Cells: Discovery of The Cell

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Cells

By definition, a cell is the fundamental and structural unit of all living organisms. It is the smallest biological, structural and functional
unit of all plants and animals. Therefore, cells are called the ‘Building Blocks of Life’ or the ‘Basic units of Life’. Organisms made up
of a single cell are ‘unicellular’ whereas organisms made up of many cells are ‘multicellular’. Cells perform many different functions
within a living organism such as digestion, respiration, reproduction, etc and keep it alive.

For example, within the human body, a lot of cells give rise to a tissue → multiple tissues make up an organ → many organs create an
organ system → several organs systems functioning together make up the human body.

Discovery of the cell

Did you know that more than 330 years ago there was no knowledge of cells? This is because they were too small for the naked eye.
The discovery of the microscope made it possible to observe cells and even study them in detail. Although it was the scientist, Robert
Hooke who coined the term ‘cell’ after observing dead cells through his microscope, it was Anton van Leeuwenhoek who first
observed live cells! Many years later, Robert Brown discovered the ‘nucleus’, the engine that makes a cell function.

Cell Theory

In 1838, a German botanist, Matthias Jakob Schleiden was the first to state that cells are the building blocks of all plants. In the
following year, another German botanist, Theodor Schwann stated that cells are the fundamental units of animals too. These
statements ended the notion that plants and animals have fundamental differences in structure.

Their discoveries led to the formulation of the ‘Cell Theory’ which states that cells are the basic units of all living organisms (plants
and animals). But, the cell theory failed to explain how new cells arise. In 1855, Rudolf Virchow, a German physiologist stated in
German ‘Omnis cellula e cellula’ which means that new cells come from already existing cells.

Therefore, the three important points of the modified cell theory are as follows:

 The cell is the basic structural and functional unit of all living organisms.

 All living organisms (plants and animals) are made up of cells.

 All cells arise from pre-existing cells.


In the following years, scientists also discovered that the body units in charge of reproduction are also cells. Here are some fun facts for
you. The female egg (Ovum) is the largest cell in the human body. The smallest cell, on the other hand, is the sperm.

First Cells Seen in Cork


While the invention of the telescope made the Cosmos accessible to human observation, the microsope opened up
smaller worlds, showing what living forms were composed of. The cell was first discovered and named by Robert
Hooke in 1665. He remarked that it looked strangely similar to cellula or small rooms which monks inhabited, thus
deriving the name. However what Hooke actually saw was the dead cell walls of plant cells (cork) as it appeared
under the microscope. Hooke’s description of these cells was published in Micrographia. The cell walls observed by
Hooke gave no indication of the nucleus and other organelles found in most living cells. The first man to witness a live
cell under a microscope was Anton van Leeuwenhoek, who in 1674 described the algae Spirogyra. Van
Leeuwenhoek probably also saw bacteria.
Formulation of the Cell Theory
In 1838, Theodor Schwann and Matthias Schleiden were enjoying after-dinner coffee and talking about their studies
on cells. It has been suggested that when Schwann heard Schleiden describe plant cells with nuclei, he was struck
by the similarity of these plant cells to cells he had observed in animal tissues. The two scientists went immediately to
Schwann’s lab to look at his slides. Schwann published his book on animal and plant cells (Schwann 1839) the next
year, a treatise devoid of acknowledgments of anyone else’s contribution, including that of Schleiden (1838). He
summarized his observations into three conclusions about cells:

1. The cell is the unit of structure, physiology, and organization in living things.
2. The cell retains a dual existence as a distinct entity and a building block in the construction of organisms.
3. Cells form by free-cell formation, similar to the formation of crystals (spontaneous generation).

We know today that the first two tenets are correct, but the third is clearly wrong. The correct interpretation of cell
formation by division was finally promoted by others and formally enunciated in Rudolph Virchow’s powerful
dictum, Omnis cellula e cellula,: “All cells only arise from pre-existing cells”.
Modern Cell Theory

1. All known living things are made up of cells.


2. The cell is structural & functional unit of all living things.
3. All cells come from pre-existing cells by division. (Spontaneous Generation does not occur).
4. Cells contains hereditary information which is passed from cell to cell during cell division.
5. All cells are basically the same in chemical composition.
6. All energy flow (metabolism & biochemistry) of life occurs within cells.

As with the rapid growth of molecular biology in the mid-20th century, cell biology research exploded in the 1950’s. It
became possible to maintain, grow, and manipulate cells outside of living organisms. The first continuous cell line to
be so cultured was in 1951 by George Otto Gey and coworkers, derived from cervical cancer cells taken from
Henrietta Lacks, who died from her cancer in 1951. The cell line, which was eventually referred to as HeLa cells,
have been the watershed in studying cell biology in the way that the structure of DNA was the significant
breakthrough of molecular biology.
In an avalanche of progress in the study of cells, the coming decade included the characterization of the minimal
media requirements for cells and development of sterile cell culture techniques. It was also aided by the prior
advances in electron microscopy, and later advances such as development of transfection methods, discovery of
green fluorescent protein in jellyfish, and discovery of small interfering RNA (siRNA), among others.
A Timeline
1595 – Jansen credited with 1st compound microscope
1655 – Hooke described ‘cells’ in cork.
1674 – Leeuwenhoek discovered protozoa. He saw bacteria some 9 years later.
1833 – Brown descibed the cell nucleus in cells of the orchid.
1838 – Schleiden and Schwann proposed cell theory.
1840 – Albrecht von Roelliker realized that sperm cells and egg cells are also cells.
1856 – N. Pringsheim observed how a sperm cell penetrated an egg cell.
1858 – Rudolf Virchow (physician, pathologist and anthropologist) expounds his famous conclusion: omnis cellula e
cellula, that is cells develop only from existing cells [cells come from preexisting cells]
1857 – Kolliker described mitochondria.
1879 – Flemming described chromosome behavior during mitosis.
1883 – Germ cells are haploid, chromosome theory of heredity.
1898 – Golgi described the golgi apparatus.
1938 – Behrens used differential centrifugation to separate nuclei from cytoplasm.
1939 – Siemens produced the first commercial transmission electron microscope.
1952 – Gey and coworkers established a continuous human cell line.
1955 – Eagle systematically defined the nutritional needs of animal cells in culture.
1957 – Meselson, Stahl and Vinograd developed density gradient centrifugation in cesium chloride solutions for
separating nucleic acids.
1965 – Ham introduced a defined serum-free medium. Cambridge Instruments produced the first commercial
scanning electron microscope.
1976 – Sato and colleagues publish papers showing that different cell lines require different mixtures of hormones
and growth factors in serum-free media.
1981 – Transgenic mice and fruit flies are produced. Mouse embryonic stem cell line established.
1995 – Tsien identifies mutant of GFP with enhanced spectral properties
1998 – Mice are cloned from somatic cells.
1999 – Hamilton and Baulcombe discover siRNA as part of post-transcriptional gene silencing (PTGS) in plants

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