LESSON 3 – CELLULAR BASIS OF LIFE

DISCOVERY OF THE CELL

• A scientist named Robert Hooke was the first person to use the term cells to refer to the tiny structures found in organisms.
• Around 1665, Hooke observed a piece of cork with the use of a microscope which he himself made. There he observed boxlike
compartments in the cork.
• Hooke thought they looked like the small rooms or cells of old monasteries. He called these roomlike structures in cork, cells.
• What Hooke really saw were the outer boundaries of the cells. They looked like empty boxes because the cells were dead.
• Many other scientists studied cells. In 1831 Robert Brown reported seeing small bodies in the cells he studied and called them
nuclei (singular form is nucleus).
• Years later in 1839, Johannes Purkinje observed the complex fluid inside the cells and named it protoplasm.

THE CELL THEORY

• In the late 1830s two German scientists, Mathias J. Schleiden, a plant biologist, and Theodor Schwann, an animal biologist,
worked on various organisms—Schleiden, on plants, and Schwann, on animals.
• They worked separately but they arrived at the same conclusion, which came to be known as the cell theory.
• According to this theory, all organisms are made up of fundamental units called cells.
• Cells are not only units of structure; they are also units of function in organisms. This means that individual cells have specific roles
in the organism.
• Another German physician, Rudolf Virchow, discovered that cells increased in number by dividing and formed new cells. Thus,
the cell theory also states that new cells arise or come from existing cells.

PLANT AND ANIMAL CELLS

• Plants and animals consist of cells that have distinct parts. These parts carry
out functions that enable the cells to maintain their activities and sustain life.

Parenchyma Cells
• Food production of plants occur in the parenchyma cells of leaves. They are
usually made of relatively large cells.
• Their thin cell walls make possible the easy exchange of water and nutrients
between cells.
• Parenchyma cells are also found in the growth regions of stems and roots and
play an important role in wound healing and the regeneration of these parts.
• Parenchyma cells serve as storage for food, forming the fleshy tissues of fruits
and vegetables.

Collenchyma Cells
• Collenchyma cells have uneven cell walls. These cell walls are thicker than those of the parenchyma cells.
• Collenchyma cells are elongated and can stretch to provide mechanical support to elongating parts of the plant.
• Collenchyma cells are commonly found below epidermal regions of the stems.

Sclerenchyma Cells
• Sclerenchyma cells have very thick walls to support mature plant parts like fibers and seeds. They are usually dead cells.
• Their cell walls have lignin that makes them waterproof.
• Plant fibers and stone cells of fruits like chico as well as seed coats of coconut shells are made of sclerenchyma cells.
• Like plants, animals have cells with different forms, sizes, and shapes that are related to their functions.

Smooth Muscle Cells

• Smooth muscle cells are elongated and have pointed ends.
• The nucleus of each cell is found near the center of the cell.
• Smooth muscle cells are found in internal organs except in the heart and in the walls of blood vessels.

Skeletal Muscle Cells

• Skeletal muscle cells are also called striated muscle cells because of their striped appearance when viewed under a compound
microscope. They are large cells.

Nerve Cells or Neuron

• The nerve cell or neuron consists of an enlarged portion, the cell body which contains the nucleus and other organelles.
• Two types of nerve fibers: the dendrites and the axon extend from the cell body.
• In humans, these nerve fibers can reach one metre long.

Erythrocytes (Red Blood Cells)

• Erythrocytes, commonly known as red blood cells, are unique because they usually lose their nuclei as they develop.
• This is to give way to their important function as carriers of oxygen to the different parts of the body.
• However, red blood cells of most of the other vertebrates like birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish retain their nuclei throughout their
lifespan.
CELLULAR ORGANELLES
• With the improvements made in the earlier light microscopes
and the invention of the electron microscope, the finer
structures or ultra-structures called organelles, of the cell
become observable. These organelles have specific functions.
• The diagrams of the generalized plant and animal cells in
Figure 2.7 are a result of putting together several electron
micrographs or pictures as seen under the electron
microscope.
• Notice that in Figure 2.7 the whole cell is enclosed by plasma
membrane.
• All the cell contents within the plasma membrane but outside
the nucleus make up the cytoplasm.
• It has a semifluid portion, the cytosol, where the organelles of
the cell, except the endoplasmic reticulum and the
mitochondria, are suspended.
• Thus, the cytoplasm is not at all homogeneous as it appears
when viewed under a compound microscope.
• The nucleus is the prominent spherical structure in the cell because it is larger than most of the other organelles. It serves as the
control center, directing and coordinating all the activities of the cell.
• The nucleus contains the chromosomes with DNA and may have a nucleolus or two nucleoli.
• The nucleolus appears as a dark round body inside the nucleus where RNA is transcribed and assembled. These have important
roles in cell division and in heredity which will be discussed in detail later.

EUKARYOTIC AND PROKARYOTIC CELLS

• What you have been reading and familiarizing yourselves with are eukaryotic cells with a distinct nucleus enclosed by a membrane.
• Except for red blood cells and plant cells like vessels, tracheid, and phloem elements which when mature also lacks nucleus
and cytoplasm, eukaryotic cells make up most of an organism’s body. Organisms with this kind of cells are called eukaryotes.
• Some eukaryotes, such as amoeba and paramecium, are single-celled.
• Some very small and simple, single-celled organisms like bacteria and cyanobacteria do not have well-defined membrane-enclosed
nucleus and organelles. Such cells are called prokaryotic cells. Organisms with prokaryotic cells are called prokaryotes.
• In a bacterial cell, one chromosome consisting of a thin, long circular molecule of double-stranded DNA is attached to the plasma
membrane.
• Since there is only one chromosome, genes are not in pairs unlike in eukaryotes.
• The mesosome, an infoldings of the plasma membrane, aids in moving particles out of the bacterium.
• Prokaryotes have small circular DNA called plasmids scattered in the cytoplasm. Their cell walls are rigid and are made of lipids,
carbohydrates, and proteins, unlike the cell walls of plant cells which are made of cellulose.

PROKARYOTES EUKARYOTES
No nucleus With nucleus
No membrane-enclosed organelles With membrane-enclosed organelles
Have one chromosome Have chromosomes in pairs
Have no cellulose in cell walls Have cellulose in cell walls
Have smaller ribosomes Have larger ribosomes
No movement of cellular materials within the cell Cellular materials often appear to move (streaming) within the cell
Have simple cytoskeleton Have complex cytoskeleton
Have solid flagella Have complex tubular flagella
Do not undergo cell division by mitosis Undergo cell division by mitosis

UNICELLULAR AND MULTICELLULAR ORGANISMS

• Organisms with more than one to a hundred, thousands, or millions of cells are referred to as multicellular.
• These organisms have different groups of specialized cells that perform specific functions.
• For example, some cells of a mango tree have a photosynthetic function; others are for storage of food.
• Some of your body cells transmit messages while others transport oxygen from the lungs to various parts of the body.
• Other organisms exist as a single-celled organism and perform all functions within one cell. They are called unicellular organisms.
• Bacteria, amoeba, and yeasts are examples of unicellular organisms.

USES OF CELLS AND CELLULAR PRODUCTS

• Cells secrete certain substances during or after cellular activity.
• Agriculture and other industries use products of cellular activities to improve yield or to produce industrial chemicals.
• Some cell secretions have been used by people to promote health as well as to increase production.
• Prokaryotes and eukaryotes have long been used in traditional biotechnology especially in the food production process.
• The bacterium Acetobacter for example, produces an enzyme used to ferment sugar and to produce acetic acid like vinegar.
• Genetic engineering through recombinant DNA technology has made possible, for example, the production of interferon using the
bacteria Escherichia coli in large quantities and at lower cose.
• Interferon is a protein that slows down the growth of viruses and inhibits the transformation of normal cells to tumor cells. It is
currently used to treat certain types of cancer.
• Gene therapy is another application of recombinant DNA technology. Here, a gene from a healthy human cell is inserted into the
gene of a virus. The virus containing the inserted gene then enters defective cells such as bone marrow cells of bone cancer
patients. The DNA of the healthy gene becomes inserted into the defective cell’s DNA. The “corrected” cell is injected back and
multiplies in the patient, curing him or her of the disease