Biological complexity: complexity of cells (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, January 18, 2018, 18:09 (2283 days ago) @ David Turell

Each cell has an enormous number of parts:

https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/how-many-protein-molecules-in-a-single-cell-go-on-guess

"How many protein molecules in a single cell?

"The answer, it turns out, is a remarkably specific 42 million.

"At least, it is if the cell in question belongs to yeast.

***

"Every yeast cell contains 6000 proteins. Brown and colleagues faced the daunting task of taking each one and finding out how many molecules they contained.

"In the end, they discovered that most of the proteins fell into a fairly narrow range, containing between 1000 and 10,000 molecules. A few were enormous – topping half a million molecules – while at the other end of the scale some contained fewer than 10."

Comment: Each cell is a factory in constant motion producing protein molecules to maintain life's homeostasis. We may not have an exact definition of life, but maintaining homeostasis is a key concept.