• Question: What do cells do and what do they need to work?

    Asked by anon-251721 on 24 Apr 2020.
    • Photo: Sophie Arthur

      Sophie Arthur answered on 24 Apr 2020:

      Cells have soooooo many different functions. There are so many different types of cells and all have different jobs. For example, there are red blood cells who transport oxygen around our bodies, nerves cells have to transfer the signals in your brain and there are rod and cone cells in the back of your eye that help you receive light and colour. So because their jobs are so diverse, their needs are different. They need different shapes and sizes, different proteins to work, but most of them need energy in the form of a molecule called ATP to be able to do everything they need.

    • Photo: Anabel Martinez Lyons

      Anabel Martinez Lyons answered on 24 Apr 2020: last edited 24 Apr 2020 2:01 pm

      A cell is the smallest unit of life. Some living things (like a bacterium) can exist as only one cell, but other more complex living things (like us humans) have a huge number of cells with many different cell types that all do different jobs in the body.

      For example, our brain cells (called neurons) conduct electrical signals and can be extremely long to carry these signals to different parts of the body, whereas our red blood cells (as Sophie mentioned) are small and donut-shaped, and are very good at carrying oxygen around the body. Cells (in general) can grow, replicate (divide to make more of themselves), and can die if they begin to malfunction. To work, they need energy, which comes from the food that we eat. We have small structures inside our cells called mitochondria which help turn bits of food into a useable form of energy called ATP, which is used by many parts of the cell to do the functions I mentioned before (grow, replicate, etc.). Hope that helps!

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