All Organisms Are Built From Cells

In the seventeenth centry, Robert Hooke used the microscope he had built to examine a thin slice of cork. He saw that the the plant tissue was divided into small compartements separated by walls. He called the compartment cells, meaning little rooms.

Over 150 years later, Matthias Schleiden propo- sed that the structure of all plant tissues is based upon an organisation of cells (plant cells). Shortly therafter Theodor Schwann proposed that all animal tissues are also organisations of cells (animal cells) and that the fundamental units of life is the cell.

Modern cell theroy can be reduced to four fundamental statements:

Cells make up all living matter.

All cells arise from other cells.

The genitic information required during the maintenance of existing cells and the production of new cells passes from one generation to the next.

The chemical reactions of an organism, that is its metabolism, take place in the cell.

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