0:00
My name is John Torday.
I'm a professor
in the Evolutionary
Medicine Program at UCLA.
This lecture is entitled
"Evolutionary Lessons
from Cell Culture."
0:11
Alexis Carrel was
a French surgeon and biologist
who was awarded the Nobel Prize
in physiology or medicine
in 1912 for pioneering
vascular suturing techniques.
He invented
the first perfusion pump
with Charles Lindbergh,
opening the way
to organ transplantation.
Carrel co-authored a book
with famed pilot,
Charles Lindbergh,
entitled
"The Culture of Organs",
and worked with Lindbergh
in the mid-1930s
to create the perfusion pump,
which allowed living organs
to exist
outside the body during surgery.
The advance is said to have been
a crucial step
in the development
of open heart surgery
and organ transplants
and to have laid the groundwork
for the artificial heart,
which became a reality
decades later.
Some of Lindbergh's critics
claimed that
Carrel overstated
Lindbergh's role
to gain media attention
but other sources say
Lindbergh played
an important role
in developing the device.
Both Lindbergh and Carrel
appeared
on the cover of Time magazine
on June 13, 1938.
Carrel was also interested
in the phenomenon
of senescence or aging.
He claimed incorrectly
that all cells continue to grow
indefinitely
and this became a dominant view
in the early 20th century.
Carrel started an experiment
on January 17, 1912,
where he placed tissue cultured
embryonic chicken heart cells
in a stoppered Pyrex flask
of his own design.
He maintained the living culture
for over 20 years,
with regular supplies
of nutrient.
This was longer
than a chicken's
normal lifespan.
The experiment
which was conducted
at the Rockefeller Institute
for Medical Research,
attracted considerable popular
and scientific attention.
Carrel's experiment was
never successfully replicated
and in the 1960s, Leonard
Hayflick and Paul Moorhead
proposed that
differentiated cells
can undergo only
a limited number of divisions
before dying.
This is known
as the Hayflick limit,
and is now a pillar of biology.
It is not certain how Carrel
obtained his anomalous results.
Leonard Hayflick suggests
that the daily feeding
of nutrient
was continually introducing
new living cells
to the alleged immortal culture.
