Back to Featured Projects Seeing Cells Exhibit Overview Seeing Cells in Life Theory of Cells as Basic Units of Life Protoplasm as the Living Stuff Cell Specialization From Fertilization to Organisms Presenting and Representing "The" Cell Experimental Manipulations Resolving the Inside of Cells Inside Living Cells Seeing How Cell Parts Move Seeing Cell Aggregates Designing Synthetic Cells Imagining Cells Seeing Cells Videos Home Groundbreaking Research at the 做厙輦⑹ Research Centers Eugene Bell Center Featured Projects Seeing Cells Exhibit From Fertilization to Organisms From the 做厙輦⑹s beginning in 1888, director Charles Otis Whitman inspired cell lineage studies. 做厙輦⑹ researchers studied how a single fertilized egg becomes a multicellular embryo and on to an organized complex organism. Download From Fertilization to Organisms HoverTouch to magnify Nereis egg division Wilson 18951 HoverTouch to magnify Nereis egg division Wilson 18952 Using different marine organisms, they followed the lineage through every cell division, watching fertilized egg cells divide into 2, 4, 8 cells, and so on. Fixing, staining, observing, drawing, and photographing allowed each researcher to share and compare with others. The images began to reveal the patterns of development. HoverTouch to magnify Ascidian egg division Conklin 19053 Comparing embryos from different species showed that cells can divide faster or slower, into larger or smaller cells, sometimes through spiral cleavage, and always in ways that cause differentiation among cells that allows them to form organisms. HoverTouch to magnify Slipper snail embryo division Long Description Successive cleavage stages in slipper nail embryos from 4 cells (top) to 8 cells (bottom). Photomicrographs with fluorescently labeled organelles (right). Close (梭梗款喧)泭Conklin 18974 (right)泭泭Henry & Lyons 20145 As they watched the cells divide into many hundreds and even thousands more cells and differentiate, they began to see new cell parts: a nucleus with chromosomes, spindle fibers to help direct the dance of cell division, organelles, and other details. All this detail led to a larger question: what is common across these cells? What is the cell? Previous Panel Next panel Download From Fertilization to Organisms Wilson, Edmund Beecher. An Atlas of the Fertilization and Karyokinesis of the Ovum. New York: Columbia University Press by Macmillan and Company, 1895. Plate VII, Figure 26. Wilson, Edmund Beecher. An Atlas of the Fertilization and Karyokinesis of the Ovum. New York: Columbia University Press by Macmillan and Company, 1895. Plate II, Figure XIV. Conklin, Edwin Grant. The Organization and Cell-Lineage of the Ascidian Egg. Philadelphia: Academy of Natural Sciences, 1905. Plate III. Conklin, Edwin Grant. 1897. The Embryology of Crepidula,泭A Contribution to the Cell Lineage and Early Development of Some Marine Gastropods. Journal of Morphology Vol. XIII, No. 1. Plate I, Figure 12 and Plate II, Figure 13. Henry, Jonathan & Deirdre Lyons. The International Journal of Developmental Biology.泭Vol. 58, No's 6/7/8, 2014. Cover figure.