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Culturing Life: How Cells Became Technologies

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Over the past few decades biotechnology has been gaining an increasing hold on public imagination. Biological research has also become the most prominent part of all scientific research, in terms of both the number of research projects and the total amount of funding that biological research gains from grant-giving agencies. This predominance can be gleaned from the percentage of articles that are dedicated to biology in the most prominent research journals such as "Nature" and "Science." And yet, this current revolution in biological research has a history that is at least a century old. It has its origins in the discovery in the early years of the twentieth century that complex biological tissues can survive and even thrive in the non-biological environment of the petri dish. The discovery and the early history of the development of this important laboratory technique is the subject of "Culturing Life," an incredible and immensely readable book by Hannah Landecker.

Today very little attention is given to the remarkable fact that living tissue can be grown, practically indefinitely, in what looks like a very hostile environment of laboratory glassware. And yet, when this was first discovered, most practicing biologists firmly believed that there is something particular about the environment of a body as a whole that was a necessary requirement for the growth and development of living cells. This discovery has been justifiably compared to the discovery of laboratory synthesis of complex organic compounds. It had an equivalent impact on what does it mean for matter to be biological, and it stretched the imagination of both the biologists and the public at large. In the subsequent chapter the book traces the further development of this new way of growing living tissue, and spends some time on the most famous examples of it - the so-called "immortal chicken heart" and the HeLa human cell culture. Many of these tissues and cultures would probably not pass the careful scrutiny of their purity that we have today, but at the time when they were used they were veritable new scientific achievements.

The book aims to stress the purely scientific significance of what it means to grow living tissue in laboratory environment, beyond its technological and therapeutic value. This laboratory technique is the crowning example of malleability and adaptability of life in general. It pushes the boundary of what we mean by the very term "life."

Hannah Landecker is an excellent writer and much of the writing in this book has almost a literally quality to it. She doesn't shy away from philosophical considerations, but does so in a non-abstract way that can have a lot of appeal even to non-academic audience. Even though the subject matter of this book is very technical, the reader is not subjected to impenetrable and arcane scientific jargon. The book is a thoughtful exploration of one of the most important laboratory techniques in the use today, and whether you are interested in history of science, biotechnology, bioethics, or are just curious about experimental biology, this book will provide you with very valuable and interesting information.