How does the Biologists discover the cell organelles and its function?

[DARTH SIDIOUS]

This is the first time I used this forum. And English is my Second language. Sorry about any inconvenience. ><

 

Cell organelles was discover many years ago with microscope. Bu how did they know the organelles shape and function?. For example : Mitochondria, how they know it is the 'powerhouse' of the cell?

 

I read many Biology-related books but they always tell me the function with no history of discovery. I'm just curious. =)

[CharonY]

Well, powerhouse is a simplification. What has been found are the components and their localization necessary for respiration of oxygen. Discoveries in biological sciences are rarely made just within one or experiment or even within a single group but tends to be built from the consensus of many studies.

Elements that lead to the discovery of the function of mitochondria are the discovery of an oxygen reductase, the cytochrome C, the successful isolation of mitochondria and subsequent investigation of the oxidizing properties of mitochondria. The most famous names associated with this work include Warburg, Lehninger, Kailin and Kennedy, and many more that I either forgot or who were involved but were not that prominent. On top you could add people involved in the identification of ATP, the formulation of the theory of chemiosmotic gradients and the discovery (and elucidation of the function) of the ATP synthetase.

As you can see, biology is very complex in nature and if you look at some simple statements such as "powerhouse", "information storage" etc. you will find that really they are the summation of many many elements, each with their own history of discovery. Depending on context (e.g. whether you are a biochemist, cell physiologist, microbiologist, medical scientist, etc.) you will find that there will be vastly different viewpoints of these elements, too.

 

Bottom line: biology is full of complexity and findings are rarely straightforward and the result of a single discovery event.

[iRNAblogger]

I agree with CharonY (BTW CharonY, you are awesome and have an answer for everything!).

 

I would like to add that more generally, these organelles were first observed through a variety of ways. They were isolated by cell fractionation, they were observed under the microscope, and they were characterized based on their morphologies at first. Nobody had any clue what these organelles really were (or what their function was) until more in-depth studies were done. This idea is something that I personally really struggled with in my biology education. I had always been slightly confused how textbooks obtained the authority that they seemed to have to make claims, such as "the mitochondria are the powerhouses of the cell." It wasn't until I started finding that there are whole books recounting the discovery of certain phenomena that are subsequently condensed into one sentence in a biology textbook that I began to understand that a textbook is a very brief summary of the discoveries made on these topics. While it is very helpful to see big-picture stuff, it is also important to return to the primary scientific literature to see where these assumptions come from.