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  1. The molecular vista: current perspectives on molecules and life in the twentieth century.Mathias Grote, Lisa Onaga, Angela N. H. Creager, Soraya de Chadarevian, Daniel Liu, Gina Surita & Sarah E. Tracy - 2021 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 43 (1):1-18.
    This essay considers how scholarly approaches to the development of molecular biology have too often narrowed the historical aperture to genes, overlooking the ways in which other objects and processes contributed to the molecularization of life. From structural and dynamic studies of biomolecules to cellular membranes and organelles to metabolism and nutrition, new work by historians, philosophers, and STS scholars of the life sciences has revitalized older issues, such as the relationship of life to matter, or of physicochemical inquiries to (...)
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  2. The Cell and Protoplasm as Container, Object, and Substance, 1835–1861.Daniel Liu - 2017 - Journal of the History of Biology 50 (4):889-925.
    (Recipient of the 2020 Everett Mendelsohn Prize.) This article revisits the development of the protoplasm concept as it originally arose from critiques of the cell theory, and examines how the term “protoplasm” transformed from a botanical term of art in the 1840s to the so-called “living substance” and “the physical basis of life” two decades later. I show that there were two major shifts in biological materialism that needed to occur before protoplasm theory could be elevated to have equal status (...)
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  3. The Artificial Cell, the Semipermeable Membrane, and the Life that Never Was, 1864–1901.Daniel Liu - 2019 - Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 49 (5):504-555.
    Since the early nineteenth century a membrane or wall has been central to the cell’s identity as the elementary unit of life. Yet the literally and metaphorically marginal status of the cell membrane made it the site of clashes over the definition of life and the proper way to study it. In this article I show how the modern cell membrane was conceived of by analogy to the first “artificial cell,” invented in 1864 by the chemist Moritz Traube (1826–1894), and (...)
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  4. Heads and Tails: Molecular Imagination and the Lipid Bilayer, 1917–1941.Daniel Liu - 2018 - In Karl Matlin, Jane Maienschein & Manfred Laubichler (eds.), Visions of Cell Biology: Reflections Inspired by Cowdry's General Cytology. University of Chicago Press. pp. 209-245.
    Today, the lipid bilayer structure is nearly ubiquitous, taken for granted in even the most rudimentary introductions to cell biology. Yet the image of the lipid bilayer, built out of lipids with heads and tails, went from having obscure origins deep in colloid chemical theory in 1924 to being “obvious to any competent physical chemist” by 1935. This chapter examines how this schematic, strictly heuristic explanation of the idea of molecular orientation was developed within colloid physical chemistry, and how the (...)
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    The Elementary Organisms.Ernst Brücke & Daniel Liu - 2024 - Journal of the History of Biology 57 (2):305-330. Translated by Daniel Liu.
    In 1861 the physiologist Ernst Brücke (1819–1892) published “The Elementary Organisms,” calling for a major reform of the definition of the animal cell. An annotated English translation of Brücke’s essay is presented here for the first time, with additional references to works cited by Brücke. Figures referenced by Brücke but not included in his original essay are also provided. I have also presented an introductory essay to my translation that provides background on Brücke and his arguments: “The Schema and Organization (...)
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    The Schema and Organization of the Cell: An Introduction to Ernst Brücke’s Die Elementarorganismen (1861).Daniel Liu - 2024 - Journal of the History of Biology 57 (2):281-304.
    Ernst Brücke’s 1861 essay Die Elementarorganismen has often been cited as a watershed in the history of physiology as well as in the history of cell theory. In its time it was widely read as a reform of animal cell theory, shifting the concept of the cell away from Schleiden and Schwann’s original cell schema of a membranous vesicle with a nucleus, and towards the protoplasm theory that had developed in botany, centered on the cell’s living contents. It was also (...)
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  7. Karl S. Matlin, Crossing the Boundaries of Life: Günter Blobel and the Origins of Molecular Cell Biology, University of Chicago Press, 2022. [REVIEW]Daniel Liu - 2023 - Journal of the History of Biology 56 (2):411-414.
  8. This is the synthetic biology that is. [REVIEW]Daniel Liu - 2017 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 63:89-93.
    Review of: Sophia Roosth, Synthetic: How Life Got Made (University of Chicago Press, 2017); and Andrew S. Balmer, Katie Bulpin, and Susan Molyneux-Hodgson, Synthetic Biology: A Sociology of Changing Practices (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
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