Welcome to the Tomistic Institute podcast.

Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square.

The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Temistic Institute chapters around the world.

To learn more and to attend these events, visit us at

to mystic institute.org. So I chose as a topic of plasma membrane because it really

checks all those boxes. And the plasma membrane, the cell membrane, that edge of the cell,

that distinguishes or is the boundary between inside the cell

and outside the cell is not a new topic for cell biologists at all. It was first named

by Carl Magley back in 1855. The concept of the cell as the unit of life actually predated that by at least 15 years.

And if you press history more, you can say that idea was even emerging in the second half of the 18th century.

With that, there's been a lot of study of the cell membrane,

the plasma membrane. It's been a rocky road. There's been many ideas put on the table in

terms of its function and its structure, and those ideas over the past 170 years have changed.

And sometimes the change has been quite abrupt.

And I want to give some examples of that.

So we're going to see a little cell biology mixed with history as well.

I think that's a condition of my undergraduate time being a history major.

Okay, so before I talk about what is the plasma membrane, also known as the cell membrane,

what it's composed of, I want to talk about its function.

And really its function is that of a boundary.

Again, between outside world and inside world, and I'm going to start my timer, so I don't talk

for two hours. But it's a specialized boundary. And we can think of more functions than just

...