Cells for peace.

A very very short intro to Cells

Prologue

You may be wondering what “cells for peace” means. This is an attempt at humor, and it’s not that humorous, which may lead you to wonder why it’s still here, which leads me to the real reason: it is a super-clever wordplay of “Atoms for Peace,” which is a side supergroup project of Radiohead gentlemen Thom Yorke and Nigel Godrich. They only released one album, but ideally the cookie crumbles will lead you back to Radiohead and open up a world to your ears and thought process that you previous didn’t know existed.

In the meantime, if you’re reading this, this is relevant to you, because you have Cells. You are made of cells. Somewhere between 30 and 40 trillion of them, to be precise.

What are cells?

Cells are the smallest functional unit of an organism. So if you’re super smart with physics already, then you know that the universe is made up of atoms, which are the smallest units of ordinary matter. Once you split an atom, some cool dangerous stuff happens. But then that atom is no longer an atom. It loses its identity as an atom. Sort of like a person is a person: if you take a person’s head off, no matter how gently you do it, then that person is no longer a functioning person. Without taking a deep dark dive into genetics, bioethics, and the future of nano regenerative technology, we can’t really say that that person is still a functioning person. Because they’re not. When you divide something, you change it.

Same thing with atoms.

Same thing with cells.

Cells are super small and are made, usually, of a center called the nucleus, which is like the mainframe computer station for each cell. The brainpower. It sends directions (DNA) to other cells to copy and build other ones. The nucleus is wrapped up in a membrane, and there is cytoplasm floating around.

Cytoplasm is basically a solution where the rest of the matter floats around. Matter like organelles, which are tiny parts inside each cell that do specialized work. Also, there’s stuff like ribosomes that make make protein. No, silly, not the protein like the protein in peanut butter (which you should eat lots of and not refrigerate). The protein that’s used to make more cells.

In addition, there’s mitochondria that provide energy and lysosomes that do recycling.

Are cells small?

Super small. The fancy word is microscopic. Fortunately there’s a piece of equipment we can use to study them. It’s called a microscope.

This post is mostly about animal cells, which make energy from water and oxygen and food, and have a cell membrane.

But there are also plant cells, which are similar, but make energy from water, sunshine, and carbon dioxide, and have cell walls rather than cell membranes.

Do I have more cells than my brother?

There’s a lot of super great things to argue about, and I’d love to argue about those many things. One thing that’s not so great to argue about is who has more cells, because most everyone has around 37 trillion.

I have not counted or tried to verify if this is correct. Despite the current fad of discounting experts or authorities in a particular field because you don’t like what they say, there is still a place for expertise and authority in my universe. I defer to those who have actually studied and used microscopes to do the counting and estimating for me.

So I’m gonna stick with the 37 trillion, and find some other good subjects to argue with others about. I recommend the same for you.

Are all cells equal?

No. More on that soon.

Unicellular organisms have one cell.

Guess how many cells multicellular organisms have?

Yes. More than one.

How many cells do rocks have?

Trick question. Zero. Rocks are not living things, so they’re not made up of cells.

Only organisms (“living things”) have cells.

Do prisoners have cells?

Yes. Prisoners live in cells, and prisoners’ cells live in cells.

That was a joke. But it’s also true.

I’d like to lose some weight. Could I ditch some of my cells?

Well, that’s already being done for you. You’re constantly losing cells, and gaining cells, and don’t try to pay too much attention, unless you’re cooking something for a bunch of people and your hair is falling into the soup. That’s not cool. Nobody wants to be eating other people’s cells.

Most people don’t, I should say. Can’t speak for everyone though. Reminds me of an argument I got into with someone when I was a kid, and I told them I was vegetarian.

“No you’re not,” the older boy insisted.

“Yes I am,” I insisted.

Turns out when you factor in all the bugs that get ground up in chocolate and other delicacies, that perhaps he was right in stating that I was not, in fact, as one hundred percent vegetarian as I thought. We might say the same thing about cells: the idea of touching other people’s cells, or eating other people’s dead cells and tissue and so forth is super gross. But we all do it. Like it or not. Disturbing reality. Deal with it.

Seriously, wash your hands plenty, don’t pick your nose, cough, or sneeze around food, and wear a hair net if you’ve got rebellious locks that keep wanting to escape off your cranium.

Cells do a bunch of cool stuff that keeps our bodies going. Let me say that a little stronger: we keep going because we have cells. Sort of like saying that oxygen is good for humans. Yes…it’s good for humans, and it’s also completely necessary in order to continue living. Cells do all kinds of great stuff. Some multitask, but mostly different cells are good for different things.

Different

Cells have different jobs, like making blood, or making bones, making muscles. Stuff like that. So you shouldn’t, for the most part, try to weed out which cells you want or don’t want.

Same

It kinda seems like they spend their existence doing the same thing: replicating themselves. Is that true?

As a certified complete non-expert on Cellular Biology, I can tell you that that it is…partially true. Yes, they pretty much keep doing the same thing. Replicating themselves. And that’s a great big giant good thing. Because it means that not only are those cells constantly working to help our bodies grow, they are helping our bodies fix themselves when we get injured, ill, damaged, or hurt.

Again, there’s a limit to what cells can do. They can fix a lot of things, but if you were accidentally caught up in the terror of the French Revolution, for example, and your head got separated from your body, then I feel strongly - even as a -non-expert - in stating that your body’s cells, hardy though they are, would be not be able fix you.

Remember that whole analogy a while back about cells and atoms being the smallest complete units? A good reminder. Heads need to remain attached to bodies.

The process by which cells divide and replicate is called mitosis. One copies itself and becomes two. Two becomes four. Four becomes eight. Eight becomes sixteen…

…and so on. They keep dividing and making new ones again and again and again and again. They are super good at recycling.

In normal circumstances, every system in your body has just the right number of cells to function correctly.

Sometimes though, cells don’t know when to stop this process. They just keep going and going beyond the number of cells that a particular body area needs. This leads to the disease known as cancer.