Cells Webquest

The wacky history of cell theory

The microscope

First invented by Zacharias Jansen
in the early 1600s,

Cell Theory

1. All organisms are composed
of one or more cells

2. The cell is the basic units of
structure and organization of
organisms

3. All cells come from
pre-existing cells

Discovered by two scientists:
Matthias Schleiden &
Theodor Schwann

DNA - the book of you

Every human starts as 2 cells which multiply until it becomes 10 trillion

Re-invented by Leeuwenhoek who
discovered "animalcules" AKA bacteria

Leeuwenhoek sent letters about
the discovery to Robert Hooke who discovered the cell

Within the nucleus of every human cell is the genome

The genome contains the "book" of DNA instructions in a cell

The set of DNA in a cell is 3 feet long compressed into one small nucleus

The book of DNA within the human body is 3.2 billion letters long

Contains 46 chromosomes or "chapters" (23 from each parent) which are between 48-250 million letters long

30,000,000 of those letters make up 20,000 genes or "instructions"

There is only 1 instruction gene to every 100 filler genes