The cell is the structural and functional unit of all known
living organisms. It is the smallest unit of an organism that is classified as living, and is sometimes called the building block of life. Some organisms, such as
bacteria, are
unicellular (consist of a single cell). Other organisms, such as
humans, are
multicellular. (Humans have an estimated 100 trillion or 1014 cells; a typical cell size is 10
µm; a typical cell mass is 1
nanogram.) The largest known cell is an
ostrich egg. In 1837 before the final cell theory was developed, a Czech Jan Evangelista Purkyňe observed small "granules" while looking at the plant tissue through a microscope. The
cell theory, first developed in 1839 by
Matthias Jakob Schleiden and
Theodor Schwann, states that all organisms are composed of one or more cells. All cells come from preexisting cells. Vital functions of an organism occur within cells, and all cells contain the
hereditary information necessary for regulating cell functions and for transmitting information to the next generation of cells.
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