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From cell physiology to cell physiology

Nature Medicine volume 6, pages 1087–1088 (2000)Cite this article

Sydney Brenner

When I began my research, I already had several years of post-graduate experience in ‘garage’ chemistry and I had added some biochemistry to my interests. I decided that cells were the important biological entities to study, particularly living cells, and the subject I decided to take up was one I called cell physiology. I began to build various pieces of equipment that I thought I would need. One was a Warburg respirometer, but my glassblowing was not very inspired. The other, more successful, was a small Beams-and-King air turbine ultracentrifuge. I used this to produce the first paper1 I was really proud of and still am. In it, I showed that the material called ‘chromidial substance’, which stained red with methyl green pyronin and contained RNA, corresponded to the fraction that Claude had separated from ground-up cells and called microsomes. These were characterized by having certain sedimentation properties in extracts. I showed, by centrifuging small pieces of rat liver at 300,000g in my small turbine, that the material identified cytologically had the same properties in each cell as the bulk material in the extract.

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References

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  1. The Molecular Sciences Institute, 2168 Shattuck Avenue, 2nd Floor, Berkeley, 94704, CA

    Sydney Brenner

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Brenner, S. From cell physiology to cell physiology. Nat Med 6, 1087–1088 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/80400

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