protoplasm, colorless ground substance of living material within cells, constituting the cytoplasm and organelles of a cell, particularly the nucleus. Protoplasm serves as the substance in which all reactions of living cells are carried out, and thus it is essential to all living processes.
Protoplasm was first described in 1835 by French biologist and cytologist Félix Dujardin, who observed the substance as it exuded through openings in the calcareous shell of unicellular organisms known as foraminiferans; Dujardin named the substance sarcode. In 1839 Czech physiologist Jan Evangelista Purkinje coined the term protoplasm, which supplanted the use of the word sarcode. At the time, supporters of the protoplasm concept considered cells as being 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 protoplasm is generally used in reference to the cytoplasm and nucleus. The cytoplasm, a semifluid substance external to the nuclear membrane and internal to the cellular membrane, is sometimes described as the nonnuclear content of protoplasm. The word protoplasm is somewhat unpopular in modern biology, although the term protoplasmic streaming is sometimes used interchangeably with the term cytoplasmic streaming to describe the movement of the cytoplasm.