Cells Part 2

Hello! So countinuing on the topic of cell ( which i clearly forgot).( I can not believe that i forgot something as important as this!) Anyway enough regrets and more blogging.

So something else that I learned over the cell topic was the a new organelle; the cytoskeleton. For years in school I have been hearing persons refer to cytoskeleton, cytoplasm and the cytosol, but honestly I thought that they were all the same thing and just fancy names for the same thing. TODAY I SHALL BECOME A WOMAN AND CORRECT MY MISTAKE.

So the cytoskeleton is like the backbone of the cell. It is made up of microtubeles or microfilaments thats give a eukaryotic cell a characteristic shape. The cytoskeleton also transports organelles from one part of the cell to another.

The cytoplasm is the protoplasm within the living cell. The cytoplasm comprises of the gel like substance in the cell and the organelles present in the cell. Some scientist also say that the cytoplasm refers to the gel like substance in a cell and each organelle except the nucleus.

The cytosol is simple the aqueous component of the cell. It is referred to as the intracellular fluid or cytoplasmic matrix.

So I hope that I have made this very clear. I finally get to sleep at night and assure myself that I no longer confuse the terms.

The Cells part 1

Hey good morning,
I have been looking over some of my post and I seemed to have forgotten one of the most important concepts of biochemistry. It was the first topic done in class and I never wrote about it. Yes you got that right; CELLS. Yes I know what you are saying! CELLS? That’s like primary school stuff right. I mean come on who does not know about cells. So I will not spend much time on the topic. I will break this post up into two , so that information can be digested at a slower rate.

So we went over basically all the main details of cells. That they were the smallest unit of life and that they were made up of many different components and that we first had prokaryotes and then eukaryotes came about ( I will also highlight how this happened in another blog). So as I was saying we did all of these basic stuff, it was really like a division of stuff that we learned at college.

However, something new stuck out at me. This was what limits the size of a cell. I was puzzled for some time by this question. When my lecturer asked it, I was really lost. Never had I thought about what limits the size of cells. So I set myself on some research and the next day it was confirmed in class.

How small a cell gets can be limited by the amount of DNA that the cell needs to survive. These cells have to have enough enzymes in order to catalyse all the functions needed to stay alive. From lecturer notes i found that the smallest cell was the Dialister pneumosintes and this is only 0.5*o.5*1.6 micrometres (seen below). This is currently known as the smallest bacteria.Please bear in mind that viruses are much smaller than bacteria.

How large a cell can get is limited by the surface area to volume ratio. As cell size increases the volume also increases. By this products of diffusion take a longer time to reach some components of a cell. So as size increases the ratio of surface area to volume ratio decrease.This means that with very large cells some products may not be able to diffuse fast enough and a build up of these products may posion the cell.

So I found these topics very interesting. I hope that I gave someone out their some clarity! Over and out people!