HISTORY OF MITOCHONDRIAL RESEARCH 13 



would tend to show that such may be the case. In a 

 changing chemical system such as cytoplasm is, one may 

 expect solution and precipitation phenomena to occur. This 

 is in agreement with observed phenomena in colloidal chem- 

 istry. There is no available evidence to show that a "solu- 

 tion" and ''precipitation" phenomenon in connection with 

 mitochondrial material would necessarily exclude the pos- 

 sibility of division by fission when this material is in the 

 physical state of granules or bodies. Cowdry is inclined to 

 believe that true mitochondria arise de novo in the cyto- 

 plasm. He bases his opinion on the assumption that mito- 

 chondria have a ''phosphoHpin-albumin" composition, and 

 that it does not seem reasonable that such a complex would 

 actively divide hke microorganisms. 



The consensus of opinion of modern cytologists, as well 

 as recent researches (Horning, '25; Takagi, '25; Causey, 

 '25; Horning, '26; and others) favor the idea of mitochondrial 

 continuity. 



In 1899 Benda investigated the mitochondria of the 

 developing muscle cell, and beheved that the mitochondria 

 differentiate into the myofibrils of the muscle fibre. Meves 

 later arrived at the same conclusion. Duesberg in 1909 and 

 1910 conducted extensive investigations of the subject. 

 He was able to follow the transformation changes and noted 

 the diminution of mitochondria parallel with the increase in 

 fibrils. The conclusions arrived at by Benda, Meves, and 

 Duesberg have been confirmed by von Kurkiewicz, Leplat 

 ('12), Levitsky ('10) Favre et Regaud ('10), Hoven ('10), 

 Prenant ('11), Arnold ('12), Schafer ('12), Luna ('13), 

 Briick ('14) and many others. Against this conception of 

 the nature of myofibril-f ormation are the opinions of Heiden- 

 hain ('11), Levi ('11), Gurevitsch ('13) and Cowdry. Cowdry 

 bases his opinion on some slight variations of staining in his 

 preparations of chick embryos, and on the impossibifity of 

 mitochondria, assumed to be composed of phosphohpin- 



