Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, Vol s3-93, 157-190, Copyright © 1952 by Company of Biologists

The Cell-Theory: A Restatement, History, and Critique

Part III. The Cell as a Morphological Unit

¹ Department of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy, Oxford

A long time elapsed after the discovery of cells before they came to be generally regarded as morphological units. As a first step it was necessary to show that the cell-walls of plants were double and that cells could therefore be separated. The earliest advances in this direction were made by Treviranus (1805) and Link (1807).

The idea of a cell was very imperfect, however, so long as attention was concentrated on its wall. The first person who stated clearly that the cell-wall is not a necessary constituent was Leydig (1857). Subsequently the cell came to be regarded as a naked mass of protoplasm with a nucleus, and to this unit the name of protoplast was given. The true nature of the limiting membrane of the protoplast was discovered by Overton (1895).

The plasmodesmata or connective strands that sometimes connect cells were probably first seen by Hartig, in sieve-plates (1837). They are best regarded from the point of view of their functions in particular cases. They do not provide evidence for the view that the whole of a multicellular organism is basically a protoplasmic unit.

Two or more nuclei in a continuous mass of protoplasm appear to have been seen for the first time in 1802, by Bauer. That an organism may consist wholly of a syncytium was discovered in i860, in the Mycetozoa. The syncytial nature of the Siphonales was not revealed until 1879. The existence of syncytia constitutes an exception to the cell-theory. No wholly syncytial plant or animal reaches a high degree of organization.

Natural polyploidy was discovered by Boveri (1887), who was also the first to produce it experimentally (1903). Although many organisms contain some polyploid constituents and others are polyploid throughout their somatic tissues, yet diploid and haploid protoplasts (haplocytes and diplocytes) are the primary components of plants and animals and are still retained as such by most organisms. The haplocyte is more evidently unitary than the diplocyte.

Haplocytes and diplocytes are not composed of lesser homologous units, and with the necessary reservations required by the existence of syncytial and polyploid masses of protoplasm, they may therefore be said to be the fundamental morphological units of organisms.