Description: A close look at Günter Blobel's transformative contributions to molecular cell biology.
The difficulty of reconciling chemical mechanisms with the functions of whole living systems has plagued biologists since the development of cell theory in the nineteenth century. As Karl S. Matlin argues in Crossing the Boundaries of Life, it is no coincidence that this longstanding knot of scientific inquiry was loosened most meaningfully by the work of a cell biologist, the Nobel laureate Günter Blobel. In 1975, using an experimental setup that did not contain any cells at all, Blobel was able to target newly made proteins to cell membrane vesicles, enabling him to theorize how proteins in the cell distribute spatially, an idea he called the signal hypothesis. Over the next twenty years, Blobel and other scientists were able to dissect this mechanism into its precise molecular details. For elaborating his signal concept into a process he termed membrane topogenesis--the idea that each protein in the cell is synthesized with an "address" that directs the protein to its correct destination within the cell--Blobel was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1999. Matlin argues that Blobel's investigative strategy and its subsequent application addressed a fundamental unresolved dilemma that had bedeviled biology from its very beginning--the relationship between structure and function--allowing biology to achieve mechanistic molecular explanations of biological phenomena. Crossing the Boundaries of Life thus uses Blobel's research and life story to shed light on the importance of cell biology for twentieth-century science, illustrating how it propelled the development of adjacent disciplines like biochemistry and molecular biology.Brief description: Karl S. Matlin is professor emeritus of biological sciences and conceptual and historical studies of science at the University of Chicago.
Review Quotes: "Over the course of the century, many biological sciences become extremely complex, and following these fields often results in highly technical and dense narratives. Crossing the Boundaries of Life does not shy away from this reality, though Matlin, who spent most of his career as a practicing cell biologist, and in fact did his postdoctoral work across the hall from Blobel's laboratory, does a laudable job in unpacking and explicating where the crucial moments of innovation occur. Matlin's narrative also adeptly ties together many strands of the
twentieth-century biosciences, most of which have only previously been outlined in disciplinary histories. Though molecular cell biology may sound like it only concerns a small slice of biological problems, Crossing the Boundaries of Life features an array of work from protein chemists, embryologists, molecular biologists, physiologists and, of course, cytologists. Matlin underpins his philosophical analysis using Hans-Jörg Rheinberger's concept of epistemic things and readers who found Rheinberger's work informative will find Crossing the Boundaries of Life to be an exceptional example of how it can be used to understand the work of modern biological sciences."-- "British Journal for the History of Science"