INTRODUCTION 



The Role of Algal Cultures in Research 



S. H. HUTNER 



Haskins Laboratories, New Yor\, N. Y. 



The cultivation of algae is entering a period of broader rele- 

 vance to the problems of modern biology. The special value of 

 algae as research materials for fundamental studies may be 

 judged more clearly against a background of developments in 

 adjacent fields. 



Nineteenth-century biologists v^ere quickened in their inves- 

 tigations of morphology by the hope, voiced by T. H. Huxley, 

 of discerning the framework underlying the protean variety of 

 life. The longed-for insight into the genealogical aspects of evolu- 

 tion w^as later extended by geneticists to the mechanisms of evo- 

 lution. With the rise of biochemistry, the older methods of defin- 

 ing evolutionary changes vi^ere broadened by such masters as 

 Kluyver and Warburg to include a search for the key reactions 

 governing the chemical activities of life. The fruitfulness of the 

 unified biochemical-morphological approach is borne out by the 

 work of Kluyver's pupil, van Niel. Van Niel's comprehensive 

 theory of photosynthesis is an essential element in the natural 

 classification of chemosynthetic and photosynthetic bacteria vis-a- 

 vis other autotrophic organisms such as green plants. A similar 

 point of view is represented by Lwoff 's studies on algal flagellates. 

 Growth depends on integrated chains of biochemical reac- 

 tions. Certain of these are now being dissected, link by link. The 

 increasing awareness that many of these links are common to 

 organisms usually considered to be only remotely related to each 

 other, is breaking down the old barriers between zoology, botany, 

 and protistology, created by a predominantly morphological tra- 



