ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2015
The unseen world: reflections on Leeuwenhoek (1677) 'Concerning little animals'.
Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 75 papers.
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Who cites it
75 citing papers in PubMed.
- Cross-feeding enables robust coexistence between four bacterial species.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Antonie van Leeuwenhoek and the dawn of microscopic observation: a narrative review from Delft's lens to the modern microscope.Applied microscopy · 2026Review
- Microbial interactions in facilitating antibiotic activity and resistance evolution.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2026Review
- Discovering, Integrating, and Reinterpreting the Molecular Logic of Life: From Classical Theories of Heredity to an Extended Functional Perspective on the Central Dogma.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- The Leeuwenhoek paradox in dental artificial intelligence: A narrative review of artificial intelligence-detected subclinical periapical changes and human-labeled false positives.Journal of dental sciences · 2026Review
- The evolution of diagnostic microbiology: integrating culture-based methods and genomic advances.PeerJ · 2026Review
- Core Concepts for Early Childhood Microbiology Education.Microbial biotechnology · 2026Article
- Deciphering enzymatic potential in metagenomic reads through DNA language models.Nucleic acids research · 2025Article
- Knowing Enough and Space-Making for Microbes in Sake Fermentation Practices.Engaging science, technology, and society · 2025Article
- Microbes as Teachers: Rethinking Knowledge in the Anthropocene.Microbial biotechnology · 2025Review
- From Biophysics to Biomedical Physics.ACS bio & med chem Au · 2025Review
- Video microscopy: an old story with a bright biological future.Biomedical engineering online · 2025Review
- Gut phages and their interactions with bacterial and mammalian hosts.Journal of bacteriology · 2025Review
- Dysbiosis of Oral Microbiome: A Key Player in Oral Carcinogenesis? A Critical Review.Biomedicines · 2025Review
- Fluorescent Particles Based on Aggregation-Induced Emission for Optical Diagnostics of the Central Nervous System.Research (Washington, D.C.) · 2025Review
- Bidirectional interplay between periodontal disease and carotid artery disease: a comprehensive holistic review.Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2025Review
- Protists and protistology in the Anthropocene: challenges for a climate and ecological crisis.BMC biology · 2024Review
- IsopretGO-analysing and visualizing the functional consequences of differential splicing.NAR genomics and bioinformatics · 2024Article
- Article
- EnsembleSeq: a workflow towards real-time, rapid, and simultaneous multi-kingdom-amplicon sequencing for holistic and resource-effective microbiome research at scale.Microbiology spectrum · 2024Article
15 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Leeuwenhoek's 1677 paper, the famous 'letter on the protozoa', gives the first detailed description of protists and bacteria living in a range of environments. The colloquial, diaristic style conceals the workings of a startlingly original experimental mind. Later scientists could not match the resolution and clarity of Leeuwenhoek's microscopes, so his discoveries were doubted or even dismissed over the following centuries, limiting their direct influence on the history of biology; but work in the twentieth century confirmed Leeuwenhoek's discovery of bacterial cells, with a resolution of less than 1 µm. Leeuwenhoek delighted most in the forms, interactions and behaviour of his little 'animalcules', which inhabited a previously unimagined microcosmos. In these reflections on the scientific reach of Leeuwenhoek's ideas and observations, I equate his questions with the preoccupations of our genomic era: what is the nature of Leeuwenhoek's animalcules, where do they come from, how do they relate to each other? Even with the powerful tools of modern biology, the answers are far from resolved-these questions still challenge our understanding of microbial evolution. This commentary was written to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.