Notebook

Notebook, 1993-

PEOPLE

Ernest Everett Just


The cell surface was, in fact, "taboo" in Just's day. "Everybody was looking in the nucleus," explains Jeffrey, "hunting for DNA. In the last ten years, however, the whole rage in biology has been the cell surface, especially in cancer research. It is being seen today as Just saw it half a century ago--as what regulates what goes in and out of the cell." [p. 31]

The cell surface, as the mediator between the cell and its environment.... [pg. 29]

He saw in the nucleus an expression of the tendency to fixity, rigidity, and resistance to change: "This tendency aids to preserve individual integrity which hands over in tact from generation to generation the character of the organism." The extoplasm expressed for Just the tendency toward change: "On the other side, the living thing is highly mobile, changing with every change in the environment, accommodating itself and thus evincing capacity for self-regulation. In the protoplasmic system the ectoplasm is the region of active momentary changes in response to environmental conditions." [p. 28]

Asked to comment on Just's work, Jeffery [MBL embryologist of the Univ. of Texas] explains, "There were two camps here then - the embryologists and the physiologists. The physiologists were in vogue because their theories of studying biology through chemical means were new. They studied all sorts of cell properties not studied before, one of which was the cell membrane, which they studied merely as a physical entity - a thin group of molecules. Just said there was more to the cell surface than just a thin membrane: there was something underneath, something important, which he called the ectoplasm."

The physiological view continued in vogue, despite Just's work, for the next 30 years, according to Jeffery: "Finally, in the seventies, we understood that cells are not just bags of liquid in membranes. Under the membranes are cytoskeletons, gel-like structures, proteins, fibers, granules. Just saw all of that, using only a light microscope." [p. 30-31]

At the time that Just began this work, most biologists saw the nuclear component as the "kernel of life," an emphasis Just wanted to shift. He wanted to demonstrate "how far life processes are related to the dual and reciprocal components, nuclear and cytoplasmic structure." He wanted to spell out the role of the ectoplasm in vital manifestations, which had not yet been done--for a simple enough reason. Compared to the nucleus, the ectoplasm was difficult to observe with the light microscope.

This is not to say that Just ignored the nucleus. His major work - a book published in 1939, two years before his death - makes clear his belief in the protoplasmic system involving both nucleus and cytoplasm. He saw in the nucleus an expression of the tendency to fixity, rigidity, and resistance to change: "This tendency aids to preserve individual integrity which hands over in tact from generation to generation the character of the organism." The extoplasm expressed for Just the tendency toward change: "On the other side, the living thing is highly mobile, changing with every change in the environment, accommodating itself and thus evincing capacity for self-regulation. In the protoplasmic system the ectoplasm is the region of active momentary changes in response to environmental conditions." Just went on to theorize that because during cleavage, the nuclear material increases while the cytoplasmic material decreases, it is logical to [p. 28] assume that the nucleus is drawing chemical s substances from the cytoplasm, which with each successive chemical withdrawal becomes itself a different compound, available for a different reaction with the developing nucleus: "The progressive differentiation of the egg according to this conception is brought about neither by the pouring out of stuffs by chromosomes into the cytoplasm nor by segregation of embryonic materials as postulated by those who uphold the theory of embryonic segregation, but by a generic restriction of potencies through the removal of stuff from the cytoplasm to the nuclei." For Just, then, experimentally-induced mutations produced by temperature changes, irradiation, and so forth were due not to direct action on the chromosomes, but to altered cytoplasmic reactions that preceded the chromosomal changes. Thus, he felt, it was possible for environment to condition heredity in the basic unit of life.

The cell surface, as the mediator between the cell and its environment, came to hold an almost spiritual fascination for Just. Here was to be found not only an explanation for such fundamental processes as fertilization and embryonic development, but perhaps also an answer to the mysteries of heredity and evolution. Life, Just felt, could not be "only a struggle against the surroundings from which life came." It must be a form of cooperation. He adopted the theory of the Russian anarchist philosopher Prince Peter Kropoti, who believed mutual aid and cooperation to be the fundamental fact of the biological world - a view that Just found preferable to the post-Darwinian idea of a struggle for existence... [pg. 29]

"The Brotherhood of Man is not so much a Christian doctrine as a fundamental biological law. For biology does not and cannot recognize any specific differences among humans. This is a fact of tremendous significance for the human family. The peace of the world lives here. And the transcendent value of science to man will be measured in just proportion to which we can realize this truth." [p. 28]

"Just was a poet," remarks Jeffery in speaking of The Biology of the Cell Surface, from which he quotes an obviously favorite passage: "We feel the beauty of Nature because we are part of Nature and because we know that however much in our separate domains we abstract from the unity of Nature, this unity remains. Although we may deal with particulars, we return finally to the whole pattern woven out of these. So in our study of the animal egg: though we resolve it into constituent parts the better to understand it, we hold it as an integrated thing, as a unified system: in it life resides and in its moving surface life manifests itself." [p. 31]


[Ernest Everett Just - The Biology of the Cell Surface and Basic Methods for Experiments on Eggs of Marine Animals - Grantham, Shelby. "The Greatest Problem in American Biology." In Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, Vol. 76, No. 3. Hanover, New Hampshire: November 1983.]





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