History of the Cell
The word cell was coined by Englishman Robert Hooke (1635-1703), after viewing slices of cork in a microscope. The word cell was derived from the Latin word cella meaning small container.
The microscope created new possibilities in the study biology. It allowed scientists to look into a completely new view of cellular biology. Galileo is credited with the invention of the microscope. Two of the main pioneers in microscope usage were Robert Hooke and Antonie von Leeuwenhoek.
Rene Dutrochet discovered, in 1824, that the cell is the fundamental element in the structure of life. The first sightings of the actual movement of a cell were made by Robert Brown in 1827. Brown also discovered the nucleus in 1833. In Berlin, Johannes Muller made the connection between biology and medicine, others soon followed Muller and his connective thinking. One to follow Muller was Theodore Schwann. Schwann created the idea of the "cell theory" in the 1830's and stated that plants consisted of cells. His statement was made after Matthias Schleiden (1804 - 1881) had decided in 1838 that animals are composed of cells. In 1939 Schwann also stated that all organisms consist of one or more cells, and that the cell is the basic structure for all of life.
German Pathologist by the name of Rudolf Virchow (1821 - 1902) altered the thought of cellular biology with his statement that "every cell comes from a cell.” Not even twenty years after this statement, processes of cell reproduction were being described.
In 1898, Camillo Golgi developed a staining technique using silver nitrate that allows the identification of the cellular organelle that now bears his name, the “Golgi apparatus.” The Golgi apparatus is responsible for processing the proteins that are synthesized in the endoplasmic reticulum.
In 1953 Stanley Lloyd Miller conducted his famous primordial soup experiment. His experiment may have possibly shown how life’s building blocks here on earth may have formed. In the experiment he subjected a gaseous mixture of hydrogen, water, methane, and ammonia to an electric discharge for one week. Instead of him showing everyone that spontaneous generation was possible, his primordial soup showed him that it was not. Miller made sure that there was no oxygen in his design, but all throughout life there has been oxygen present.
The first time, the author, Rebecca Skloot heard of Henrietta Lacks was during a biology class at a community college. "Everybody learns about these cells in basic biology, but what was unique about my situation was that my teacher actually knew Henrietta’s real name and that she was black" (Zielinski). This first initial encounter would begin the search for the unknown story behind the real woman, whose name no one had really heard of. Henrietta had cancerous cells taken from her that would be known as HeLa cells in science literature; the first human cells to reliably and proliferately be produced in a laboratory. These cells became one of the crucial research materials for health and genetic science studies (such as developing the polio vaccine, cloning. and gene mapping), the foundation of medical research and scientific discoveries worldwide. They were also the impotence to a great deal of controversy due to them being taken without the knowledge or consent of the donor or her family; "enduring nearly 60 years of anguish directly related to the success of the Hela cell line" as stated in a review by Norman Fost (87). He brought light to
Physicist in the 1900 first started to consider the structure of atoms. The recent discovery of J. J. Thomson of the negatively charged electron implied that a neutral atom must also contain an opposite positive charge. In 1903 Thomson had suggested that the atom was a sphere of uniform positive electrification , with electrons scattered across it like plum in an pudding. (Later known as the Plum Pudding Model)
The primordial Soup theory was discovered in 1920. According to the Russian scientist A.I. Oparin and English Geneticist J.B.S. Haldane life started in a warm pond/ocean in a process that took place 3.8 billion years ago. A combination of chemicals made fatty acids which made protein. In this process a molecule was born in the atmosphere. The molecule was energized with lightning and rain making “organic soup”. The first organisms would have to be simple heterotrophs in order to survive.
Skloot gains credibility by describing researchers who took different approaches to culturing cells. A French surgeon at the Rockefeller Institute named Alexis Carrel grew his “immortal chicken heart.” Many researchers believed it was not possible to have tissues living outside of the body, and Carrel proved them wrong by growing a sliver of chicken-heart tissue in culture successfully. Doctor George Gey was the head of tissue culture research at Johns Hopkins Hospital where Henrietta was treated for her cancer. Dr. Gey, along with his wife, had spent years trying to grow cells outside of the human body in search of the cause and cure for cancer. Most cells they tested either died or hardly grew. In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Skloot writes, “The Geys were determined to grow the first immortal human cells: a continuously dividing line of cells all descended from one original sample, cells that would constantly replenish themselves and never die” (30; ch. 3). Little did they know, they were about to grow the first immortal human cells, using cells they removed fro...
The next theory that he disproved was the “Primordial Soup Theory”. Sir Fred Hoyle scoffed at the ridiculous atheistic notion when he said, “The notion that a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial organic soup here on earth is evidently nonsense of a high order.” “There was no primeval soup, neither on this planet, nor on any other, and if the beginning of life were not random, life must therefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence” (Donyes
Cell biology has made a huge upsurge to the advancement and face of public health. In the novel The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, cell biologists at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland have researched Henrietta Lacks’ cervical cells to find a new life changing discovery: that her cells, other known as HeLa cells, would be everlasting and would replenish themselves and change the picture of medicine. Rebecca Skloot begins the compelling story of this scientific advancement of saving humanity from illness by analyzing the life of Henrietta. Throughout part one, life, Skloot reviews just how these cells were founded, how Henrietta’s life began and how Henrietta’s story continues to be told and researched today.
Primordial Soup Theory claims that life began in a pond or a ocean because of a combination of chemicals from the atmosphere and some form of energy to make amino acids, the monomers of proteins, which would then evolve into all the species. In this theory, the basic building blocks of life came from simple molecules which form the atmosphere.This was then energized by lightning and rain.According to this theory the first organism’s would have to be simple heterotrophs.They would become autotrophs through mutation.However,evidence now suggests that the first organisms were autotrophs..The scientists involved in the hypothesis were A.I Oparin,J.B.S.Haldane, Stanley Miller,Harold Urey, Sidney Fox.Oparin and Haldane both
After conducting an experiment in which Reich believed he had succeeded in developing protozoa from bions, he began to investigate the formation of cancer cells. He believed that cancer cells formed in the same way, and supposedly produced a motion picture in which cancer cells did indeed develop from the breakdown of living tissue. Reich felt certain that this "biopathy" was the result of sexual repression.
The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher by Lewis Thomas consists of short, insightful essays that offer the reader a different perspective on the world and on ourselves.
The industrial revolution was in full swing and people now believed in machines and scientific laws. Subsequently a new generation of scientist wanted to know where new cells really came from and they wanted a mechanistic explanation that did not rely on cells simply springing forth from inanimate matter. Robert Remak, who was born in 1815 and died in 1865, was a polish Jew while his friend Rudolph Virchow, who was born in 1821 and died in 1902, was a politically savvy German. Robert Remak is not well known scientist but he did play a critical role in developing the final piece of cell theory. Remak was Jewish and so obtaining a professorship was always an uphill battle. He ultimately was forced to do his research in a run-down attic apartment in Berlin. Despite these obstacles Robert Remak set out to discover how new cells formed. Remak began his experiments and observations of cells in the 1840s he began by looking where he was sure to see lots of cells forming, the embryos of chickens. He used chick embryos because eggs were very inexpensive and the embryos of chicks are easily accessible. He would begin by cutting a blood vessel from the chick embryo and then pipetting by mouth the blood onto a microscope slide where he would observe the blood cells for hours. As he observed the blood from the chick embryo he saw cells that were going through different stages of cell division. Remak revealed his findings to his friend Virchow who thought it was interesting but ultimately must be a rare event that only applies to the red blood cells of developing chicks. This was hardly a major breakthrough according to Virchow and so Remak the diligent scientist that he was went to look for more evidence. Remak knew he needed to prove that this process occurred in other cells of other animals and so he picked frogspawn to study next. Remak through his
In 1838 Theodor Schwann and Matthias Schleiden were talking about their studies on cells. It has been suggested that when Schwann heard Schleiden describe plant cells with nuclei, he was stuck by the similarity of these plant cells to cells he had observed in animal tissues. The two published his book on animal and plant cells the next year. Schwann summarized his observations into three conclusions about cells.
Spontaneous Generation thought to be the Origin of Life until the 1850's. Through a Science Fair that was sponsored by the French Academy of Science, it was Louis Pasteur who was responsible for disapproving this myth.
This hypothesis emerged when scientists found organic molecules in meteorites from the universe. Some investigators wondered if the abiotic production of organic materials in the soil was absolutely basic to the origin of life. Maybe some organic materials from elsewhere in the universe had arrived in the early earth.
particles and radiation, over 20 billion years ago (History). This theory says that all living things
Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA, has said that “the origin of life appears to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have to be satisfied to get it going” (Horgan 27).2 Noted evolutionary astronomer Frederick Hoyle has described the chances of life having evolved from nonlife to be about as likely as the chances that “a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein” (Johnson 106). Why do respected scientists doubt what textbooks teach as fact? It would appear that these scientists know something that current theories describing the origin of life fail to explain. While current theories describe scenarios in which genetic material such as RNA becomes entrapped in a protective cell membrane as a likely recipe for the formation of life, they generally do not focus on the difficulties of forming and concentrating all of these components in the first place.3 To clarify, current theories suffer from what I call the “cookbook mentality.