Microglia
The ability to view and characterize different neural cells including microglia began in 1880 when Nissl staining was developed by Franz Nissl. Franz Nissl and F. Robertson first described microglial cells during their histology experiments. The cell staining techniques in the 1880s showed that microglia are related to macrophages. The activation of microglia and formation of ramified microglial clusters was first noted by Victor Babeş while studying a rabies case in 1897. Babeş noted the cells were found in a variety of viral brain infections but did not know what the clusters of microglia he saw were. Pío del Río Hortega, a student of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, first called the cells "microglia" around 1920. He went on to characterize microglial response to brain lesions in 1927 and note the "fountains of microglia" present in the corpus callosum and other perinatal white matter areas in 1932. After many years of research Rio-Hortega became generally considered as the "Father of Microglia." For a long period of time little improvement was made in our knowledge of microglia. Then, in 1988, Hickey and Kimura showed that perivascular microglial cells are bone-marrow derived, and express high levels of MHC class II proteins used for antigen presentation. This confirmed Pio Del Rio-Hortega's postulate that microglial cells functioned similarly to macrophages by performing phagocytosis and antigen presentation.
Mitchell Sogin
Dr. Sogin’s molecular phylogeny from ribosomal RNA sequences provided a framework for reconstructing the evolution of microbial eukaryotes. He documented early diverging eukaryotic lineages, giving the earliest evidence of a link between animals and fungi, to the exclusion of all other eukaryotes. His work demonstrated that the AIDS-related pathogen "Pneumocystis" shares a recent common ancestor with fungi instead of with the parasitic protozoa that cause malaria. He also discovered the “rare biosphere” which represents most of Earth’s microbial diversity. Sogin was the first to use PCR to amplify and sequence ribosomal RNA genes and to use next generation DNA sequencing to characterize complex microbial communities, which now dominates the field of molecular microbial ecology, including efforts underway within the Human Microbiome Project. He has contributed to analytical strategies to determine the taxonomic identity of marker gene surveys and with David Mark Welch of the Josephine Bay Paul Center has established the Visualization of Microbial Population Structures (VAMPS) website, which offers tools for comparing microbial community populations. As part of the Census of Marine Life, Sogin formed and led the International Census of Marine Microbes. His group currently collaborates on studies of human microbiome dynamics with Dr. Eugene Chang of the University of Chicago. They study pouchitis, a model for ulcerative colitis. Dr. Sogin also serves on the editorial boards of the "Journal of Eukaryotic Microbiology" (formerly "Journal of Protozoology"), "Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution", "Protist" (formerly "Archiv fur Protistenkunde"), "Applied and Environmental Microbiology", and "Environmental Microbiology".