From microsomes to ribosomes : strategies of representation / Hans-Jörg Rheinberger.
Abstract:
'I intend to exemplify these counterintuitive issues on strategy' and representation' in science by going into considerable detail about a research process that originated at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. It started, in 1911, with Peyton Rous's tentative identification of a cancer-inducing agent as an ultramicroscopic organism. Through a series of "unprecedented events" made possible by the conjunction of different techniques of representation, including ultracentrifugation and electron microscopy, this agent was replaced by what for a long time was considered to be, and was structurally described as, a microsome. Through another shift, the microsomal pellet differentiated into a membrane part and a protein-synthesizing organelle, which came to be referred to as the ribosome by the late 1950s.'
Journal of the history of biology Vol. 28 (1995), p. 49-89