Broad Look At Metabolism And Cells

BingDing

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I'm rereading Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything" and he has a chapter on cells. He brings a pretty broad perspective to his writing. I thought a couple quips might be of interest.

At any given moment, a typical cell in your body will have about one billion ATP molecules in it, and in two minutes every one of them will be drained dry and another billion will have taken their place. Every day you produce and use up a volume of ATP equivalent to about half your body weight. Feel the warmth of your skin.That's your ATP at work.

Typically a cell will contain some 20,000 different types of protein, and of these about 2,000 types will each be represented by at least 50,000 molecules. "This means," says Nuland, "that even if we count only those molecules present in amounts of more than 50,000 each, the total is still a very minimum of 100 million protein molecules in each cell. Such a staggering figure gives some idea of the swarming immensity of biochemical activity within us.

My $.02 for the day.
 

charlie

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Wow thats pretty cool. And HUGE numbers!
 

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