Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov compares science with construction, where knowledge, like bricks, creates the foundation of the system. So the cell theory with its founders - Schleiden and Schwann - is shared by many naturalists and scientists, their followers. One of the creators of the theory of the cellular structure of organisms R. Virchow once said: "Schwann stood on the shoulders of Schleiden." It is about the joint work of these two scientists that will be discussed in the article. On the cell theory of Schleiden and Schwann.
Mathias Jacob Schleiden
At the age of twenty-six, the young lawyer Matthias Schleiden (1804-1881) decided to change his life, which did not please his family at all. Having abandoned the practice of law, he transferred to the medical faculty of the University of Heidelberg. And already at the age of 35 he became a professor at the Department of Botany and Plant Physiology at the University of Jena. Schleiden saw his task in unraveling the mechanismcell reproduction. In his works, he correctly singled out the primacy of the nucleus in the processes of reproduction, but did not see any similarities in the structure of plant and animal cells.
In the article "On the Question of Plants" (1844), he proves the commonality in the structure of all plant cells, regardless of their location. The review of his article is written by the German physiologist Johann Müller, whose assistant at that time was Theodor Schwann.
Failed priest
Theodor Schwann (1810-1882) studied at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Bonn, as he considered this direction the closest to his dream - to become a priest. However, the interest in natural science was so strong that he graduated from Theodore University already at the Faculty of Medicine. Working as an assistant to the aforementioned I. Muller, in five years he made so many discoveries that would be enough for several scientists. This is the detection of pepsin in the gastric juice, and the sheath of nerve fibers. It was he who proved the direct participation of yeast fungi in the fermentation process.
Companions
The scientific community of the then Germany was not too big. Therefore, the meeting of the German scientists Schleiden and Schwann was a foregone conclusion. It took place in a cafe during one of the lunch breaks, in 1838. Future colleagues discussed their work. Matthias Schleiden shared with Theodor Schwann his discovery of cell recognition by nuclei. Repeating Schleiden's experiments, Schwann studies animal cells. They communicate a lot and becomefriends. And a year later, the joint work “Microscopic studies on the similarity in the structure and development of elementary units of animal and plant origin” appeared, which made Schleiden and Schwann the founders of the theory of the cell, its structure and life.
Cell structure theory
The main postulate, which reflected the work of Schwann and Schleiden, is that life is in the cell of all living organisms. The work of another German - the pathologist Rudolf Virchow - in 1858 finally clarifies the life processes of the cell. It was he who supplemented the work of Schleiden and Schwann with a new postulate. “Every cell is from a cell,” he put an end to the issues of spontaneous generation of life. Rudolf Virchow is considered by many to be a co-author, and some sources use the statement "the cellular theory of Schwann, Schleiden and Virchow".
Modern cell theory
One hundred and eighty years that have passed since that moment have added experimental and theoretical knowledge about living beings, but the cellular theory of Schleiden and Schwann remained the basis, the main postulates of which are as follows:
- The self-renewing, self-reproducing and self-regulating cell is the basis and elementary unit of life.
- All living organisms on the planet are characterized by their same structure.
- A cell is a complex of polymers that is recreated from inorganic components.
- Their reproductioncarried out by division of the mother cell.
- The multicellularity of organisms implies the specialization of elements into tissue, organ and system.
- All specialized cells are formed during the differentiation of totipotent cells.
Bifurcation point
The theory of the German scientists Matthias Schleiden and Theodor Schwann was a turning point in the development of science. All branches of knowledge - histology, cytology, molecular biology, anatomy of pathologies, physiology, biochemistry, embryology, evolutionary doctrine and many others - received a powerful impetus in development. The theory, which gives new insight into the interactions within a living system, opened up new horizons for scientists who immediately took advantage of them. Russian I. Chistyakov (1874) and Polish-German biologist E. Strasburger (1875) reveal the mechanism of mitotic (asexual) cell division. The discovery of chromosomes in the nucleus and their role in the heredity and variability of organisms, the decoding of the process of DNA replication and translation and its role in protein biosynthesis, energy and plastic metabolism in ribosomes, gametogenesis and zygote formation follow.
All these discoveries are part of the building of science about the cell as a structural unit and the basis of all life on planet Earth. A branch of knowledge, the foundation of which was laid by the discoveries of friends and associates, such as the German scientists Schleiden and Schwann. Today, biologists are armed with electron microscopes with a resolution of tens and hundreds of times and the most complextools, methods of radiation labeling and isotope irradiation, gene modeling technologies and artificial embryology, but the cell is still the most mysterious structure of life. More and more discoveries about its structure and life bring the scientific world closer to the roof of this building, but no one can predict whether its construction will end and when. In the meantime, the building is not completed, and we are all waiting for new discoveries.
