Our bodies are made up of an amazing variety of cells, from the corpuscles that carry oxygen in our blood to the branching neurons that control our thoughts.
Researchers from institutions in Germany, Canada, Spain and the United States have published a comprehensive study of how many individual cell types of each type are present in a typical body.
Based on a thorough analysis of over 1,500 published sources, most adult men have a total of approximately 36 trillion cellAdult women, on the other hand, tend to have about 28 trillion cells. In contrast, for a 10-year-old child, she would have about 17 trillion.
This study revealed something very interesting, not just the total number of cells. Grouping cells into categories based on their size means that each size category contributes about the same amount to the body’s mass.
“These patterns suggest an organism-wide trade-off between cell size and number and suggest the existence of cell size homeostasis across cell types.” researchers write In their published papers.
In other words, there seems to be a natural balancing act that produces fewer larger cells and more smaller cells to keep the categories homogeneous. Additionally, the size variation for each category was similar.
This is interesting given that the relative sizes of the body’s smallest cells (such as red blood cells) and largest cells (such as muscle fibers) are like comparing the sizes of a shrew and a blue whale. It’s a discovery.
As researchers point out, our cells are perfectly sized for different roles, and when this scale is disrupted, it becomes very obvious. presence of disease. It’s obviously important that this kind of cellular control is done, and it’s done very wisely.
scientists have tried Estimate the number of cells They’ve been in our bodies before, and while the new numbers are close to the previous ones, what’s special about this latest study is that it also tries to delve into cell size comparisons.
Future research will explore how exactly our bodies regulate the size and number of the cells that make us up, and how this regulation maintains our bodies’ health and normal growth. You will have the opportunity to find out how it works.
The researchers hope that their findings will be useful for a variety of studies in biology, and all data from the analysis is currently being collected with that purpose in mind. available online.
“Our data establish an overall quantitative framework for cells in the human body and help highlight large-scale patterns in cell biology,” the research team said. write.
This study PNAS.