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

Key protein regulates immune response to viruses in mammal cells

Researchers have revealed the regulatory mechanism of a specific protein that plays a key role in balancing the immune response triggered by viral infections in mammal cells. These findings could help drive the development ...

Describing growing tissues in the language of thermodynamics

A key feature of biological tissues is their inhomogeneity and their ability to grow via cell reproduction. To study this behavior, it is important to describe it using equations, which account for factors including growth ...

Researchers crack mystery of swirling vortexes in egg cells

Egg cells are the largest single cells on the planet. Their size—often several to hundreds of times the size of a typical cell—allows them to grow into entire organisms, but it also makes it difficult to transport nutrients ...

How a calcium-sensing protein multitasks

The calcium-sensing receptor is critical for maintaining healthy calcium levels, but CaSR is also well-known for its side hustles. The receptor is increasingly recognized for its ability to detect other ions and proteins ...

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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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