Biological Sciences
Studying Cells
Studying cells involves examining the fundamental units of life to understand their structure, function, and behavior. This field encompasses various techniques such as microscopy, cell culture, and molecular biology to investigate cellular processes and interactions. By studying cells, scientists gain insights into the mechanisms underlying biological phenomena and can apply this knowledge to areas such as medicine, biotechnology, and environmental science.
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4 Key excerpts on "Studying Cells"
eBook - ePub- Britannica Educational Publishing, Kara Rogers(Authors)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- Britannica Educational Publishing(Publisher)
CHAPTER 6The Study of CellsT he study of cells as fundamental units of living things forms the basis of the field known as cell biology. The earliest phase of cell study began with English scientist Robert Hooke’s microscopic investigations of cork and his introduction of the term cell in 1665. In the 19th century two Germans, the botanist Matthias Schleiden and the biologist Theodor Schwann, were among the first to clearly state that cells are the fundamental particles of both plants and animals. This pronouncement—the cell theory—was amply confirmed and elaborated by a series of discoveries and interpretations.In 1892 the German embryologist and anatomist Oscar Hertwig suggested that organism processes are reflections of cellular processes. His work established cytology (now generally referred to as cell biology) as a separate branch of biology. Research into the activities of chromosomes led to the founding of cytogenetics, in 1902–04, when the American geneticist Walter Sutton and the German zoologist Theodor Boveri demonstrated the connection between cell division and heredity.Modern cell biologists have adapted many methods of physics and chemistry to investigate cellular events. Improvements in techniques for growing cells in the laboratory have revolutionized science and medicine. For example, scientists now can build “bioartificial” tissues for transplantation into patients and are able to investigate individual steps in the process of cell differentiation. These developments have important implications in medicine, specifically for the regeneration of tissue in persons affected by certain diseases.THE HISTORY OF CELL THEORY
Although the microscopists of the 17th century had made detailed descriptions of plant and animal structure and Hooke had coined the term cell
eBook - PDF- Rathoure, Ashok Kumar(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Daya Publishing House(Publisher)
Chapter 1 Introduction to Cell Biology Introduction The earth surrounded by the living and non living things. The living things are regarded as organisms. The living organisms are complicated and highly organized and are composed of many cells, typically of many types. These cells possess sub-cellular structures or organelles, which are complex assemblies of very large polymeric molecules or macromolecules. Crucial events in biomineral formation such as compartmentalization, supersaturation, precipitation, export of macromolecules and cessation require a referee who can control these events with precision and fidelity. This job falls to the cell and in particular, a specialized cell, such as an osteoblast, odontoblast, mantle epithelium or bacterium who has evolved or differentiated into a molecular factory that generates and controls the biomineralization process. All organisms are composed of structural and functional units of life called cells. The study of cell and its organelles is called cytology derived from Greek word kytos meaning container. This includes their physiological properties, their structure organelles they contain, interactions with their environment, their life cycle, division and death. This is done both on a microscopic and molecular level. Cell biology research extends to both the great diversity of single celled organisms like bacteria and the many specialized cells in multicellular organisms like humans. Knowing the composition of cells and how cells work is fundamental to all of the biological sciences. Appreciating the similarities and differences between cell types is particularly important to the fields of cell and molecular biology. These fundamental similarities and differences provide a unifying theme, allowing the principles learned from studying one cell type to be extrapolated and generalized to other cell types. Research in cell biology is closely related This ebook is exclusively for this university only.
- Stevo Najman(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- IntechOpen(Publisher)
Section 5 New Methods in Cell Biology 22 Salivary Glands: A Powerful Experimental System to Study Cell Biology in Live Animals by Intravital Microscopy Monika Sramkova, Natalie Porat-Shliom, Andrius Masedunkas, Timothy Wigand, Panomwat Amornphimoltham and Roberto Weigert Intracellular Membrane Trafficking Unit, Oral and Pharyngeal Cancer Branch, National Institutes of Dental and Craniofacial Research, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, USA 1. Introduction Mammalian cell biology has been studied primarily by using in vitro models. Among them, cell cultures are the most extensively used since they make possible to study in great detail the molecular machineries regulating the biological process of interest. Indeed, cell cultures offer several advantages such as, being amenable to both pharmacological and genetic manipulations, reproducibility, and relatively low costs. However, their major limitation is that the architecture and physiology of cells in vitro may differ considerably from the in vivo environment. This reflects the fact that cells in a living organism i) have a three-dimensional architecture, ii) interact with other cell populations, iii) are surrounded by an extracellular matrix with a specific and unique composition, and iv) receive a number of cues from the vasculature and from the nervous system that are essential for maintaining their functions and differentiation state (Cukierman et al., 2001; Ghajar and Bissell, 2008; Xu et al., 2009). In the last two decades, cell biology has greatly benefited from major technological advances in light microscopy that have enabled imaging virtually any cellular process at different levels of resolution.
eBook - PDF- A. L. Stanford(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Academic Press(Publisher)
UNIT I Becoming Acquainted with Living Systems This page intentionally left blank CHAPTER I The Biologist's View of Life Characteristics of Life 4 Reproduction 5 Growth 5 Metabolism 5 Movement 6 Responsiveness 7 A Few Biological Generalizations 7 Cellular Organization 9 Observation of Cellular Structures 10 Cellular Structure and Components 11 The Nucleus 11 The Cytoplasm 12 Other Organelles 13 Plant Cells 14 Nuclear Control of Cellular Processes 15 Cellular Division 17 What Causes Cells to Divide? 17 The Stages of Mitosis 18 Interphase 18 Prophase 18 Metaphase 19 Anaphase 20 Telophase 20 Cell Differentiation 20 Biological Classification 21 References and Suggested Reading 23 Biophysics is the application of the techniques, approaches, and know-ledge of the physical sciences to the problems of the Ufe sciences. In a sense, 3 4 I . T H E B I O L O G I S T ' S V I E W O F L I F E it is not new. Many contributions to life science have come from physicists and chemists over a century ago. In another sense it is particularly new. The science of biology^ the study of structure and function of animals and plants, has emerged in recent years into the realm of a molecular science. The problems now confronting biologists require the techniques of many disciplines—physics, engineering, chemistry, psychology, and mathe-matics. Biophysics is but one name for an effort to consolidate all our scientific and technological forces to attack the numerous new problems that have arisen in the study of living things. The interdisciplinary nature of the current problems of the biological sciences places additional demands on the individual scientist, engineer, and student. The classic compartmentalizations of education no longer seem adequate. Every area of formal training has developed its own tech-niques, formalisms, and (worst of all) its own jargon. To every student falls the burden of learning entire new languages, and this is crucial.
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