A short history of tissue fractionation.

Abstract

The period immediately following the end of World War II will be remembered in the history of cell biology as that of the great breakthrough .As with many scientific advances, new tools, not new thoughts, rendered possible the massive invasion of the subcellular world that was launched at that time .The availability of the electron microscope, and the development of procedures allowing the examination of biological samples with this instrument, made the cell accessible to detailed morphological exploration .At the same time, the introduction of chromatography, of radioisotopes, and of spectrophotometers and other refined physical instruments, enhanced enormously the power and incisiveness of biochemical analysis.Revolutionary as these developments were, they would, nevertheless, not have sufficed in themselves for the construction of a true cell biology.What was needed, in addition, was a bridge between morphology and biochemistry, a junction between the essentially parallel avenues opened by these two disciplines, a hybrid methodology whereby the visible and the measurable could be correlated into a unified picture of the living cell.Tissue fractionation provided this indispensable link .Like many important scientific advances, tissue fractionation owes its development to the vision and effort of a few innovators .It is, however, very far from being a monolithic construction, built according to carefully conceived plans.Rather it has arisen in a somewhat haphazard and untidy fashion from the meshing together, sometimes intended, sometimes accidental, of a remarkable diversity of interests.Physical chemists, engineers, biochemists, virologists, molecular biologists, have all had their input, in addition to the cytologists themselves.Their combined contributions have produced a vigorous and highly successful hybrid, which nevertheless still betrays traces of its mixed parentage in the uncertainties that surround some of its concepts and applications.Part of this haziness is due also to the nature of the object of tissue fractionation.Any reductionist approach to the complexity of the living cell must perforce proceed by successive approximation.This kind of progress is very apparent from the crude fractionations of yesteryear to the sophisticated dissections that are being carried out in many laboratories today.Clearly, the process of growth is still con-

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