Written by students who passed Immediately available after payment Read online or as PDF Wrong document? Swap it for free 4.6 TrustPilot
logo-home
Summary

Summary Chapter 2: The Cell and Its Functions

Rating
-
Sold
-
Pages
20
Uploaded on
06-05-2026
Written in
2024/2025

- List the organizational components of cells - Explain the importance of the cytoskeleton and its involvement with cell junction types - List and explain the 14 important organelles found within eukaryotic cells - Understand the relationship with the nuclear material and the importance of chromosome telomeres - Understand how the science of epigenetics plays into a study of genetic control

Show more Read less

Content preview

PER 510 HUMAN PHYSIOLOGY

GUYTON & HALL TEXTBOOK OF
MEDICAL PHYSIOLOGY 14TH EDITION
BY JOHN E. HALL and MICHAEL E. HALL




Special Thank You to George E. Haynes
for Preparation of Power Point Slides


Instructor: Michael Campisi CCP

Unit One: Introduction to Physiology: The Cell and General Physiology

Chapter 2: The Cell and Its Functions




LEARNING OBJECTIVES
BY THE END OF THIS PRESENTATION, THE STUDENT SHOULD BE ABLE TO:


 List the organizational components of cells

 Explain the importance of the cytoskeleton and its involvement with cell junction types

 List and explain the 14 important organelles found within eukaryotic cells

 Understand the relationship with the nuclear material and the importance of chromosome telomeres

 Understand how the science of epigenetics plays into a study of genetic control




THE CELLULAR BASIS OF ALL LIFE ON EARTH




 The English scientist Robert Hooke first observed plant cells with a crude microscope in the late 1600s.

 Then, in the 1830s two German scientists, Matthias Schleiden and Theodor Schwann, proposed that all
living things are composed of cells.

 German pathologist Rudolf Virchow extended this idea by contending that cells arise only from other
cells.




1

, Since the late 1800s, cell research has been exceptionally fruitful and provided us with four concepts collectively known as the
CELL THEORY: all
things are made of cells
-




 1) A cell is the basic structural and functional unit of living organisms. When you define cell properties, you define the
properties of life.

 2) The activity of an organism depends on both the individual and the collective activities of its cells.
-

cells come from other cells
 3) According to the principle of complementarity of structure and function, the biochemical activities of cells are
dictated by their shapes or forms, and by the relative number of their specific subcellular structures.

 4) Continuity of life from one generation to another has a cellular basis.


 Each of the 100 trillion cells in a human being is a living structure that can survive for months or many years, provided its
surrounding fluids contain appropriate nutrients.

 To understand the function of organs and other structures of the body, it is essential that we first understand the basic
organization of the cell and the functions of its component parts.




► Organization of the Cell

 Plasma Membrane: forms a selectively permeable boundary isolating the internal cellular environment
 Protoplasm (Cytoplasm): this is a general term that refers to the five basic substances that make up the bulk of a cell:
 1) Water -> Mostly
 2) Electrolytes & ions-Na
I t ca. ,



 3) Proteins
 4) Lipids
 5) Carbohydrates 3
Macro Molecules




1) Water
 The principal fluid medium of a cell; in a concentration of 70 to 85 percent.
 It has three basic states: solid, liquid, gas. (Under very rare circumstances, a plasma-like state can also form.)
 Water is unlike any other substance on the planet.
 Recently, researchers investigating the properties of water have found that when it’s heated to between 40 and 60 degrees Celsius
(104- and 140-degrees Fahrenheit), it hits a 'crossover temperature', and appears to start switching between two different states of
liquid. This “switching” phenomena causes water to exhibit a whole new set of physical and chemical properties depending on the state
it flips into.
 Other properties of water include:
 High cohesive and adhesive molecular forces
 High Molecular surface Tension (Mercury is the highest)
 High Specific Heat and Heat of Vaporization
 High Boiling Point for its molecular weight and High Thermal Conductivity
 High Heat of Fusion
 Low density on Freezing
 High Dielectric constant
 Relatively, transparent
 Incompressible under many conditions
 Ionizes well and is a good solvent




2) Electrolytes
 Important ions in the cell include potassium, magnesium, phosphate, sulfate, bicarbonate, sodium, chloride, and
calcium.
-

Play a role in Metabolism Proteins : structural = share and form -
> Cytoskeleton
3) Proteins
 After water, the most abundant substances in most cells are proteins, which normally constitute 10 to 20 percent of
the cell mass. They are divided into two types: structural proteins and functional proteins. MetabolicProcesses
enzymes >
- Control
 Structural proteins

 are present in the cell mainly in the form of long filaments that are polymers of many individual protein
molecules.

 A prominent use of such intracellular filaments is to form microtubules that provide the basis for the
cell’s “cytoskeleton”, or the mass of protein filaments that hold the parts of the cytoplasm and
nucleoplasm together in their respective compartments, plus such cellular organelles as cilia,
flagella, and the mitotic spindles of dividing cells.

 In the Extracellular matrix (ECM), fibrillar structural proteins are found especially in the
collagen and elastin fibers of connective tissue and in blood vessel walls, tendons, ligaments, and
many other structures.

 Functional proteins

 These proteins are mainly the enzymes of the cell and, in contrast to the fibrillar proteins, are often mobile
in the cell fluid. Also, many of them are adherent to or housed within membranous structures inside the cell.
-
tell genes to turn on and Produce Stuff




2

, 4) Lipids
 Lipids are several types of substances that are grouped together because of their common property of being soluble in fat solvents.

 Especially important lipids are phospholipids and cholesterol, which together constitute only about 2 percent of the total cell mass.

 The significance of phospholipids and cholesterol is that they are mainly insoluble in water and, therefore, are used to form the cell
membrane and intracellular membrane barriers that separate the different cell compartments.

 In addition to phospholipids and cholesterol, some cells contain large quantities of triglycerides, also called neutral fat.

 In the fat cells, triglycerides often account for as much as 95 percent of the cell mass.

 The fat stored in these cells represents the body's main storehouse of energy-giving nutrients that can later be used to provide energy
wherever in the body it is needed.


5) Carbohydrates
main function = energy synthesis
 Carbohydrates have little structural function in the cell except as parts of glycoprotein (proteoglycan) molecules, but they play a
major role in nutrition of the cell.

 Most human cells do not maintain large stores of carbohydrates; the amount usually averages about 1 percent of their total mass but
increases to as much as 3 percent in muscle cells and, occasionally, 6 percent in liver cells.

 However, carbohydrate in the form of dissolved glucose is always present in the surrounding extracellular fluid so that it is readily
available to the cell.

 Also, a small amount of carbohydrate is stored in the cells in the form of glycogen, which is an insoluble polymer of glucose that can be
depolymerized and used rapidly to supply the cells’ energy needs.




LINES OF EVOLUTION:
 It all started about 3.5 to 3.8 billion years ago during the Precambrian Period with the appearance of
heterotrophic prokaryotic cells. This line of prokaryotic cells eventually evolved into an additional
line the autotrophic prokaryotic cells. These two lines of prokaryotic cells around a billion years
later became more complex and evolved into the cells of higher organisms called eukaryotic cells
(about 2.7 billion years ago). The eukaryotic cells like the prokaryotic split into two lines the
Autotroph and the Heterotroph.

 The two lines of prokaryotic and the two lines of the eukaryotic cells still exist today. The scope of our
discussion, however, will be limited to the Heterotrophic Eukaryotic cells.




AUTOTROPH EUKARYOTIC HETEROTROPH EUKARYOTIC




 The approximately 100 trillion
cells that make up the adult
human body include over 200 Nucleic acids = DNA and RNA
different cell types that vary
greatly in shape, size, and
function.

 The cell is not merely a bag of
fluid, enzymes, and chemicals; it
also contains highly organized
physical structures, called
intracellular organelles.

 The physical nature of each
organelle is as important as the
cell's chemical constituents for cell
function.

 Many of these organelles are
essential to the life of the cell.

 We will now begin to look at the
most important organelles and
other structures of the
eukaryotic cell.




3

Document information

Uploaded on
May 6, 2026
Number of pages
20
Written in
2024/2025
Type
SUMMARY
$15.99
Get access to the full document:

Wrong document? Swap it for free Within 14 days of purchase and before downloading, you can choose a different document. You can simply spend the amount again.
Written by students who passed
Immediately available after payment
Read online or as PDF

Get to know the seller
Seller avatar
JeffRam2021

Get to know the seller

Seller avatar
JeffRam2021 Geneva College
View profile
Follow You need to be logged in order to follow users or courses
Sold
-
Member since
3 year
Number of followers
0
Documents
36
Last sold
-

0.0

0 reviews

5
0
4
0
3
0
2
0
1
0

Why students choose Stuvia

Created by fellow students, verified by reviews

Quality you can trust: written by students who passed their tests and reviewed by others who've used these notes.

Didn't get what you expected? Choose another document

No worries! You can instantly pick a different document that better fits what you're looking for.

Pay as you like, start learning right away

No subscription, no commitments. Pay the way you're used to via credit card and download your PDF document instantly.

Student with book image

“Bought, downloaded, and aced it. It really can be that simple.”

Alisha Student

Working on your references?

Create accurate citations in APA, MLA and Harvard with our free citation generator.

Working on your references?

Frequently asked questions