Margaret Adaline Reed Lewis (November 9, 1881 – July 20, 1970) was an American cell biologist and embryologist who made contributions to cancer research and cell culture techniques, and was likely the first person to successfully grow mammalian tissue in vitro. She authored around 150 papers, many co-authored with her husband Warren Harmon Lewis. The Lewises developed a growth medium called the Locke–Lewis solution and jointly received the Gerhard Gold Medal from the Pathological Society of Philadelphia.
Early life and education Margaret Adaline Reed was born in Kittanning, Pennsylvania, on November 9, 1881, to Martha A. (née Walker) and Joseph Cable Reed. Her early life was "uneventful" according to her but she remembered the flooding of Conemaugh River in May 1889, when she accompanied her father to rescue stranded people using a boat. The family later moved to Meyersdale. An episode of scarlet fever damaged her hearing. She had an interest in medicine from a young age. Her parents sent her older sister Jessica and her to a finishing school, Hannah More Academy in 1894, but they were unhappy and were then sent to the Girl's Latin School of Baltimore. From 1897 to 1901 she attended Goucher College (then known as Woman's College of Baltimore), where she earned an A. B. in mathematics. She was a member of the Alpha chapter of the Tau Kappa Pi Fraternity. After graduation, she studied at Bryn Mawr College, Columbia University, and the Universities of Zurich, Paris, and Berlin, but never earned a graduate degree. At Bryn Mawr and Columbia, she researched regeneration in amphibians and crayfish, with summer visits to the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woodshole where she assisted the noted American embryologist Thomas Hunt Morgan. In 1903, she became a lecturer at the New York Medical College for Women and, in 1905, she moved to lecture at Barnard College. In 1906, she traveled to Europe and worked at the University of Zurich. She also visited Berlin and Paris.
Career
Mammalian in vitro culture In 1908, Margaret Reed researched in Berlin in Max Hartmann's lab where she performed probably the first in vitro mammalian cell culture with guinea pig bone marrow by explanting the bone marrow and placing it into a nutrient-rich agar produced by fellow lab researcher Rhoda Erdmann and incubating the sample. A few days after doing so, she found that some of the nuclei exhibited characteristics of mitosis. This discovery was revisited by Margaret Reed after she married Warren Harmon Lewis in 1910. In their combined efforts, the Lewises found that cell proliferation with their media selection and methods seemed only to occur in tissues common to all organs, such as connective tissue and blood vessel endothelium. Since the Lewises main interest was microscopic cell structures, their objective was to create optically-clear media, which led to the creation of the Locke–Lewis solution. This medium is composed of salt solutions supplemented with bouillon and dextrose. The tissue grown in this medium was prepared in a method that became known as the "Lewis culture" where the tissue bits were put into a hanging drop on the underside of a thin glass slip. In the Locke–Lewis solution, the more robust cells, such as fibroblasts and macrophages, had a tendency to migrate out of the explant and flatten, making them easy to observe under high magnifications.
Cell biology Lewis was among the first scientists to observe the dynamics of mitochondria in living cells. In 1915, Margaret and Warren Lewis published a comprehensive analysis of the shapes and movements of mitochondria in cultured cells. Lewis's pioneering time-lapse studies included observations of mitochondrial movement toward and away from the centrosome, mitochondrial fission, and mitochondrial fusion. In the same paper, Lewis presented perhaps the first descriptions of stress-induced mitochondrial fragmentation and mitophagy.
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