From Artifacts to Facts

In the early 1980s, undergraduate students studying life sciences at the University of Porto learned about mesosomes as artifacts and about the work of the researcher Manuel Teixeira da Silva. This story of the previous decade, locally well-known, was part of their education and training.

Teixeira da Silva was recognized for his work providing experimental evidence on bacterial mesosomes as artifacts rather than real structures. In one of the papers presenting it, we can read: “From the data available it is difficult to conclude which, if any, of these different patterns of membrane ultrastructure is real” (Silva, 1971: 227).

From Artifacts to Facts briefly explores this story in the context of the scientific ecosystem in a country under dictatorship and the researchers’ struggle against scientific isolation. This is a story of people totally committed to scientific reasoning and the presentation of experimental evidence, a story of people who linked research and education. And, in that sense, it is not surprising that the debate of the mesosome as artifact of the technique quickly entered the classroom.

Curators
Maria Strecht Almeida (ICBAS, U.Porto)
Júlio Borlido Santos (i3S, U.Porto)

Rui Fernandes (i3S, U.Porto) organized the objects in the exhibition from the archive of the Histology and Electron Microscopy platform.
Anabela Nunes (i3S, U.Porto) did the graphic work of the panels.
Jorge Moreira designed the poster and flyer.