Bioko

“ On the other hand, the large and sharply demarcated plant-cell, with its various organella, is much more valuable in connection with many problems than the tiny animal-cell. For many physiological purposes, in fact, the higher plant body is more accessible to exact physical and chemical research than the higher animal body. The antithesis is less in the kingdom of the protists, as the difference between animal and vegetal life is mostly confined to difference of metabolism, and finally disappears altogether in the province of the unicellular forms of life. ”

“ November 24.—From an early hour preparations were made to have a Botanical Demonstration for Sven Hedin. Ginkgo and cycas spermatozoids were provided, yeast of the native wine, fossil slides under the microscope—all in working order. But the poor man is being rushed all over Tokio to such an extent that but a short time was available for each thing. He was cordial and nice, and professed to like the fossils, and seemed fairly intelligently interested, and made every one feel pleased with him. ”

“ The ultimate goal was to protect the crops from frost and thus to extend their growing season. Such non-frost-triggering bacteria occur in nature as products of natural mutation, but Lindow and Panopoulos apparently hoped that the genetically engineered organisms would be more stable than the natural mutants. They sought to treat crops at six sites; the workers applying the recombinant-DNA-containing bacteria would wear respirators to reduce the risk of inhalation. ”

“ Bacteria, archea, and microeukaryotes dominate Earth's habitats, compound recycling, nutrient sequestration, and, according to some estimates, biomass. Microbes are not only ubiquitous, they are essential to all life, as they are the primary source for nutrients, and the primary recyclers of dead matter back to available organic form. Along with all other animals and plants, the human condition is profoundly affected by microbes, from the scourges of human, farm animal, and crop pandemics, to the benefits in agriculture, food industry, and medicine to name a few. ”

“ Simmo told it to me, one day, when we had caught Meeko coming out of a woodpecker's hole with the last of a brood of fledgelings in his mouth, chuckling to himself over his hunting.
Long ago, in the days when Clote Scarpe ruled the animals, Meeko was much larger than he is now, large as Mooween the bear. But his temper was so fierce, and his disposition so altogether bad that all the wood folk were threatened with destruction. Meeko killed right and left with the temper of a weasel, who kills from pure lust of blood. ”

“ One of the great difficulties met with in the earlier periods of the study of this organism was its slow, though persistent, growth. At first cultivations in fluid media were not kept sufficiently long under observation to allow of its growth; it was exceedingly difficult to obtain pure cultures, and then to keep them, and in impure cultures the tubercle bacilli were rapidly overgrown. Taken directly from the body, they do not grow on most of the ordinary media, and it was only when Koch used solidified blood-serum that he succeeded in obtaining pure cultures. ”

“ The variations in the size of this fraction are the cause of all change in the life-expression of every organism. When the biotone increases, and the metabolism quotient becomes more than one, we have growth; when, on the other hand, it falls below one, and the biotone decreases, we have atrophy, and finally death. New biogens are constructed in regeneration. In generation or reproduction groups of biogens (as germ-plasm) are released from the parent in consequence of redundant growth, and form the foundation of new individuals. ”

“ Study of the biogenesis of their outer membrane is particularly important for understanding early cell evolution and for testing whether it might be derived by simplification from that of other negibacteria, rather than the primitive state as argued here. Characterizing the many lineages known only from environmental rRNA sequences, establishing the full metabolic diversity of the group, and extensive genomic and evolutionary studies to determine whether it is holophyletic or paraphyletic are all essential for finally pinpointing the root of the tree of life. ”

“ If we inoculate a nutrient material with a pure culture of bacteria, and the medium is not exactly adjusted to the needs of the particular organism, it will not thrive, and will speedily be overgrown by some other species obtaining access from the air. This fact very much discounts the use of pure cultures of bacteria which have been proposed for bating, although in the case of erodin, where the medium has been adjusted to suit the organism, considerable success has been attained. ”

“ But the doctrine of omnis cellula e cellulâ is admitted for plants, and is a widely prevalent belief with respect to animals. [27] Thus Virchow, the great supporter of the cellular theory, whilst allowing that difficulties exist, maintains that every atom of tissue is derived from cells, and these from pre-existing cells, and these primarily from the egg, which he regards as a great cell. That cells, still retaining the same nature, increase by self-division or proliferation, is admitted by almost every one. ”

“ If either dies, the other is the gainer; since the algae can thrive on the products of animal decomposition, and algæ—digestible, i. e., dead algæ—are much esteemed by most animals.
The whole burden of the physiological history of symbiosis is forcibly summed up by Mr. Geddes as follows: "Thus, then, for a vegetable cell no more ideal existence can be imagined than that within the body of an animal cell of sufficient vital activity to manure it with carbonic acid and nitrogen waste, yet of sufficient transparency to allow the free entrance of the necessary light. ”

“ Evolutionary relationships among the four major kinds of cell. The horizontal red arrow indicates the position of the universal root as inferred from the first protein paralogue trees, i.e. between neomura and eubacteria. To determine whether the root is really there or within eubacteria, as suggested instead by many paralogue trees for metabolic enzymes, we must correctly polarize the direction of the negibacteria/posibacteria transition that took place in bacteria that had already evolved flagella. ”

“ Material infected with the microbe is then placed in the test-tube by a sterilized platinum wire and the tube closed by raw cotton. It is then placed in an incubator oven and is subjected to a gentle heat. In a little while the microbes begin to develop and increase, forming colonies, in which they swarm by the million, and present the clotted appearance seen in Fig. 178. The separation of different bacteria existing in the same material, so as to isolate each species and get what is called a “pure culture,” has been greatly promoted by Prof. Koch’s method of plate culture. ”

“ Very often the natives of the Mimika eat the crude sago, that is to say, the pith simply as it is cut out of the tree, without having been washed or pounded. The stuff is roasted in the usual way and the separation of the sago is done in the mouth of the eater, who spits out the uneatable fibre. ”

“ They maintain their individuality by a simple metabolism; they grow by the addition of fresh plasm obtained by it, and they split up into two equal globules of plasm when the growth passes a certain limit—reproduction by clevage, maintenance of the species. Thus these chromacea have neither special organs, or organella, that we can distinguish in their simple plasma-bodies, nor different functions in their life-process; it is wholly taken up with the primitive work of their vegetal metabolism. ”

“ Nay more, the primordial organic cells could only have originated in the first instance from non-cellular plastides or monads by their homogeneous plasson resolving itself into an internal nucleus and an external protoplasm. Thus, as we subsequently learnt to know most of the exceptions to this generalisation of Virchow, it appeared all the bolder; the more so as we were at that time far from being able to refer all the different tissues of the higher animals with any certainty to cells, and as not a few experiments seemed to point to the hypothesis of free cell-formation. ”

“ No little nuisance-makers can exist on Kansas; the monad would eat them in a rage."
"The ultimate antibiotic," Hartford said. "A micro-organism that functions as a saprophyte, a soil-former and a scavenger. Besides all this, it's a universal phagocyte, policing up the human environment inside and out, to keep it clean of any other microscopic organisms. The monad fills every niche in the micro-ecology of the planet."
"This is what Pia-san and his okusama, poor dead girl, discovered," Takeko said. "Renkei entered the Stone House to tell you that we do not stink, that we are not dangerous. ”

“ The journey down was not very eventful, but one night we spent at Bioto Creek will always remain memorable to us. At Bioto we put all our cases on board a canoe, and set out with two natives to navigate the overladen craft to Pokama. As we did not leave until late we were forced to spend the whole night in the creek. In our crazy vessel, weighed down almost to the water’s edge, for she had only three inches of free board, we lay close inshore, under dense mangrove trees. Sleep was impossible, for we were assailed by mosquitoes and other discomforts ”

“ In Würzburg, Virchow elaborated that comprehensive application of the cellular theory to pathology which culminates in the conception that the cell is an independent living elementary organism, and that our human organism, like that of all the higher animals, is merely a congeries of cells—a highly fertile conception, which Virchow now denies as resolutely as he then supported it. ”

“ Thus, using Kuhnian language, we could call the shift, which I hope is underway, of considering the root to be between neomura and eubacteria to accepting it among negibacteria a paradigm shift, because it affects our perspectives in so many ways and also meets the usual intense resistance associated with such a major shift. But the proper way to effect such a shift is not philosophic discussion but by evaluating the evidence critically and in detail. In evolutionary biology both refutation and confirmation have a role. ”

“ In the case of the protists, the entire organism usually consists of a single independent cell throughout life. But in the tissue-forming animals and plants, which are the great majority, the organism begins its career as a simple cell, and then grows into a cell-community, or, more correctly, an organised cell-state. Our own body is not really the simple unity that it is generally supposed to be. On the contrary, it is a very elaborate social system of countless microscopic organisms, a colony or commonwealth, made up of innumerable independent units, or very different tissue-cells. ”

“ The sea swarmed with fish, and with walrus and seal. Every one along the whole coast was happy. Ask yourselves—is it not so?"
The Angakok seemed very much pleased with himself, and he looked about, as if he expected every one else to be pleased with him too. All the people were filled with wonder at his great power. They began to talk among themselves.
"Yes, I remember the famine well," said Koko's father. "I was away up the coast that season. Several died in our village for lack of food."
Other men remembered things about other times when food had been scarce. ”

“ The immortality of the unicellulars, on which Weismann has laid so much stress, can only be sustained for a small part of the protists even in his own sense—namely, for those which simply propagate by cleavage, the chromacea and bacteria among the monera (chapter ix.) , the diatomes and paulotomes among the protophyta, and a part of the infusoria and rhizopods among the protozoa. Strictly speaking, the individual life is destroyed when a cell splits into two daughter-cells. ”

“ Cook's statement is, that if bioplasts spin, it is as dependent, and not as independent machines or agencies. There are millions of these bioplasts--taking the word in the sense in which Professor Beale uses it--in every living organism considered as a biological whole. In the case of man, there are millions of them within a comparatively small compass; and each has its own cell to which its specific work is assigned. ”

“ Under the microscope they very much resemble what in country districts is called bullrushes, or the different sections of a bamboo walking-stick or fishing-rod.
In the spring days, when this growth of green approaches its maturity, it arrives at that mysterious time when the future urgently appeals to it, when each cell feels a strange and irresistible attraction to its neighbor cell. Each reaches out toward the other until a contact is formed, a perfect union is effected, a new germ is created, and the old cells are left lifeless and perish. ”

“ On the basis of the cellular theory, which teaches that the cells live their own independent life, have their own active properties, proliferations and degenerations, Virchow built up his cellular pathology into a comprehensive system, attaching greater importance to the cell changes than to an altered condition of the circulation or quality of the blood, as was previously held to account for pathological changes. ”