Checking whether an avocado is hard or soft by looking at it? This would require recognizing how the plant cells behave behind the skin. The same applies to all other cells on our planet: Despite more than 100 years of intensive ...
General Physics
35 minutes ago
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Melanin protects the skin—the body's largest organ and a vital component of the immune system—from the damaging effects of ultraviolet (UV) radiation. When the skin is exposed to UV radiation, melanin production is stimulated ...
Molecular & Computational biology
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A team led by Professor Seo Dae-ha of the Department of Physics and Chemistry at DGIST has developed new real-time microscopy technology and successfully observed the behavior of "motor proteins," which may hold the key to ...
Cell & Microbiology
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Cell & Microbiology
Aug 2, 2024
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Wild boars and red junglefowl gave rise to common pigs and chickens. These animals' genes evolved to express themselves differently, leading to signatures of domestication—such as weaker bones and better viral resistance—in ...
Molecular & Computational biology
Aug 2, 2024
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92
Whole genome duplication (WGD) is a common mutation in plants with profound evolutionary potential. While it is well-known that an increase in genetic material can lead to larger cell sizes, the impact of gene dosage multiplication ...
Plants & Animals
Aug 2, 2024
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In Antarctica there is a small lake, called Deep Lake, that is so salty it remains ice-free all year round despite temperatures as low as -20°C in winter. Archaea, a unique type of single-celled microorganism, thrive in ...
Ecology
Aug 2, 2024
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113
According to Greek mythology, red roses first appeared when Aphrodite pricked her foot on a thorn, spilling blood on a white rose. Since then, roses' thorns have captured the imaginations of countless poets and forlorn lovers.
Molecular & Computational biology
Aug 1, 2024
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77
New "squishy" lasers could help solve the mystery of the biological forces that control the development of embryos and cancerous tumors.
Cell & Microbiology
Aug 1, 2024
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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.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
