Cellular Biology
Cellular Biology
Cellular Biology
Cell, in biology, the basic membrane-bound unit that contains the fundamental molecules of life
and of which all living things are composed. A single cell is often a complete organism in itself,
such as a bacterium or yeast. Other cells acquire specialized functions as they mature. These cells
cooperate with other specialized cells and become the building blocks of large multicellular
organisms, such as humans and other animals. Although cells are much larger than atoms, they
are still very small.
The smallest known cells are a group of tiny bacteria called mycoplasmas; some of these single-
celled organisms are spheres as small as 0.2 μm in diameter (1μm = about 0.000039 inch), with a
total mass of 10−14 gram—equal to that of 8,000,000,000 hydrogen atoms.
Cells of humans typically have a mass 400,000 times larger than the mass of a single mycoplasma
bacterium, but even human cells are only about 20 μm across. It would require a sheet of about
10,000 human cells to cover the head of a pin, and each human organism is composed of more
than 30,000,000,000,000 cells.
Basic similarities between cells and ways cells may vary depending on their function.
As an individual unit, the cell is capable of metabolizing its own nutrients, synthesizing many
types of molecules, providing its own energy, and replicating itself in order to produce
succeeding generations.
In a multicellular organism, cells become specialized to perform different functions through the
process of differentiation. In order to do this, each cell keeps in constant communication with its
neighbours. As it receives nutrients from and expels wastes into its surroundings, it adheres to
and cooperates with other cells. Cooperative assemblies of similar cells form tissues, and a
cooperation between tissues in turn forms organs, which carry out the functions necessary to
sustain the life of an organism.
A cell is enclosed by a plasma membrane, which forms a selective barrier that allows nutrients to
enter and waste products to leave. The interior of the cell is organized into many specialized
compartments, or organelles, each surrounded by a separate membrane. One major organelle,
the nucleus, contains the genetic information necessary for cell growth and reproduction. Each
cell contains only one nucleus, whereas other types of organelles are present in multiple copies in
the cellular contents, or cytoplasm. Organelles include mitochondria, which are responsible for
the energy transactions necessary for cell survival; lysosomes, which digest unwanted materials
within the cell; and the endoplasmic reticulum and the Golgi apparatus, which play important
roles in the internal organization of the cell by synthesizing selected molecules and then
processing, sorting, and directing them to their proper locations. In addition, plant cells
contain chloroplasts, which are responsible for photosynthesis, whereby the energy of sunlight is
used to convert molecules of carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H2O) into carbohydrates. Between
all these organelles is the space in the cytoplasm called the cytosol. The cytosol contains an
organized framework of fibrous molecules that constitute the cytoskeleton, which gives a cell its
shape, enables organelles to move within the cell, and provides a mechanism by which the cell
itself can move. The cytosol also contains more than 10,000 different kinds of molecules that are
involved in cellular biosynthesis, the process of making large biological molecules from small
ones.
Cells
Animal cells and plant cells contain membrane-bound organelles, including a distinct nucleus. In
contrast, bacterial cells do not contain organelles.
Specialized organelles are a characteristic of cells of organisms known as eukaryotes. In contrast,
cells of organisms known as prokaryotes do not contain organelles and are generally smaller than
eukaryotic cells. However, all cells share strong similarities in biochemical function.
Eukaryotic cell
Understand how cell membranes regulate food consumption and waste and how cell walls
provide protection.
Cells ingest molecules through their plasma membranes.
Cells contain a special collection of molecules that are enclosed by a membrane. These molecules
give cells the ability to grow and reproduce. The overall process of cellular reproduction occurs in
two steps: cell growth and cell division. During cell growth, the cell ingests certain molecules
from its surroundings by selectively carrying them through its cell membrane. Once inside the
cell, these molecules are subjected to the action of highly specialized, large, elaborately folded
molecules called enzymes. Enzymes act as catalysts by binding to ingested molecules and
regulating the rate at which they are chemically altered. These chemical alterations make the
molecules more useful to the cell. Unlike the ingested molecules, catalysts are not chemically
altered themselves during the reaction, allowing one catalyst to regulate a specific chemical
reaction in many molecules.
Biological catalysts create chains of reactions. In other words, a molecule chemically transformed
by one catalyst serves as the starting material, or substrate, of a second catalyst and so on. In this
way, catalysts use the small molecules brought into the cell from the outside environment to
create increasingly complex reaction products. These products are used for cell growth and
the replication of genetic material. Once the genetic material has been copied and there are
sufficient molecules to support cell division, the cell divides to create two daughter cells.
Through many such cycles of cell growth and division, each parent cell can give rise to millions
of daughter cells, in the process converting large amounts of inanimate matter into biologically
active molecules.
water 70
proteins 18
RNA 1.1
DNA 0.25
polysaccharides 2
Aside from water, which forms 70 percent of a cell’s mass, a cell is composed mostly
of macromolecules. By far the largest portion of macromolecules are the proteins.
An average-sized protein macromolecule contains a string of about 400 amino acid molecules.
Each amino acid has a different side chain of atoms that interact with the atoms of side chains of
other amino acids. These interactions are very specific and cause the entire protein molecule to
fold into a compact globular form.
Most of the catalytic macromolecules in cells are enzymes. The majority of enzymes are proteins.
Key to the catalytic property of an enzyme is its tendency to undergo a change in its shape when
it binds to its substrate, thus bringing together reactive groups on substrate molecules.
Some enzymes are macromolecules of RNA, called ribozymes. Ribozymes consist of linear
chains of nucleotides that fold in specific ways to form unique surfaces, similar to the ways in
which proteins fold. As with proteins, the specific sequence of nucleotide subunits in an RNA
chain gives each macromolecule a unique character. RNA molecules are much less frequently
used as catalysts in cells than are protein molecules, presumably because proteins, with the
greater variety of amino acid side chains, are more diverse and capable of complex shape chan
All living organisms are composed of cells arising only from the growth and division of other
cells. The improvement of the microscope then led to an era during which many biologists made
intensive observations of the microscopic structure of cells. By 1885 a substantial amount of
indirect evidence indicated that chromosomes—dark-staining threads in the cell nucleus—carried
the information for cell heredity. It was later shown that chromosomes are about half DNA and
half protein by weight.
DNA structure
All of the genetic information in a cell was initially thought to be confined to the DNA in the
chromosomes of the cell nucleus. Later discoveries identified small amounts of additional genetic
information present in the DNA of much smaller chromosomes located in two types of organelles
in the cytoplasm. These organelles are the mitochondria in animal cells and the mitochondria
and chloroplasts in plant cells. The special chromosomes carry the information coding for a few
of the many proteins and RNA molecules needed by the organelles. They also hint at the
evolutionary origin of these organelles, which are thought to have originated as free-
living bacteria that were taken up by other organisms in the process of symbiosis.
RNA: replicated from DNA
It is possible for RNA to replicate itself by mechanisms related to those used by DNA, even
though it has a single-stranded instead of a double-stranded structure. In early cells RNA is
thought to have replicated itself in this way. However, all of the RNA in present-day cells is
synthesized by special enzymes that construct a single-stranded RNA chain by using one strand
of the DNA helix as a template. Although RNA molecules are synthesized in the cell nucleus,
where the DNA is located, most of them are transported to the cytoplasm before they carry out
their functions.
The relative volumes occupied by some cellular compartments in a typical liver cell
cytosol 54 1
mitochondrion 22 1,700
nucleus 6 1
lysosome 1 300