Overview
- Discusses concepts and theories in cell biology from ancient times to the 21st century
- Puts the work of famous scientists like Hooke, Hofmeister, Sachs, Schwann, Mendel, Nemec, and McClintock into today’s perspective
- Written by leading experts in the field
Part of the book series: Plant Cell Monographs (CELLMONO, volume 23)
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Table of contents (12 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
Plants have been an object of study since the roots of the Greek, Chinese and Indian cultures. Since the term “cell” was first coined by Robert Hooke, 350 years ago in Micrographia, the study of plant cell biology has moved ahead at a tremendous pace. The field of cell biology owes its genesis to physics, which through microscopy has been a vital source for piquing scientists’ interest in the biology of the cell. Today, with the technical advances we have made in the field of optics, it is even possible to observe life on a nanoscale. From Hooke’s observations of cells and his inadvertent discovery of the cell wall, we have since moved forward to engineering plants with modified cell walls. Studies on the chloroplast have also gone from Julius von Sachs’ experiments with chloroplast, to using chloroplast engineering to deliver higher crop yields. Similarly, advances in fluorescent microscopy have made it far easier to observe organelles like chloroplast (once studied by Sachs) or actin (observed by Bohumil Nemec). If physics in the form of cell biology has been responsible for one half of this historical development, biochemistry has surely been the other.
Editors and Affiliations
About the editors
František Baluška is a lecturer and researcher at the Institute of Cellular and Molecular Botany at Bonn University, Germany. He obtained the Full Professor title at the Comenius University Bratislava (Slovakia) in 2008. His main interest is plant cell biology, especially root apices, as related to the cytoskeleton, endocytosis, vesicle trafficking and polarity. He has investigated root apices for more than twenty years, and made original contribution to the root apex organization by the discovery of a transition zone interpolated between the apical meristem and the rapid cell elongation region. František Baluška is also interested in the response of roots to environmental factors such as gravity, as well as in the emerging field of plant neurobiology. Finally, he is interested in the conceptual analysis of the cell theory. He published more than eighty research papers and edited several books. In 2005, he initiated the Plant Neurobiology Society which annualy organizes international symposia on plant neurobiology. FrantišekBaluška founded and acts as Editor-in-Chief for two journals: Plant Signaling & Behavior and Communicative & Integrative Biology.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Concepts in Cell Biology - History and Evolution
Editors: Vaidurya Pratap Sahi, František Baluška
Series Title: Plant Cell Monographs
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69944-8
Publisher: Springer Cham
eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life Sciences, Biomedical and Life Sciences (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer International Publishing AG 2018
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-69943-1Published: 09 March 2018
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-09922-0Published: 04 January 2019
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-69944-8Published: 01 March 2018
Series ISSN: 1861-1370
Series E-ISSN: 1861-1362
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: X, 290
Number of Illustrations: 8 b/w illustrations, 11 illustrations in colour
Topics: Cell Biology, Plant Anatomy/Development, Biological Microscopy, History of Biology