Related topics: protein · cancer cells · cancer · stem cells · immune system

A shade closer to more efficient organic photovoltaics

Transparent solar cells will transform the look of infrastructure by enabling many more surfaces to become solar panels. Now, materials called non-fullerene acceptors that can intrinsically generate charges when exposed to ...

Crinkled coatings could prevent medical implants from failing

Medical implants could fail less often when coated with a microscopically crinkled, ceramic material designed by researchers at the University of Michigan. The coating is described in a paper published in ACS Applied Materials ...

Researchers create artificial cells that act like living cells

In a new study published in Nature Chemistry, UNC-Chapel Hill researcher Ronit Freeman and her colleagues describe the steps they took to manipulate DNA and proteins—essential building blocks of life—to create cells that ...

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Cell (biology)

The cell is the structural and functional unit of all known living organisms. It is the smallest unit of an organism that is classified as living, and is often called the building block of life. Some organisms, such as most bacteria, are unicellular (consist 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 is 1 nanogram.) The largest known cell is an unfertilized ostrich egg cell.

In 1835 before the final cell theory was developed, a Czech Jan Evangelista Purkyně observed small "granules" while looking at the plant tissue through a microscope. The cell theory, first developed in 1839 by Matthias Jakob Schleiden and Theodor Schwann, states that all organisms are composed of one or more cells. All cells come from preexisting cells. Vital functions of an organism occur within cells, and all 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 cellula, meaning, a small room. The descriptive name for the smallest living biological structure was chosen by Robert Hooke in a book he published in 1665 when he compared the cork cells he saw through his microscope to the small rooms monks lived in.

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