Paul Portier (physiologist)

In 1901, Albert I, Prince of Monaco organised a scientific expedition around the French coast of the Atlantic Ocean.[8] He specifically invited Portier and Charles Richet, professor of physiology at the Collège de France, to join him for investigating the toxins produced by cnidarians (like jellyfish and sea anemones).[10] Richet and Portier boarded Albert's ship Princesse Alice II from where they collected various marine animals.[11]

Richet and Portier extracted a toxin called hypnotoxin from their collection of jellyfish (but the real source was later identified as Portuguese man o' war)[12] and sea anemone (Actinia sulcata) from Cape Verde Islands.[6][13] In their first experiment on the ship, they injected a dog with the toxin in an attempt to immunise the dog, which instead developed a severe reaction (hypersensitivity). To confirm the findings, they knew that more experimental works were needed in the laboratory.[6] In 1902, they repeated the injections in their laboratory and found that dogs normally tolerated the toxin at first injection, but on re-exposure, three weeks later with the same dose, they always developed fatal shock. They also found that the effect was not related to the doses of toxin used, as even small amounts in secondary injections were lethal.[13] Thus, instead of inducing tolerance (prophylaxis) which they expected, they discovered effects of the toxin as deadly.[14]

In 1902, Richet introduced the term aphylaxis to describe the condition of lack of protection. He later changed the term to anaphylaxis on grounds of euphony.[15] The term is from the Greek ἀνά-, ana-, meaning "against", and φύλαξις, phylaxis, meaning "protection".[16] On 15 February 1902, Richet and Portier jointly presented their findings before the Société de biologie in Paris.[17][18] The moment is regarded as the birth of allergy (the term invented by Clemens von Pirquet in 1906) study (allergology).[18] Richet continued to study on the phenomenon and was eventually awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on anaphylaxis in 1913.[3][11][19]

Portier never claimed the co-discovery of anaphylaxis, instead honoured Richet as a senior scientist. After the Nobel Prize, Richet praised him for "giving up all claim to the honor of the discovery."[8] Portier explained: "We discovered anaphylaxis without looking for it, and almost in spite of ourselves. But it was necessary to have the eyes and mind of a physiologist to understand the interest."[2]

Portier was the first to realise that condensation of water vapour was the cause of the spout of a blowing whale and other marine mammals. He showed that condensation occurred in the expelled air as water vapour was spread and cooled down.[6] His studies from 1909 established the principle of surface tension in insects that walked on water.[1] His studies in 1922 involved osmoregulation (salt-water balance) in fishes. In 1934, he showed that deaths of marine birds in oil spills were due to loss of body heat caused by oils infiltrating the feathers.[6]

Following his interest in entomology and physiology, Portier studied how insects such as termites digest cellulose. He found out that bacteria in termite's gut were essential for cellulose digestion. In addition, the bacteria provided essential vitamins to the termites and were involved during the developmental processes of the hosts. Thus, the bacteria were symbionts.[20] It was at the time a known fact that such bacteria were parasites. Portier began to realised that microbes could be necessary for the lives and formation of higher organisms. In 1917, he published the role of symbiosis in the lives of plants and animals, and by that time he started writing a book, he called Les Symbiotes.[21] He was able to link the similarities of bacteria and mitochondria, the energy-producing cell organelles, and claimed that mitochondria behaved just like bacteria in culture.[22][23]

In 1918, Portier, summing up his observations on symbiosis in nature and his evolutionary idea (now known as symbiogenesis), published Les Symbiotes, dedicating it to Prince Albert.[24] According to Portier, symbiosis is a universal process by which all complex life forms (eukaryotes) arose from the fusion of independent unicellular organisms; mitochondria, for examples, are just a type of bacteria.[4][22] He made a statement:

All living beings, all animals from Amoeba to Man, all plants from Cryptogams to Dicotyledons are constituted by an association, the emboîtement [embodiment] of two different beings. Each living cell contains in its protoplasm formations, which histologists designate by the name of mitochondria. These organelles are, for me, nothing other than symbiotic bacteria, which I call "symbiotes."[21]

As Portier himself remarked that his theory was "a veritable scientific heresy,"[21] the book and the evolutionary idea were received with scepticism and ridicule. The Société de biologie created a committee to investigate the controversy.[23] Scientists at the Pasteur Institute openly argued that mitochondria could never be cultured and challenged Portier to demonstrate his experiments. As John Archibald described: "Les Symbiotes caused a brouhaha in France... Portier's reputation as a competent experimentalist was damaged and his grand hypothesis was ignored."[24] The next year, Auguste Lumière published a refutation Le Mythe des Symbiotes ("The Myth of Symbiotes").[20] Portier had prepared a draft of the sequel to Les Symbiotes, but never published it or touched on the subject of evolution again.[24] (Symbiogenesis is now widely accepted, and mitochondria are evidently once free-living bacteria.[25][26])