Discovery of Cells and the Development of Cell Theory

The study of cells started about 330 years ago. Before that time cells escaped notice because of their small size. With the invention of the microscope and its subsequent improvement, cells became visible and many new discoveries were made about them. Even today the study of cells reveals more detail, and its secrets, which are in fact the secrets of life itself, are revealed with ever increasing clarity. 1665: English scientist and microscopist Robert Hooke was the first to observe cells in plant tissue (cork). He drew the cells he saw and also coined the word cell. The word cell is derived from the Latin word cellula which means small compartmentHooke named them cells because they looked like the cells or small rooms that monks live in. Hooke published his findings in his famous work, Micrographia.

1670: Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (16321723) described cells in a drop of pond water using a microscope. A Dutch businessman and a contemporary of Hooke, he also used microscopes and was a physicist. Although future microscopes were to contain more than one lens (compound microscopes), Leeuwenhock's single lens was ground to such perfection that he was able to make great advances and to draw attention to his field. Leeuwenhoek was the first person to observe single-celled animals (protozoa) with a microscope. He described them in a letter to the Royal Society, which published his detailed pictures in 1683. Leeuwenhoek was also the first person, using a microscope, to observe clearly and to describe red blood cells in humans and other animals, as well as sperm cells. In addition, he was the first to see bacteria using a microscope.

Hooke's Microscope

an unbelievably great company of living animalcules, a-swimming more nimbly than any I had ever seen up to this time. The biggest sort bent their body into curves in going forwards. Moreover, the other animalcules were in such enormous numbers, that all the water seemed to be alive. I'm well aware that these my writings will not be accepted by some, as they judge it to be impossible to make such discoveries: but I do not bother about such contradictions. Among the ignorant, they're still saying about me that I'm a conjuror, and that I show people what does not exist: but they're to be forgiven, they know no better. I well know there are whole Universities that won't believe there are living creatures in the male seed : but such things don't worry me, I know I'm in the right.

Hooke's drawing of Cork Cells

One hundred fifty years went by and microscope development made great strides 1833: English Botanist Robert Brown discovered the nucleus in plant cells. 1838: Matthias Jakob Schleiden, a German botanist, concluded that all plant tissues are composed of cells and that an embryonic plant arose from a single cell. He declared that the cell is the basic building block of all plant matter. This statement of Schleiden was the first generalization concerning cells. His conception of the cell as the common structural unit of plants had the profound effect of shifting scientific attention to living processes as they happened on the cellular level. 1839: A year after Schleiden published his cell theory on plants, his friend Theodor Schwann extended it to animals, thereby bringing botany and zoology together under one unifying theory. For the first time, plants and animals were acknowledged to be fundamentally the same in structure. Schwann pulled existing observations together into a theory that stated: 1. Cells are organisms and all organisms consist of one or more cells. 2. The cell is the basic unit of structure for all organisms. In other words, the cell is the basic unit of life. This statement was the second generalization concerning cells and is the most important in the development of biology. It became known as the cell theory. 1855: Taking Brown's original description of nuclei and observations of other scientists on cell division, Rudolf Virchow was able to add a third tenet to the cell theory: 3. All cells develop only from existing cells.

Modern cell theory has expanded to include other principles: 4. The cell contains hereditary information (DNA) which is passed on from cell to cell during cell division. 5. All cells are basically the same in chemical composition and metabolic activities. 6. All basic chemical & physiological functions are carried out inside the cells (movement, digestion, etc) 7. Cell activity depends on the activities of subcellular structures within the cell (organelles, nucleus, plasma membrane)

Answer these comprehension questions about the discovery of cell theory. 1. How is technology important in the development of cell theory? 2. How did von Leeuwenhoeks observations extend knowledge about microscopic creatures? 3. What was significant about Schleiden and Schwanns findings? 4. How is Virchows third tenet similar to Redis conclusion in 1698 from his experiment on spontaneous generation? 5. In what ways are all cells alike?