• Question: what chemicals are cells made up of?

    Asked by ytpies to Betul, Bridget, Ceri-Wyn, Laurel, Maria on 21 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Laurel Fogarty

      Laurel Fogarty answered on 20 Jun 2010:

      Cells have a few parts (ok lots of parts!) The cell membrane is made up of phospholipids, which are kind of fatty molecule that contains the cell cytoplasm (the watery base of the cell), then of course there is DNA, which counts as a chemical I think!

      An interesting thing is that plant cells have very different chemicals to animal cells, they have cell walls made of a tough molecule called cellulose and have chlorophyll which allows plants to make food out of sunlight!

    • Photo: Ceri-Wyn Thomas

      Ceri-Wyn Thomas answered on 20 Jun 2010:

      Water and proteins mainly. Many different types of protein (themselves made of many different types of chemical!) are found in the cell lipids, your DNA and RNA. I guess the main chemicals or elements in addition to water would be oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium…..the list could go on and on!

    • Photo: Betul Arslan

      Betul Arslan answered on 20 Jun 2010:

      Cells are pretty organic. 70% of cells are composed of water and the rest is carbon based. Amino acids are made of Carbon, Nitrogen, Sulfur, Oxygen and Hydrogen and they compose the proteins in our cells. Cellular compartments are divided by membranes, which are made of phospho-lipids, you can think them as like a jello looking structures, yet permeable to allow organelles to have signaling with the rest of the cellular media.

    • Photo: Bridget Waller

      Bridget Waller answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      Human cells are composed of all sorts of chemicals! The main component is always water…but apart from that there are sugars, DNA, salts etc. It depends on the cell! Check out your biology text book and see what you can find.

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