The cell

The cell is the structural and functional unit of all living organisms, and is sometimes called the "building block of life." Some organisms, such as bacteria, are unicellular, consisting of a single cell. Other organisms, such as humans, are multicellular, (humans have an estimated 100 trillion or 1014 cells; a typical cell size is 10 µm, a typical cell mass 1 nanogram).

The cell theory, first developed in 1839 by Schleiden and Schwann, states that all organisms are composed of one or more cells; all cells come from preexisting cells; all vital functions of an organism occur within cells, and cells contain the hereditary information necessary for regulating cell functions and for transmitting information to the next generation of cells.

The word cell comes from the Latin cella, a small room. The name was chosen by Robert Hooke when he compared the cork cells he saw to the small rooms monks lived in.

Some (Lynn Margulis and Dorian Sagan, 1995) have argued that the cell is the smallest unit of life.

Properties of cells:

Each cell is at least somewhat self-contained and self-maintaining: it can take in nutrients, convert these nutrients into energy, carry out specialized functions, and reproduce as necessary. Each cell stores its own set of instructions for carrying out each of these activities.

All cells share several abilities:

• Reproduction by cell division (mitosis or meiosis).

• Metabolism, including taking in raw materials, building cell components, converting energy, molecules and releasing by-products. The functioning of a cell depends upon its ability to extract and use chemical energy stored in organic molecules. This energy is derived from metabolic pathways.

• Synthesis of proteins, the functional workhorses of cells, such as enzymes. A typical mammalian cell contains up to 10,000 different proteins.

• Response to external and internal stimuli such as changes in temperature, pH or nutrient levels.

Diagram of a typical animal cell. Organelles are labelled as follows:

1. Nucleolus

2. Nucleus

3. Ribosome

4. Vesicle

5. Rough endoplasmic reticulum

6. Golgi apparatus (or "Golgi body")

7. Cytoskeleton

8. Smooth endoplasmic reticulum

9. Mitochondrion

10. Vacuole

11. Cytoplasm

12. Lysosome

13. Centriole

All cells, whether prokaryotic or eukaryotic, have a membrane, which envelopes the cell, separates its interior from its environment, controls what moves in and out, and maintains the electric potential of the cell. Inside the membrane, a salty cytoplasm takes up most of the cell volume. All cells possess DNA, the hereditary material of genes, and RNA, containing the information necessary to build various proteins such as enzymes, the cell's primary machinery. There are also other kinds of biomolecules in cells. This article will list these primary components of the cell, then briefly describe their function.