THE BACTERIAL CELL 



RENfi J. DUBOS, MEMBER OF THE ROCKEFELLER INSTITUTE FOR MEDICAL 



RESEARCH, NEW YORK; MEMBER OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES; 



JOHN PHILLIPS MEMORIAL AWARD; MEAD JOHNSON AWARD 



Only such substances can be anchored at any particular 

 part of the organism which fit into the molecule of the 

 recipient combination as a piece of mosaic fits into a 

 certain pattern. 



PAUL EHRLICH 



B 



BACTERIA appeared to the nineteenth century biologist 

 as a type of protoplasmic material devoid of any organi- 

 zation, almost as a link between the animate and the inanimate world. 

 "They are," said Ferdinand Cohn, "the simplest and lowest of all 

 living forms — beyond them, life does not exist." The compound 

 microscope failed to reveal any structure within their cellular bound- 

 aries, and the biochemist was inclined to consider the bacterial cell 

 as a mere bag of enzymes which owed its enormous biochemical 

 activity to its colloidal dimensions. The primitiveness of bacterial 

 life appeared to be confirmed in chemical terms when Winogradsky 

 demonstrated in 1887 that certain autotrophic species can grow in 

 purely inorganic media and can synthesize their protoplasm from 

 mineral salts and carbon dioxide, utilizing for the reduction of the 

 latter the energy released by the oxidation of sulfur, iron, ammonia, 

 nitrite, etc. (21). Was it not permissible to consider this production 

 of organic matter from inorganic elements as the most primitive bio- 

 chemical expression of life, as the beginning of life on earth? 



Advances on the diverse fronts of bacteriology were quick to 

 dispel these early illusions concerning the biochemical primitiveness 

 and the simplicity of organization of the bacterial cell. Analysis of 

 the chemical activities of bacteria soon revealed that microbial life takes 

 place through the agency of the same type of reactions, the same 



49 



