Dorothea Zucker-Franklin

The major thrust has been to correlate the ultrastructure with the function and pathology of blood and bone marrow cells. To this end, electron microscope observations have been correlated with histochemical, immunohistochemical and biomolecular techniques. This led to the first description of membrane fusion, the discovery, that blood platelets contain muscle actin and myosin, the fibrillar nature of the amyloid protein, the recognition, that some blood mononuclear cells (now called stem cells) can form colonies of various mature blood cells in soft agar, the recognition that basophils and mast cells differ ultrastructurally. These and many other observations have culminated in a 2 volume Atlas of Blood Cells; Function and Pathology, the 3rd edition of which is due this year. The most recent contribution may be the recognition, that about 8% of American blood donors carry the tax sequence of HTLV-1 in their circulating lymphocytes on the basis of which current tests used to assure the safety of our blood supply may have to be amended.