Peroxisomes

History

Peroxisomes (microbodies) were first described by a Swedish doctoral student, J. Rhodin in 1954. They were identified as organelles by Christian de Duve and Pierre Baudhuin in 1966. De Duve and co-workers discovered that peroxisomes contain several oxidases involved in the production of hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) as well as catalase involved in the decomposition of H₂O₂ to oxygen and water. Due to their role in peroxide metabolism, De Duve named them "peroxisomes", replacing the formerly used morphological term "microbodies". Later, it was described that firefly luciferase is targeted to peroxisomes in mammalian cells, allowing the discovery of the import targeting signal for peroxisomes, and triggering many advances in the peroxisome biogenesis field.