth expanding. In this Perspective, we summarize the research progress of AIE materials in unveiling some phenomena and processes of living systems, aiming to provide a general research approach from the viewpoint of holism. At last, insights into what we can do in the near future are also raised and discussed.