What methods have been devised to discover functions of subcellular components/organelles?
Historically, biochemists smashed apart cells, separated the organelles by centrifugation , and then biochemically analysed the function of each fraction containing different organelles. In addition, radioactive labels could be used to identify the location of specifically labelled compounds within these fractionated cell organelles. More recently, cell-free systems allow the study and analysis of organelles. Today, we have many different cell biology tools to explore organelle function, including visualizing molecules in living cells many other light microscope and electron microscope techniques, cell staining , biochemical, antibody markers, fluorescent probes, gene transfection, “knock-out” and “knock-in” of specific genes (proteins), antisense blocking of function……the list goes on and on.
