Author : M.J. Morgan
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN 13 : 1468476793
Total Pages : 529 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (684 download)
Book Synopsis Carbohydrate Metabolism in Cultured Cells by : M.J. Morgan
Download or read book Carbohydrate Metabolism in Cultured Cells written by M.J. Morgan and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-11-11 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is perhaps obvious to any student of Biology that the discovery of chemical processes in whole organisms has usually preceded the elucidation of the compo nent steps. However, it is perhaps less obvious that the unravelling of the se quences in which those chemical steps occur in living matter, of the precise mechanisms involved, and of the manner in which they are regulated, would have been achieved neither by the study of intact plants and animals nor even of extracts derived from them. Our ability to understand the nature and regulation of metabolism rests on two main premises: the postulate that life processes can indeed be validly investigated with individual cells and cell-free extracts, and the thesis that there is an essential "unity in biochemistry" (as Kluyver put it, 60 years ago) that enables events in one organism to be legitimately studied in another. Of particular utility in this latter respect has been the use of cultures of single-celled organisms, growing in defined media-especially prokaryotes, such as Escherichia coli, and eukaryotes, such as Neurospora and Sac charomyces sp. , to which both biochemical and genetical techniques could be applied. It was, of course, Pasteur's observations of bacterial fermentations that first overthrew the belief that oxygen was essential for all energy-yielding pro cesses: his recognition that "La fermentation . . . . . c' est La vie sans air" laid the foundations of our knowledge of glycolysis.