Ultrastructure

Ultrastructure (or ultra-structure) is the detailed structure of a biological specimen, such as a cell, tissue, or organ, that can be observed by electron microscopy. It refers in general to the study of cellular structures that are too small to be seen with an optical microscope.

Ultrastructure, along with molecular phylogeny, has often been a reliable (that is, phylogenetic) way of classifying organisms.[1]

Other uses

Ultra-Structure is also the name given to a notational system for representing complex rules.[2]

References

  1. ^ Laura Wegener Parfrey, Erika Barbero, Elyse Lasser, Micah Dunthorn, Debashish Bhattacharya, David J Patterson, and Laura A Katz (December 2006). "Evaluating Support for the Current Classification of Eukaryotic Diversity". PLoS Genet. 2 (12): e220. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.0020220. PMC 1713255. PMID 17194223. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=1713255. 
  2. ^ Long, J., and Denning, D., Ultra-Structure: A design theory for complex systems and processes. In Communications of the ACM (January 1995)