The
cell is the basic structural and functional unit of all known
living organisms. It is the smallest unit of life that is classified as a living thing, and is often called the building block of life.
[1] 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 10
14 cells; a typical cell size is 10&_160;
µm; a typical cell mass is 1&_160;
nanogram.) The largest known cell is an unfertilized
ostrich egg cell.
[2]In 1835, before the final cell theory was developed, Jan Evangelista Purkyne 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, that all cells come from preexisting cells, that vital functions of an organism occur within cells, and that all cells contain the hereditary information necessary for regulating cell functions and for transmitting information to the next generation of cells.[3]
The word cell comes from the Latin cellula, meaning, a small room. The descriptive term for the smallest living biological structure was coined 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.[4]
Each cell is at least somewhat self-contained and self-maintaining it can take in nutrients, convert these nutrients into energy, carry out specialized functions, and reproduce as necessary. Each cell stores its own set of instructions for carrying out each of these activities.
