REVIEWER

Cellular Biology (20%)

 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.

Similarities and differences between 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.

The nature and function of cells

 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

The molecules of cells

 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.

The structure of biological molecules

  Cells are largely composed of compounds that contain carbon.
 Because carbon atoms can form stable bonds with four other atoms, they are uniquely suited for
the construction of complex molecules. These complex molecules are typically made up of chains
and rings that contain hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen atoms, as well as carbon atoms.
 Most, but not all, of the carbon-containing molecules in cells are built up from members of one of
four different families of small organic molecules: sugars, amino acids, nucleotides, and fatty
acids. Each of these families contains a group of molecules that resemble one another in both
structure and function. In addition to other important functions, these molecules are used to build
large macromolecules.
 For example, the sugars can be linked to form polysaccharides such as starch and glycogen,
the amino acids can be linked to form proteins, the nucleotides can be linked to form
the DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) and RNA (ribonucleic acid) of chromosomes, and the fatty
acids can be linked to form the lipids of all cell membranes.

Approximate chemical composition of a typical mammalian cell

component percent of total cell weight

water 70

inorganic ions (sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium, chloride,

1
etc.)

miscellaneous small metabolites 3

proteins 18

RNA 1.1

DNA 0.25

phospholipids and other lipids 5

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

The genetic information of cells

 Cells can thus be seen as a self-replicating network of catalytic macromolecules engaged in a

carefully balanced series of energy conversions that drive biosynthesis and cell movement. But
energy alone is not enough to make self-reproduction possible; the cell must contain detailed
instructions that dictate exactly how that energy is to be used.

 DNA: the genetic material

 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.

 messenger RNA; translation

 Molecular genetics emerged from the realization that DNA and RNA constitute the genetic
material of all living organisms. (1) DNA, located in the cell nucleus, is made up of nucleotides
that contain the bases adenine (A), thymine (T), guanine (G), and cytosine (C). (2) RNA, which
contains uracil (U) instead of thymine, transports the genetic code to protein-synthesizing sites in
the cell. (3) Messenger RNA (mRNA) then carries the genetic information to ribosomes in the
cell cytoplasm that translate the genetic information into molecules of protein.
 The RNA molecules in cells have two main roles. Some, the ribozymes, fold up in ways that
allow them to serve as catalysts for specific chemical reactions. Others serve as “messenger
RNA,” which provides templates specifying the synthesis of proteins. Ribosomes, tiny protein-
synthesizing machines located in the cytoplasm, “read” the messenger RNA molecules and
“translate” them into proteins by using the genetic code. In this translation, the sequence
of nucleotides in the messenger RNA chain is decoded three nucleotides at a time, and each
nucleotide triplet (called a codon) specifies a particular amino acid. Thus, a nucleotide sequence
in the DNA specifies a protein provided that a messenger RNA molecule is produced from that
DNA sequence. Each region of the DNA sequence specifying a protein in this way is called
a gene.
 By the above mechanisms, DNA molecules catalyze not only their own duplication but also
dictate the structures of all protein molecules. A single human cell contains about 10,000
different proteins produced by the expression of 10,000 different genes. Actually, a set of human
chromosomes is thought to contain DNA with enough information to express between 30,000 and
100,000 proteins, but most of these proteins seem to be made only in specialized types of cells
and are therefore not present throughout the body. (For further discussion, see below The
nucleus.)
 The organization of cells
 Intracellular communication
  A cell with its many different DNA, RNA, and protein molecules is quite different from a test
tube containing the same components. When a cell is dissolved in a test tube, thousands of
different types of molecules randomly mix together.
When a eukaryotic cell is examined at high magnification in an electron microscope, it becomes
apparent that specific membrane-bound organelles divide the interior into a variety of
subcompartments. Although not detectable in the electron microscope, it is clear from
biochemical assays that each organelle contains a different set of macromolecules. This
biochemical segregation reflects the functional specialization of each compartment.

The relative volumes occupied by some cellular compartments in a typical liver cell

percent of total cell approximate number per

cellular compartment
volume cell

cytosol 54 1

mitochondrion 22 1,700

endoplasmic reticulum plus Golgi

15 1
apparatus

nucleus 6 1

lysosome 1 300

Early Stages of Human Development

 The ovum contains a small collection of cells in the early stages of human development. As cells
divide (A–D), they are separated into different regions of the ovum. Each region of the ovum
transmits a unique set of chemical signals to nearby cells. Thus, the signals detected by one cell
differ from those detected by its neighbour cells. In this process, known as cell determination,
cells are individually programmed to direct them toward development into different cell types.
 A fertilized egg multiplies and produces a whole family of daughter cells, each of which adopts a
structure and function according to its position in the entire assembly. All of the daughter cells
contain the same chromosomes and therefore the same genetic information. Despite this common
inheritance, different types of cells behave differently and have different structures. In order for
this to be the case, they must express different sets of genes, so that they produce different
proteins despite their identical embryological ancestors.
 During the development of an embryo, it is not sufficient for all the cell types found in the fully
developed individual simply to be created. Each cell type must form in the right place at the right
time and in the correct proportion; otherwise, there would be a jumble of randomly assorted cells
in no way resembling an organism. The orderly development of an organism depends on a
process called cell determination, in which initially identical cells become committed to different
pathways of development. A fundamental part of cell determination is the ability of cells to detect
different chemicals within different regions of the embryo. The chemical signals detected by one
cell may be different from the signals detected by its neighbour cells. The signals that a cell
detects activate a set of genes that tell the cell to differentiate in ways appropriate for its position
within the embryo. The set of genes activated in one cell differs from the set of genes activated in
the cells around it. The process of cell determination requires an elaborate system of cell-to-cell
communication in early embryos.
 The cell membrane
 The cell membrane, therefore, has two functions: first, to be a barrier keeping the constituents of
the cell in and unwanted substances out and, second, to be a gate allowing transport into the cell
of essential nutrients and movement from the cell of waste products.

 molecular view of the cell membrane

 Intrinsic proteins penetrate and bind tightly to the lipid bilayer, which is made up largely of
phospholipids and cholesterol and which typically is between 4 and 10 nanometers (nm; 1 nm =
10−9 metre) in thickness. Extrinsic proteins are loosely bound to the hydrophilic (polar) surfaces,
which face the watery medium both inside and outside the cell. Some intrinsic proteins present
sugar side chains on the cell's outer surface.
 Chemical composition and membrane structure
 Most current knowledge about the biochemical constituents of cell membranes originates in
studies of red blood cells. The chief advantage of these cells for experimental purposes is that
they may be obtained easily in large amounts and that they have no internal membranous
organelles to interfere with study of their cell membranes. Careful studies of these and other cell
types have shown that all membranes are composed of proteins and fatty-acid-based lipids.
Membranes actively involved in metabolism contain a higher proportion of protein; thus, the
membrane of the mitochondrion, the most rapidly metabolizing organelle of the cell, contains as
much as 75 percent protein, while the membrane of the Schwann cell, which forms an insulating
sheath around many nerve cells, has as little as 20 percent protein.