Abstract
Starting in the 1960s, the Indian chemist Krishna Bahadur, from the University of Allahabad, published on organic and inorganic particles that he had synthesized and baptized ‘Jeewanu’, or ‘particle of life’. Bahadur conceived of the Jeewanu as a simple form of the living. These studies are presented in a historical perspective and positioned within mid-20th century research on the origin of life, notably the so-called ‘coacervate theory’ of the Soviet biochemist Aleksandr I Oparin. The concepts of life proposed by Bahadur, Oparin and others are discussed from a historical standpoint.
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Notes
Gánti (2003) discusses some of these.
Dick and Strick (2004, p 257, footnote 77) report that Bahadur, unlike Sydney W Fox, became persona non grata among the NASA exobiology network after the publication of this paper.
Experiments demonstrating carbon dioxide reduction and nitrogenase activity of Jeewanu-like particles were repeated by Bahadur and collaborator Adolph Smith from NASA’s Ames Research Center in the early 1980s, using state-of-the-art equipment (Smith et al. 1981). I would like to thank C Grier Sellers for this information
The organically shaped, self-assembling mineral structures produced by French biologist Stéphane Leduc (1853–1939), discussed by Evelyn Fox Keller (2002), are another case in point. Leducs reception would provide an interesting reading with regard to Bahadur, who also quoted these studies.
I cannot report anything about the circulation of his work in India or among the Russian language community here.
Obviously, at any time multiple definitions and interpretations have coexisted. Popa (2004) provides a chronology, one of which, attributed to Antonio Lazcano, shall suffice here: “Life is like music; you can describe it, but you cannot define it”.
Bahadur repeatedly referred not only to growth but also to the motility of Jeewanu, which he apparently documented on films. Microcinematography, which has been used in cell research since the beginning of the 20th century, obviously highlights another level of the living than mid-century molecular biology (see e.g. Landecker 2006). The interest in such in vivo observational techniques parallels Bahadur with the case of South African microbiologist Adrianus Pijper, who proposed an alternative explanation for the function of bacterial flagella in the post-war years (Strick 1996).
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Vidyanand Nanjundiah (Bangalore) for his encouragement to expand a shorter essay on Jeewanu which has been published in a festschrift volume in honour of Hans-Jörg Rheinberger (Berlin, 2011). Moreover, I owe my thanks to Christina Brandt (Berlin/Bochum), Anindita Nag (Berlin), Dhruv Raina (New Delhi) and James E Strick (Lancaster, PA) for hints and helpful suggestions. This work was funded by a research fellowship of the ESRC Centre for Genomics in Society (Egenis) at the University of Exeter, UK, and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin.
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[Grote M 2011 Jeewanu, or the ‘particles of life’. The approach of Krishna Bahadur in 20th century origin of life research. J. Biosci. 36 563–570] DOI 10.1007/s12038-011-9087-0
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Grote, M. Jeewanu, or the ‘particles of life’. J Biosci 36, 563–570 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12038-011-9087-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12038-011-9087-0