Discovery of cells and cell theory
What is this incredible object? Would it surprise you to learn that it is a human cell? The cell
is actually too small to see with the unaided eye. Cells may be small in size, but they are
extremely important for life. Like all other living things, you are made of cells. Cells are the
basis of life, and without cells, life as we know it would not exist.
If you look at a living matter with a microscope — even a simple light microscope — you will
see that it consists of cells. Cells are the basic units of the structure and function of living things.
They are the smallest units that can carry out the processes of life. All organisms are made up of
one or more cells, and all cells have many of the same structures and carry out the same basic life
processes. Knowing the structure of cells and the processes they carry out is necessary to
understanding life itself.
The first time the word cell was used to refer to these tiny units of life was in 1665 by a British
scientist named Robert Hooke. Hooke was one of the earliest scientists to study living things
under a microscope. The microscopes of his day were not very strong, but Hooke was still able
to make an important discovery. When he looked at a thin slice of cork under his microscope, he
was surprised to see what looked like a honeycomb. Hooke made the drawing in the figure below
to show what he saw. The cork was made up of many tiny units, which Hooke called cells.
Soon after Robert Hooke discovered cells in cork, Anton van Leeuwenhoek in Holland made
other important discoveries using a microscope. Leeuwenhoek made his own microscope lenses,
and he was so good at it that his microscope was more powerful than other microscopes of his
day. In fact, Leeuwenhoek’s microscope was almost as strong as modern light microscopes.
Using his microscope, Leeuwenhoek was the first person to observe human cells and bacteria.
By the early 1800s, scientists had observed the cells of many different organisms. These
observations led two German scientists, named Theodor Schwann and Matthias Jakob Schleiden,
to propose that cells are the basic building blocks of all living things. Around 1850, a German
doctor named Rudolf Virchow was studying cells under a microscope when he happened to see
them dividing and forming new cells. He realized that living cells produce new cells through
division. Based on this realization, Virchow proposed that living cells arise only from other
living cells.
The ideas of all three scientists — Schwann, Schleiden, and Virchow — led to
cell theory, which is one of the fundamental theories unifying all of biology.
Cell theory states that:
• All organisms are made of one or more cells.
• All the life functions of organisms occur within cells.
• All cells come from already existing cells
Seeing inside cells
Starting with Robert Hooke in the 1600s, the microscope opened up an amazing new world —
the world of life at the level of the cell. As microscopes continued to improve, more discoveries
were made about the cells of living things. However, by the late 1800s, light microscopes had
reached their limit. Objects much smaller than cells, including the structures inside cells, were
too small to be seen with even the strongest light microscope.
Then, in the 1950s, a new type of the microscope was invented. Called the electron microscope,
it used a beam of electrons instead of light to observe extremely small objects. With an electron
microscope, scientists could finally see the tiny structures inside cells. In fact, they could even
see individual molecules and atoms. The electron microscope had a huge impact on biology. It
allowed scientists to study organisms at the level of their molecules and led to the emergence of
the field of cell biology. With the electron microscope, many more cell discoveries were made.
1. Your Task: Questions:
1. Describe cell.
2. Explain how cells were discovered
3. Outline how cell theory developed
4. Describe 3 cells theory states
5. What are the differences between a light microscope and an electron microscope?
2. Structures Shared By All Cells
Although cells are diverse, all cells have certain parts in common. These parts include:
1.____________________________-is a thin coat of phospholipids that surrounds a cell. It
forms the physical boundary between the cell and its environment, so you can think of it as the
“skin” of the cell.
2._____________________________- refers to all of the cellular material inside the plasma
membrane. It is made up of a watery substance called cytosol and contains other cell structures
such as ribosomes.
3.__________________________________- are structures in the cytoplasm where proteins are
made.
4._________________________________- is a nucleic acid found in cells. It contains the
genetic instructions that cells need to make proteins.
(DNA, ribosomes, plasma membrane, cytoplasm)
3. Write the names of the organelles in the cells.
