What Are We?

Eukaryotic Cell Biology

In this course, Professor Jake Baum (Imperial College London) introduces us to eukaryotic cells, that is animal and plant cells. To do this, we begin by: (i) asking what we are made of, and what scientists decades and centuries ago thought about this very same questions; before (ii) discussing how microscopy revolutionised our ability to understand ourselves to a much higher complexity; and then (iii) looking at the key players in cell biology, before beginning to understand the size and complexity of this field of science; which then follows onto (iv) cell compartmentalisation, and how this compartmentalisation enables the cell to carry out many different functions efficiently; and finally (v) looking at cell dynamism and seeing how this dynamism has enormous complexity but enables the most vital processes in our bodies such as growth and repair and cell division.

What Are We?

In the first mini-lecture, we ask the question “What am I?”. It’s a question that has interested scientists for centuries. Without access to modern tools such as microscopes, it was impossible to see what we were made of. This first mini-lecture introduces some of the prevailing theories that dominated scientific discussion over the centuries. Who were the key thinkers of this field, and what did they propose? We learn about the camera obscura, the first thinkers to understand how light behaved, including Ibn al-Haytham, Kepler, Descartes, as well as theories of self such as the homunculus, and continuity of form.