scholarly journals Tissue culture and biological time: Alexis Carrel, Henri Bergson and the plasticity of living matter

BioSocieties ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosine Kelz

AbstractTaking the early tissue culture experiments of Alexis Carrel in the 1910s–1930s as its example, the article explores the relationship between advances in biotechnological control over living matter and a holistic ontology of life, which stresses the temporal specificity of living things. With reference to Henri Bergson, Carrel argued that physiological time depends on an organism’s relationship to its milieu. By developing a laboratory apparatus and culture media, new objects of investigation could be made to live outside the organism and be brought to behave in novel temporal ways. In difference to recent biotechnological advances, like for example genome editing, which seek to ‘engineer’ living organisms by rebuilding them from their DNA up, then, early twentieth century interventionist laboratory practices were often linked to an understanding that biological plasticity results from organismic complexity and interactions between organism and milieu. These notions contributed to shaping laboratory apparatuses and techniques; they also helped to establish an understanding of environmental control that would allow for the production of novel ‘living things’.

2019 ◽  
pp. 135-142
Author(s):  
Diana Lelonek

The Center for the Living Things is a research institute founded in 2016 in order to examine, collect and popularise knowledge concerning new non-human forms: plants, lichen, fungi and insects. All exhibits gathered in the Institute’s collection are abandoned objects, used commodities and those no longer needed – the debris of human overproduction, which has become the natural environment for many living organisms. Specimens were found in an illegal waste dumping site, where man-derived objects and plant tissues mix. These hybrids of plants and artificial objects are difficult to classify, as they are simultaneously animate and inanimate. Exhibits collected in the Center for the Living Things cannot be classified conventionally. Recently, waste has taken over behaviours from living matter. In the process of overproduction, the incessant need to constantly update the goods we possess is the reason why most of these unnecessary products seem to be out of our control. The Center for the Living Things aims to describe mechanisms appearing in the sphere of rejection and uselessness. In this sphere, products are no longer tools used by people. Products participate in almost every process that occurs in the biosphere, hence we cannot definitively separate economic or social processes from so-called natural processes. The Center aims to draw attention to these processes, seek connections and possible alternatives. Specimens are stored and cultivated in an ever-expanding collection at Poznań’s Botanical Gardens. This institution also organises also houses temporary exhibitions, presentations and workshops. Work is underway on an edition of the ‚Atlas of Waste-plants’ to appear at the end of 2019. More information and a digital version of the Institute’s collection can be found at: www.centerforlivingthings.com.


Author(s):  
John Basl

According to the ethic of life, all living organisms are of special moral importance. Living things, unlike simple artifacts or biological collectives, are not mere things whose value is entirely instrumental. This book articulates why the ethic is immune to most of the standard criticisms raised against it, but also why such an ethic is untenable, why the domain of moral concern does not extend to all living things; it argues for an old conclusion in an entirely new way. To see why the ethic must be abandoned requires that we look carefully at the foundations of the ethic—the ways in which it is tightly connected to issues in the philosophy of biology and the sorts of assumptions it must draw on to distinguish the living from the nonliving. This book draws on resources from a variety of branches of philosophy and the sciences to show that the ethic cannot survive this scrutiny, and it articulates what the death of the ethic of life means in a variety of areas of practical concern, including environmental ethics, biomedical ethics, ethics of technology, and in philosophy more generally.


1974 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 262-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nediyalka A. Zagorska ◽  
Zlata B. Shamina ◽  
Raisa G. Butenko

Minerals ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 114
Author(s):  
Kadriann Tamm ◽  
Zeinab Arab Zadeh ◽  
Rein Kuusik ◽  
Juha Kallas ◽  
Jason Yang ◽  
...  

Phosphorus is an essential and non-substitutable element for the cellular processes of all living organisms. The main source of phosphorus in the biosphere is phosphate rock. With more than 700 Mt phosphate rock, Estonia holds the largest sedimentary phosphate rock deposits in the European Union. Estonian phosphate rock is particularly outstanding due to its remarkably low content of hazardous heavy metals such as Cadmium (<5 ppm) and trace elements of Uranium (<50 ppm). It is also a reliable source of valuable elements such as rear earth elements (REEs). The aim of this study was to investigate the distribution of the main minerals (apatite and quartz) between slimes, tailings, and concentrates that formed at the froth flotation of Estonian phosphate rock with the up-to-date level of know-how and techniques. Subsequently, the relationship between the obtained grades and recovery levels in concentrates was determined based on the collector dosage and flotation duration. It was observed that the fine fraction of the tailings contains 17.9–33.49 wt% P2O5 that can be added to the final product. Moreover, it was found that, with the lower dosage of the collector, the extended flotation time does not influence the phosphate grade and a high amount of quartz remains in the concentrates. It was also shown that, by raising the collector dosage and setting the flotation time, an adequate grade (>32 wt% P2O5) and recovery (up to 98%) can be gained. The results showed that Estonian phosphate rock can be beneficiated to produce a high-quality concentrate at high recovery levels by modifying the main flotation parameters depending on the properties of the ore.


2007 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 217-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Szalowska ◽  
S.A.F.T. vanHijum ◽  
H. Roelofsen ◽  
A. Hoek ◽  
R.J. Vonk ◽  
...  

Blood ◽  
1985 ◽  
Vol 65 (3) ◽  
pp. 605-614
Author(s):  
DM Shasby ◽  
SE Lind ◽  
SS Shasby ◽  
JC Goldsmith ◽  
GW Hunninghake

To determine whether reactive oxygen molecules could directly and reversibly increase the transfer of albumin across an endothelial barrier, we measured albumin transfer across monolayers of endothelium cultured on micropore filters before and after exposure to xanthine and xanthine oxidase. Xanthine and xanthine oxidase increased endothelial albumin transfer in a dose-dependent fashion. Parallel phase contrast and fluorescence microscopy demonstrated retraction of adjacent cells from one another and disruption of the actin filaments. The oxidant- induced increases in albumin transfer and changes in cell shape were reversed by removing xanthine oxidase and then incubating the monolayers for 3 1/2 hours in tissue culture media enriched with fetal bovine serum. However, incubation in tissue culture media without serum resulted in progressive injury and cell death. Hence, the brief exposure to oxidants initiated a progressive injury process that was reversed by incubation in serum. Because intracellular and extracellular calcium are important determinants of cell shape, and because some oxidized membrane lipids act as calcium ionophores, we asked whether oxidants altered endothelial calcium homeostasis. Xanthine-xanthine oxidase increased release of 45Ca++ from preloaded cells. The calcium antagonist lanthanum chloride prevented xanthine- xanthine oxidase increases in endothelial albumin transfer and prevented the changes in cell shape; chelation of extracellular calcium inhibited lysis of endothelium by xanthine-xanthine oxidase; and the calcium ionophore A23187 increased endothelial albumin transfer and mimicked the oxidant-induced changes in cell shape. Lanthanum chloride inhibited these effects of A23187. These data suggest that oxygen radicals can reversibly increase endothelial permeability to macromolecules, that this is associated with reversible changes in endothelial cell shape and actin filaments, and that the changes in cell shape are related to oxidant-induced changes in endothelial calcium homeostasis.


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