PROTOPLASM

the cytoplasm and nucleus of a cell. The term was first defined in 1835 as the ground substance of living material and, hence, responsible for all living processes. Advocates of the protoplasm concept implied that cells were either fragments or containers of protoplasm. The weakness of the concept was its inability to account for the origin of formed structures within the cell, especially the nucleus. Today the term is used to mean simply the cytoplasm and nucleus. The word protoplasm is somewhat unpopular in modern biology, although the term protoplasmic streaming is commonly used to describe the movement of the cytoplasm.