Cells

Stomate, Tradescantia pallida.

Whatever their specialties, all biologists deal with organisms, cells or molecules, all biologists today sooner or later have to interpret the results of their investigations in the light of the theory of evolution.

— Francois Jacob, The Logic of Life (1973), pp. 13-14.

… there were usually about three-score of these small Cells placed end-ways in the eighteenth part of an inch in length, whence I concluded that there must be near eleven hundred of them, or more than a thousand of them in length of an inch and therefore in a square inch above a Million, or 1 166 400, and in a Cubick Inch, above twelve hundred Millions, or 1 259 712 000, a thing most incredible, did not our Microscope assure us of it by ocular demonstration.
— Robert Hooke (1635 – 1703), Micrographia, 1665

The problem before us, then, is to discover how a slow reaction can be made to go faster. The most obvious and well-known method of doing this is by raising the temperature; but this is clearly out of the question in living cells. Another possibility is to make use of mass action, increasing by some means the effective concentration of the reactive substances … this is possible in the cell. There remains a third, the formation of an intermediate compound with another substance. This compound may be supposed to be both formed and again decomposed at a rapid rate, so that the total time taken is much less than that of the original reaction. Now it is evident that something of the kind contemplated by these latter two possibilities is at the bottom of the process called ‘catalysis’ by Berzelius.
— Sir William Bayliss (1860 – 1924), lecture to the Royal Institution, 24 March, 1916.

… the most essential part of a living cell — the chromosome fibre — may suitably be called an aperiodic crystal. In physics we have dealt hitherto only with periodic crystals. To a humble physicist’s mind, these are very interesting and complicated objects; they constitute one of the most fascinating and complex material structures by which inanimate nature puzzles his wits. Yet, compared with the aperiodic crystal, they are rather plain and dull. The difference in structure is of the same kind as that between ordinary wallpaper in which the same pattern is repeated again and again in regular periodicity and a masterpiece of embroidery, say a Raphael tapestry, which shows no dull repetition, but an elaborate, coherent, meaningful design traced by the great master.
— Erwin Schrödinger (1887 – 1961), What is Life? Canto Books 1992, 5.

We have seen that plants are composed entirely of cells, or of organs which are obviously derived from cells … Thus all tissues, all the organs of animals are really one cellular tissue diversely modified. This uniformity if ultimate structure proves that organs really differ one from the other only in the nature of the substances which are contained in the vesicular cells of which they are composed.
— René Joachim Henri Dutrochet (1776 – 1847), Recherches anatomiques et physiologiques sur la structure intime des animaux et des vegetaux, et sur leur motilité. Bailliere, Paris, 1824.

… there is one universal principle of development for the elementary parts of organisms, however different, and this principle is the formation of cells.
— Theodor Schwann (1810 – 1882), explaining his ‘cell theory’, 1839.

The two sexes have equal numbers of autosomes, but females with their two X chromosomes, have a double dose of X-linked genes. One would therefore expect that they would have twice as much of the gene products of X-linked genes as males have, and that this would cause difficulty in the cooperation of X-linked and autosomal genes during development. In fact, males and females are found to have equal amounts of the products of X-linked genes. The theory recently put forward to explain this is that one of the two X chromosomes of female mammals is genetically inactivated or ‘switched off’ at an early stage of development and, although still present in all cells, remains dormant and produces no gene products throughout the further life of the animal. Thus, in effect, both males and females have only a single dose of X-linked genes.
— Mary F. Lyon (1925 – 2014), ‘The X Chromosomes and Gene Action in Mammals’, Penguin Science Survey 1967, Biology, 121.

On the other hand, in one particular type of cell, those of the fly’s salivary glands, it has lately been discovered that the chromosomes are greatly extended. If the hereditary factors, strung out along the chromosomes, are correspondingly elongated, it is just possible that it may be practicable to observe them individually.
— A. W. Haslett, Unsolved Problems of Science, London 1937.

The elementary parts of all tissues are formed of cells in an analogous though very diversified manner, so that it may be asserted that there is one universal principle of development for the elementary parts of organisms, however different, and that this principle is the formation of cells.
— Theodor Schwann (1810 – 1882), Microscopical Researches (1847).

Glass walls do not a prism make
— Duncan Bain (1944 – ) ‘Three new uses for a soft cell’ from Canary Row, Breek-Anathema Press, 1985.

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