Event
Le pouvoir de synthèse: Pure Cultures and the Chemical Order of Nature, 1921-1946| Title of the event | Le pouvoir de synthèse: Pure Cultures and the Chemical Order of Nature, 1921-1946 |
| Organizer | AvH-Institut für Pflanzenwissenschaften, Experimentelle Phykologie und Sammlung von Algenkulturen (SAG) |
| Speaker | Charles A. Kollmer |
| Speaker institution | Princeton University, Department of History |
| Type of event | Vortrag |
| Category | Forschung |
| Registration required | Nein |
| Details | Techniques for obtaining pure cultures of microorganisms originated in late nineteenth-century medical bacteriology. In the famous postulates of Robert Koch and Jakob Henle, the purity of a culture was essential for determining whether the microbes it contained caused a specific disease. During the first half of the twentieth century, however, enterprising microbiologists from a variety of backgrounds began to use pure cultures for a novel purpose. By transferring cultures onto a growth medium of known composition, they obtained insight into the biochemistry of the microbes' nutritional needs. These needs were not idiosyncratic, but rather formed patterns, shedding light at once on general features of metabolism, as well as the phylogenetic relationships between taxa. Such studies of microbial nutrition reflected and reinforced microbiologists' belief in life's unity at the chemical level, a belief that has profoundly influenced the course of modern biology. In my talk, I will illustrate these dynamics within the work of André and Marguerite Lwoff, a couple who researched collaboratively at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, as well as the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Medizinische Forschung in Heidelberg and the Molteno Institute in Cambridge, England. Inspired in part by the culture techniques of Ernst Georg Pringsheim, and later working with strains from Pringsheim's culture collection, the Lwoffs pursued an ambitious program of research, drawing surprising connections between the nutrition of photosynthetic flagellates and that of parasitic blood pathogens. |
| Date | Start: 25.01.2018, 14:00 Uhr Ende: 25.01.2018 , 15:00 Uhr |
| Location |
Albrecht-von-Haller-Institut für Pflanzenwissenschaften (Untere Karspüle 2) Kleiner Hörsaal Botanik, Untere Karspüle 2 |
| Contact |
0551-39-5740 mlorenz@uni-goettingen.de |
| External link | https://lageplan.uni-goettingen.de/?ident=6320_... |