cell history

• Characteristics of living things

  • Movements
  • Respiration
  • Sensitivity
  • Growth
  • Reproduction
  • Excretion
  • Nutrition
• Spontaneous generation


  The belief that living organisms can arise from non-living matter
• Examples of spontaneous generation

  • Generation of mice
  • Wet soil after a flood creating amphibians
  • Garbage creating rats
  • Oyster shells forming as the earth solidified
• Francesco Redi’s Experiment
• John Needham’s Experiment
• Lazaro Spallanzani’s Experiment
• Louis Pasteur’s Experiment
• Theories on the origin of life

  • Spontaneous generation
  • Divine creation
  • Panspermia
• Robert Hooke observed cells in cork in 1665
• Cells


  The basic structural unit of all living organisms
• Anton van Leeuwenhoek created a powerful microscope in 1674
• Matthias Schleiden concluded that all plants are made of cells in 1838
• Theodor Schwann concluded that all animals are made of cells in 1838
• Rudolph Virchow concluded “Omnis cellula e cellula” in 1858
• “All cells are from other pre-existing cells”
• Robert Hooke described cells in microphagia


  1665
• Leeuwenhoek discovered protozoa


  1674
• Brown described the cell nucleus in the cell of the orchid


  1833
• Schleiden and Schwann propose the cell theory


  1838
• Albert von Roelliker realized that sperm cells and egg cells are also cells


  1840
• N. Pringsheim observed how a sperm cell penetrated an egg cell


  1856
• Kolliker described mitochondria

  1857
• Rudolf Virchow expounded on his famous conclusion: omnis cellula e cellula


  1858
• Fleming described chromosome behavior during mitosis


  1879
• Germ cells are haploid, theory of heredity


  1883
• Camillo Golgi described Golgi apparatus


  1898
• Svedberg developed the first analytical ultracentrifuge


  1926
• Behrens used differential centrifugation to separate nuclei from cytoplasm


  1938
• Siemens produced the first commercial transmission electron microscope


  1939
• Coons used fluorescent labelled antibodies to detect cellular antigens


  1941
• Gey and co-workers established a continuous human cell line


  1952
• Crick, Wilkins and Watson proposed structure of DNA double-helix


  1953
• Eagle systematically defined the nutritional needs of animal cell in culture


  1955
• Meselson, Stahl and Vinograd developed density gradient centrifugation in cesium chloride solutions for separating nucleic acids


  1957
• Ham introduced a defined serum-free medium


  1965
• Sato and colleagues published papers showing that different cell lines require different mixtures of hormones and growth factors in serum-free media


  1976
• Transgenic mice and fruit flies are produced


  1981
• Creation of first knockout mouse which contains an artificially introduced mutation in their cells

  1987
• Mice are cloned from somatic cells


  1998
• Human genome DNA sequence draft

  2000