Topic #2: June 19, 2018

The Cell
Theory
ëAbiogenesis
ëBiogenesis
ëPostulates
 Theory of Spontaneous
Generation / Abiogenesis
• Until the early 19th century people
frequently believed in spontaneous
generation of life from non-living matter.
• Classical notions of abiogenesis, now more
precisely known as spontaneous
generation, held that complex, living
organisms are generated by decaying
organic substances, e.g. that mice
spontaneously appear in stored grain or
maggots spontaneously appear in meat.
 Aristotle
— Historia Animalia
— “Mullet, a kind of fish, is the
mud of a dried-up pond that
came to life spontaneously
when rain filled the pond.”
Girolamo Fracastro
— In 1546 the physician
Girolamo Fracastoro
theorized that epidemic
diseases were caused by
tiny, invisible particles or
"spores", which might
not be living creatures,
but this was not widely
accepted.
Sir Thomas Browne
— Thomas Brown — In the 17th century such
assumptions started to be
questioned
— Sir Thomas Browne in his
Pseudodoxia Epidemica,
subtitled Enquiries intoVery
many Received Tenets, and
Commonly Presumed Truths, of
1646, an attack on false
beliefs and "vulgar errors."
Sir Thomas Browne
— His conclusions were not widely accepted,
e.g. his contemporary, Alexander Ross
wrote: "To question this (i.e., spontaneous
generation) is to question reason, sense and
experience. If he doubts of this let him go to
Egypt, and there he will find the fields
swarming with mice, begot of the mud of
Nylus, to the great calamity of the
inhabitants."
Antoni Van Leeuwenhoek
Robert Hooke
Hooke & Leeuwenhoek
—Robert Hooke published the first
drawings of a microorganism in
1665. He is also credited for
naming the cell which he
discovered while observing cork
samples.
Hooke & Leeuwenhoek
— Then in 1676 Anthony van
Leeuwenhoek discovered
microorganisms that, based on his
drawings and descriptions are thought
to have been protozoa and bacteria. This
sparked a renewal in interest in the
microscopic world.
 Needham & Pouchet
John Turberville Needham F. A. Pouchet
— Performed an experiment — Prepared a hay infusion
to test the theory of and introduced “artificial
abiogenesis. air”, presumed to be
— He boiled mutton gravy, uncontaminated.
poured it into a glass vial — In a few days, the infusion
and corked it. After a few contained a rich variety
days, the vial was of microorganisms.
swarming with
microorganisms.
Francisco Redi
— Francesco Redi was an Italian
physician who was the first to
attempt to disprove the Theory
of Spontaneous Generation by
performing a controlled
experiment.
— In 1668, Francesco Redi performed an experiment to check
whether maggots (baby flies) really came from decaying meat.
— He did this by placing meat in a number of jars and covering half
of them with fine gauze while leaving the others uncovered.
— Maggots developed only on the meat in the uncovered jars.
— From this, Redi concluded that the maggots did not come from
the meat, but from tiny eggs that flies had laid on the meat.
— Since the flies could not land on the meat in the covered jars,
they could not lay eggs on that meat, and no maggots formed.
— Therefore, decaying meat could not produce maggots. Only flies
could produce maggots.
— Soon other scientists were able to repeat Redi's experiment, so
many were convinced that living things can not come from
nonliving things.
Redi’s Experiment
— From the 17th century onwards it was
gradually shown that, at least in the case of
all the higher and readily visible organisms,
the previous sentiment regarding
spontaneous generation was false.
— The alternative seemed to be…
omne vivum ex ovo: that every living thing
came from a pre-existing living thing
(literally, everything from an egg)
 Advent of the
Theory of Biogenesis
• With the invention of microscopes after Redi's
death, scientists were able to see tiny
organisms that they could not see with the
naked eye.
• It was discovered that these tiny
microorganisms did appear from decaying
meat, even if it was covered as Redi had
done. This lead scientists to believe that even
though spontaneous generation does not
occur in visible organisms, it may occur in
microorganisms.
Lazzaro Spallanzani
— Lazzaro Spallanzani was
an Italian naturalist (a
type of scientist) who
also attempted to
disprove the Theory of
Spontaneous Generation,
almost one hundred
years after Francesco
Redi's experiments.
 Spallanzani’s Experiment
— In the late 1700's, Lazzaro Spallanzani tried to
disprove abiogenesis by performing a controlled
experiment with broth:
— He put broth into two flasks (glass containers)
and sterilized them both by boiling the broth.
— One of the flasks was left open to the air.
— The other flask was sealed up to keep out any
organisms that might be floating in the air.
— Microorganisms developed only in the
uncovered flask.
Spallanzani
—In 1768 Lazzaro
Spallanzani proved that
microbes came from the
air, and could be killed by
boiling.
Louis Pasteur
— Yet it was not until 1861 that
Louis Pasteur performed a
series of careful experiments
which proved that organisms
such as bacteria and fungi do
not appear in nutrient rich
media of their own accord in
non-living material, and
which supported cell theory.
Pasteur’s Experiment
— Louis Pasteur performed the same type of experiment as
Spallanzani, except both of his flasks allowed air to enter:
— One flask had a straight neck that both air and
microorganisms could enter.
— The other flask had an S-shape neck that allowed air in,
but not microorganisms.
— The broth in the straight neck flask became
contaminated with microorganisms.
— The broth in the flask with an S-shaped neck did not
become contaminated.
Theory of Biogenesis
— Therefore, Louis Pasteur showed that
even though air could get in the flask,
the broth did not produce
microorganisms.
— Scientists finally were convinced that
living things, no matter how small, do
NOT come from nonliving things.
Theory of Biogenesis
— The present theory of where living
things come from is called Biogenesis.
This theory states that living things
come only from other living things. For
example, mice come only from mice,
and microorganisms such as bacteria
can only come from other bacteria.
 Oparin & Haldane

• Primeval Soup: “Soup of Life”

• Since spontaneous generation was
now proved incorrect, many scientists
began to wonder how life started on
Earth. Aleksandr Oparin attempted to
answer this question.
Oparin’s Theory
— In the early 1900's Aleksandr Oparin, a Russian
biochemist, proposed a hypothesis of where life
on Earth came from. He suggested that before
there was life on Earth:
— The oceans (or seas) were hot, not cold like
today
— The Earth's atmosphere (basically the air
around it) was made of gases such as ammonia,
hydrogen, methane and water vapor (and no
oxygen like there is today)
Oparin’s Theory
—Energy from lightning and rays from the
sun caused these gases to combine and fall
into the hot seas of the Earth.
—These combined gases became more
complex, eventually forming simple forms
of life, such as microorganisms.
—Eventually, these organisms have evolved
into various life forms that exist today,
including humans.
 Oparin’s Theory
• Oparin's theory may sound crazy, but there are scientists that
believe this. Basically, this hypothesis suggests that life on
Earth started from nonliving things.
• "Wait a second!" you say, "Oparin's theory is just like
Spontaneous Generation!" The answer is "Yes, it is similar,
but there are some big differences...."
• The old Theory of Spontaneous Generation suggested that
living things came from nonliving things rather quickly, within
a few weeks. But Oparin's hypothesis is that this form of
Spontaneous Generation took much longer, and happened a
long time ago with intense energy.
• One of the scientists that attempted to test this hypothesis
was Stanley Miller.
Miller-Urey Experiment
— Stanley Miller is an American Scientist that
decided to test Oparin's Hypothesis of how
life began on Earth.
— In 1952, while he was a graduate student,
Miller put together a contraption (seen above)
much like the diagram on the left.
Miller’s Experiment
— In this contraption, Miller circulated water,
ammonia, methane and hydrogen. He gave
these materials an electric jolt to simulate
the energy from lightning and the sun.
— After a week, Miller analyzed his solution
and discovered simple molecules with
nitrogen atoms that are very similar to
molecules that make up living things.
Miller’s Experiment
— This experiment showed that substances
present in living things (such as amino acids,
the building blocks of protein in our bodies)
could have come from nonliving materials
in the environment.
— However, later findings from other scientists
have indicated that amino acids may already
have been on Earth at the time it was being
formed.
History
— Zacharias Jansen
—Invented one of the microscope’s first
prototype
— Robert Hooke
—Observed cork cells
— Anton van Leeuwenhoek
—Observed a variety of cells
— Lorenz Oken
—Said that all organisms originate from and
consist of cells
History
— Robert Brown
—Discovered the nucleus
— Felix Dujardin
—Discovered the living substance
“sarcode”
— Jan Evangelista Purkinje
—Changed the name “sarcode” into
“protoplasm”
History
— Matthias Schleiden & Theodore
Schwann
—Said that cells are the elementary
particles of plants and animals
— Rudolf Virchow
—Concluded that the cell is the basic
unit of life and every cell is formed
from a pre-existing cell
 Postulates of the Cell Theory
— All organisms are composed of
one or more cells
— Cells are the basic unit of
organization of all organisms
— Cells arise only by division of
previously existing cells.
Animal Cell
Plant Cell