Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Challenges, Risks, and Rewards: Learning to Control Our Biological Fate
- 2 Learning to Breed Successfully
- 3 How Life is Handed On
- 4 Cells in Sickness and Health
- 5 Experiences in Utero Affect Later Life
- 6 Infection, Nutrition, and Poisons: Avoiding an Unhealthy Life
- 7 Signs of Ageing: When Renovation Slows
- 8 Cancer and the Body Plan: A Darwinian Struggle
- 9 Fighting Infection
- 10 Are Devastating Epidemics Still Possible?
- 11 Discovering Medicines: Infinite Variety through Chemistry
- 12 Protein Medicines from Gene Technology
- 13 Refurbishing the Body
- 14 Living with the Genetic Legacy
- 15 Epilogue: Signposts to “Wonderland”
- References
- Index
4 - Cells in Sickness and Health
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Challenges, Risks, and Rewards: Learning to Control Our Biological Fate
- 2 Learning to Breed Successfully
- 3 How Life is Handed On
- 4 Cells in Sickness and Health
- 5 Experiences in Utero Affect Later Life
- 6 Infection, Nutrition, and Poisons: Avoiding an Unhealthy Life
- 7 Signs of Ageing: When Renovation Slows
- 8 Cancer and the Body Plan: A Darwinian Struggle
- 9 Fighting Infection
- 10 Are Devastating Epidemics Still Possible?
- 11 Discovering Medicines: Infinite Variety through Chemistry
- 12 Protein Medicines from Gene Technology
- 13 Refurbishing the Body
- 14 Living with the Genetic Legacy
- 15 Epilogue: Signposts to “Wonderland”
- References
- Index
Summary
Hundreds of different types of cell, each based on a single design and all derived from one fertilised egg, make up our bodies. Their sheer variety, exquisite minuteness, versatility, and fortitude make cells truly extraordinary. Our entire existence depends on the actions of cells with precisely defined roles that are performed at very particular places in our bodies, governed by a vast network of chemical messages. Ultimately, a cellular clock determines how many times they can divide, and a program exists that can sacrifice cells for the benefit of the entire bodily organisation. When we are sick, it is really our cells that are sick, and it is in cells that scientists look for the immediate cause of most diseases. This chapter is concerned with the strengths and weaknesses of cells in health and disease.
The Architecture of Cells
Just as powerful telescopes revolutionised our perception of our place in the solar system, so advances in microscopy revolutionised perceptions of our material character. Early nineteenth-century microscopists realised that all living things are made up of cells and that only division of preexisting cells could generate more cells. The immensely influential Prussian biologist Rudolph Virchow was one of the first to absorb this lesson and to see that more was to be gained in studying pathology by looking at cells than by looking at the gross anatomy of cadavers.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Biomedicine and the Human ConditionChallenges, Risks, and Rewards, pp. 69 - 89Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005