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Cell as Reactor

Essay by   •  April 29, 2013  •  Essay  •  966 Words (4 Pages)  •  1,442 Views

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Organism must grow & reproduce itself using resources from the surrounding environment. Living systems capture & utilize energy from the environment to produce highly ordered structures to give rise to autocatalytic processes. This allows the natural optimization of living processes for the evolution of new biological information structures and new life forms. The complexity of the bacterial cell is thus a match for any chemical plant in the power and sophistication of its chemistry.

There are many things that could be done by the cell itself alone. They can do everything that will make them survive and mutate to have evolution on its own species. This unique chemistry reactions have creates a variety of novel solutions to a set of problem associated with life. So that's why cell can be assumed or for future technology, reacts as a reactor. Some of the cell's functions:

2.1 Growth and metabolism

Between successive cell divisions, cells grow through the functioning of cellular metabolism. Cell metabolism is the process by which individual cells process nutrient molecules. Metabolism has two distinct divisions:

Catabolism is the cell breaks down complex molecules to produce energy and reducing power. Anabolism is the cell that uses energy and reducing power to construct complex molecules and perform any other biological functions.

2.2 Self-replication

Cell division involves a single cell (called a mother cell) dividing into two daughter cells. This leads to growth in multicellular organisms (the growth of tissue) and to procreation (vegetative reproduction) in unicellular organisms.

Prokaryotic cells divide by binary fission.

Eukaryotic cells usually undergo a process of nuclear division, called mitosis, followed by division of the cell, called cytokinesis. A diploid cell may also undergo meiosis to produce haploid cells, usually four. Haploid cells serve as gametes in multicellular organisms, fusing to form new diploid cells.

DNA replication, or the process of duplicating a cell's genome, always happens when a cell divides through mitosis or binary fission. Replication, like all cellular activities, requires specialized proteins for carrying out the job.

2.3 Movement or motility

Cells can move during many processes: such as wound healing, the immune response and cancer metastasis. For wound healing to occur, white blood cells and cells that ingest bacteria move to the wound site to kill the microorganisms that cause infection.

2.4 Protein synthesis

Cells are capable of synthesizing new proteins, which are essential for the modulation and maintenance of cellular activities. This process involves the formation of new protein molecules from amino acid building blocks based on information encoded in DNA/RNA. Protein synthesis generally consists of two major steps: transcription and translation.

2.5 Life of the cell

The basic unit for all living organisms is the cell. Organisms can consist of a single cell (bacteria for example), or many cells. In more complicated organisms, cells are organized to form more complicated structures such as organs, for example. In each of these cells, unique forms of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) molecules

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