L1 History of MCB

• 1665: Robert Hooke

  • Used a primitive microscope to describe small pores in sections of cork that he called "cells"
  • Most important publication was Micrographia, a 1665 volume documenting experiments he had made with a microscope
  • He actually observed plant cell walls
  • "little boxes" = cells
• 1674: Anton van Leeuwenhoek

  • Using a microscope, he looked at water droplet that came from a pond water
  • Reported his discovery of Protozoa which he called "animalcules"
  • Sees bacteria for the first time 9 years later
  • Reported his work and documented his observations through the publications in the Royal Society of London
  • Dubbed as the Father of Microbiology
• 1833: Robert Brown

  • Published his microscopic observation of orchids clearly describing the cell nucleus
  • Looked through orchid (plant) cells under the microscope
• 1838: Mattias Schleiden and Theodore Schwann

  • Proposed the cell theory, stating that the nucleated cell is the universal building block of plant and animal tissues
  • Cell Theory:
  • All living things are made up of cells
  • Cells are the basic units of structure and function of living things
  • New cells are only from existing cell
• 1857: Albert von Kolliker

  • Described mitochondria in muscle cells
  • First described it in striated muscles as conspicuous granules, can swell in water, and has a membrane
  • Described from striated muscles
• 1879: Walther Flemming

  • Described with great clarity chromosome behavior during mitosis in animal cells
  • Used fins and gills of salamander
  • mitosis, chromosomes
• 1881: Santiago Ramon y Cajal

  • Developed staining methods that revealed the structure of nerve cells and the organization of neural tissues
  • Founder of modern neurobiology
• 1898: Camillo Golgi

  • Described the Golgi apparatus by staining with silver nitrate
  • Golgi's method was used to visualize nervous tissues in the brain
  • Beginnings of the descriptions of the axons and dendrites of nerve cells
  • Hippocampus: responsible for memory formation and storage
• 1902: Theodor Boveri

  • Linked chromosome and heredity by observing chromosome behavior during sexual reproduction
  • First to see evidence of meiosis in Ascaris megalocephala, the horse nematode
• 1952: Palade, Porter, and Sjostrand

  • Developed methods of Electron Microscopy that enabled many intracellular structures to be seen for the first time
  • "big three" use of EM to describe details of cellular structure
  • George Palade:
  • First to show the structure of the mitochondrion
  • Was even able to visualize a structure that was later identified as ATPase
  • Described small granular components called the ribosomes
  • Keith Porter (Father of Cell Biology):
  • First to publish the electron micrograph of a cell and discovered the ER
• • 1930s - 1950s:
  • 3 disciplines merged to give rise to Cell Biology
  • Cytology: invention of the electron microscope
  • Biochemistry: Kreb elucidated the TCA cycle
  • Genetics: Avery, Mcleod, and McCarthy showed that DNA is the agent of genetic transformation
• 1952: Hugh Huxely

  • Showed the muscles containing arrays of protein filaments - the first evidence of the cytoskeleton
  • Along with J. Hanson, they proposed the sliding theory of muscle contraction
• 1957: James David Robertson

  • Described the bilayer structure of the cell membrane, seen for the first time in EM
• 1960: John Kendrew

  • Described the first detailed protein structure (sperm whale myoglobin) to a resolution of 0.2 nm using X-Ray Crystallography
  • Shared the 1962 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Max Perutz
• 1968: Mojmir Petran and Collaborators

  • Developed the Tandem Scanning Microscope, the first confocal microscope
  • Permits the observer to visualize fluorescent molecules in a single phase of focus thereby creating a vastly sharpened cross-sectioned image
• 1974: Elias Lazarides and Klaus Weber

  • Developed the use of fluorescent antibodies to stain the cytoskeleton
• 1994: Martin Chalfie et al.

  • Introduced the green fluorescent protein (GFP) as a marker in microscopy
  • Useful in monitoring gene expression studies and localization of proteins in living organisms
• 1995: Craig Venter and Hamilton Smith

  • Determined the base sequence of two bacteria: Haemophilus influenzae and Mycoplasma genitalium (first free-living organisms to be sequenced)
• 1996: Many investigators

  • Determined the base sequence of the genome of brewer's yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae), first eukaryotic organism to be sequenced
• 1997: Ian Wilmut et al.

  • Cloned a sheep (Dolly) from an adult sheep udder cell
• 1998: Andrew Fire and Craig Mello

  • Discovered that RNAi works by degrading mRNAs containing the same sequences as an invading dsRNA
  • RNAi is a biological process in which RNA molecules inhibit gene expression by causing the destruction of specific mRNA
• 2003: Many investigators

  • Reported and finished sequence of the human genome
• 2007: Craig Venter and colleagues

  • Used traditional sequencing to obtain the first sequence of an individual human
  • Initiated a race in sequencing the entire human genome
• 2008: Jian Wang and colleagues

  • Used "next generation" sequencing to obtain the first sequence on an Asian (Han Chinese) human
• Fritiof S. Sjostrand:

  • Contributed the first high-resolution pictures of mitochondria and dramatically improved techniques for ultrathin sectioning with minimal distortion
  • Much of his effort went into distinguishing real observations from distortion artifacts
• Jennifer Doudna & Emmanuelle Charpentier

  • gene editing tool