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Creation Date
10-2-2017
Description
Christian de Duve - Nobel Lecture: Exploring Cells with a Centrifuge
Nobelprize.org
De Duve titled his Nobel lecture “Exploring Cells with a Centrifuge,” and surprisingly, his discovery of lysosomes, an important organelle, or cell structure, responsible for the hydrolytic activity, was made using mainly a centrifuge. His laboratory at the Catholic University of Louvain did not even contain a microscope, which is unimaginable in a biochemical lab today. The discovery of lysosomes was in a way accidental and later confirmed by the then-novel electron microscopy in 1955. De Duve was only 38 years old at the time but had been exposed to rigorous training in biochemistry in the finest research institutes of the field.
Keywords
Christian de Duve, Nobel lecture, centrifuge, Albert Claude, George Palade