That homework help thread.

[Hannah]

Pretty self-explanatory, eh? Oodles of smart people who are all smart in different areas means one thing; a kick ass homework help forum. So, have at it.

[Xuut]

Okay, so Bio nerds can anyone tell me some characteristics of specialized cells?

 

Like, I know a muscle cell has more mitochondria than other cells since it needs more energy because they work more. But what about nerve cells? Fat cells? Red blood cells? White blood cells?

 

Basically, what organelles are in these cells (in an animal one by the way...) and a little explanation of why would be great. Like, the muscle cell has more mitochondria in it because it needs more energy. I Google it but all I got was that fat cells are made up of very little cytoplasm....

[nathan_p]

Fat cells have a shitload of, uh... I sold my textbook but they're mostly fat storage, very little actual cell. So there are lots of organelles that only store adipose. These have some other name, but yeah.

 

Nerve cells have very extended dendrites and axons to help them communicate with the rest of the body.

 

Red blood cells eject their nucleus once they become adults, so they're basically only able to store carbon dioxide and oxygen; they can't get nutrients any other way but by osmosis.

 

Muscle cells can be many-nucleated for, um, I forget. 

 

Leukocytes I don't remember.

 

Off the top of my head, more later.

[Xuut]

XD Adipose is their name. Good job internet. I think it's vesicles. Or something. According to the internet, they have like zero cytoplasm things. Dude, you can sell your textbook?

 

:D Thank you. I manage to find some on white blood cells which essentially, are basically the typical model cell except they have more lysosomes. If you remember anything from that, it'd be awesome. But thank you very much. I'm willing to bet this will help me.... somewhere down the road. (Like say my next bio quiz...)

 

 

[nathan_p]

College is great -- and I just found the fucker, seems I didn't sell it 'cause I couldn't find the DVD that came with. Whatever.

 

As far as leukocytes go, there's five different types, divided into two supertypes. The supertypes are granulocytes/agranulocytes, because of how they stain.

 

Granulocytes appear to have, well, granules in 'em when they're stained. This is because they have enzymes in their membranes which help digest things that the cell wraps itself around. The most common type of leukocyte, the neutrophil, falls under this category, as do basophils and eosinophils.

 

Agranulocytes don't look granule-y. They do contain lysozomes, though. These are lymphocytes, monocytes, and oh hell there was a sixth one -- macrophages.

 

I wiki'd it and that's the digest edition, soooo your average leukocyte is probably a neutrophil, thus rather large and somewhat short-lived. They seek out and kill microbes in the body, and are then themselves consumed; the short lifespan keeps whatever pathogens may infect them from spreading.

[Xuut]

I would totally buy it without the stupid DVD.

 

:D You are amazing. Thank you so very much. Now I'll sound like 10x smarter and hopefully get some bonus points out of this damn project. If I do a what is a white blood cell section to explain the extra lysosomes I hope I get a better mark...

[nathan_p]

They were, uh, plastic-wrapped together.

 

As it turns out, my assignment for today was also about cells. Huh. Good luck on the project!

[Omega]

Macrophages are just monocytes that have moved into the tissues.

 

Basically the whole purpose of white cells is to kill things real dead. Lysozomes are full of nasty things that kill things dead, like enzymes and hydrogen peroxide. That's why they have lots of them. lymphocytes produce antibodies. They're not pacman white cells - don't nom things up, and so don't have as many.