History of MCB

• Robert Hooke used a primitive microscope to observe cells, specifically the cell walls of plasma membrane of cork, and documented his observations in Micrographia.
• Anton Van Leeuwenhoek, Father of Microbiology, observed bacteria (protozoa) in a water droplet from a pond of water, and these were termed as animalcules.
• Robert Brown observed the cell nucleus from orchids.
• Matthias Schleiden and Theodore Schwann, in 1838, proposed the cell theory which states that the nucleated cell is the universal building block of plant and animal tissues.
• Albert von Kolliker observed the mitochondria at muscle cells and noted their abundance.
• Walther Flemming discovered chromosome behavior in mitosis of animal cells.
• Santiago Ramon y Cajal, Founder of Modern Neurobiology, developed a staining method to observe nerve cells and organization of neural tissue.
• Camillo Golgi applied AgNO 3 staining to observe the Golgi apparatus and the same method was applied to examine nervous tissues in the brain.
• Theodore Boveri observed chromosome behavior during sexual reproduction of horse nematode; hence the term meiosis.
• Palade, Porter, and Sjostrand developed an electron microscope that enabled the observation of intracellular structures.
• George Palade was the first to show the structure of mitochondria and later identified ATPase and ribosomes.
• Fritiof Sjostrand improved the resolution of electron microscope as well as techniques for ultra-thin sectioning and distinguished real observations from distortion artifacts from ultra-thin sectioning.
• Hugh Huxely observed that the muscle contains an array of protein.
• Filaments in the cytoskeleton are referred to as actin and microtubules.
• Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpenteir developed CRISPR/CAS9 to allow modification of specific genes.
• Cytology is the study of the structure and function of plant and animal cell, developed when EM was invented.
• The Human Genome Project is an international research project that aims to create a database of human genome, allowing us to have a holistic understanding for genes linked to different types of diseases.
• Craig Venter made a race in sequencing of Human genome, the first to sequence human genome using traditional method.
• Anzalone et al. used CRISPR/CAS9 to fix defective gene.
• Biochemistry is the study of chemical and physicochemical processes within a living organism.
• Mojmir Petran and collaborators developed the tandem scanning microscope, the first confocal microscope.
• Andrew Fire and Craig Mello developed RNAi, the interference of mRNA to stop the translation to proteins.
• James David Robertson observed the bilayer structure of cell membrane using EM.
• John Kendrew described myoglobin in sperm whale.
• Ian Wilmut was the first to clone an animal (Dolly the sheep).
• The development of cell biology was a merging of three disciplines: Cytology, Biochemistry, and Genetics.
• Martin Chalfie and his colleagues developed fluorescent antibodies to stain cytoskeleton.
• Craig Venter and Hamilton Smith were the first to sequence two bacteria: Haemophilus influenzae and Mycoplasma genitalium, using sanger sequencing.
• Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity of organisms, developed when Avery, Mcleod & McCarthy showed that DNA is the agent of genetic transformation.
• Many Investigators sequenced yeast ( Saccharomyces cerevisae ), the first eukaryotic organism sequenced.