Lesson 6
Home Up Other Organelles Cellular Structures Seeing Organelles End of Chapter 4 Cells and Cancer

    This week we are finishing our study of cell structure.  We are also finishing chapter 4.  As you progress in your learning about the organelles, I wanted to be sure that you understood how we found out about the organelles and about how we can see the organelles.  So I included a web page called "seeing organelles," to make that clear.

    The rest of the organelles that I did not get to last week are included in "other organelles."  This page got a bit long, but I didn't want to break it up into multiple pages.  I have also included a separate page just on the cytoskeleton and a page that describes the end of chapter 4 that I want you to learn about.  (The other nondissolved items I mentioned in the last lesson includes both the cytoskeleton and the cell wall).

Quick Cell Navigation

nucleus rough endoplasmic reticulum (rER) golgi complex golgi complex golgi complex lysosome lysosome lysosome lysosome lysosome mitochondrion mitochondrion mitochondrion mitochondrion mitochondrion smooth endoplasmic reticulum (sER) ribosome ribosome ribosome ribosome ribosome ribosome ribosome ribosome ribosome ribosome cytoskeleton cytoskeleton cytoskeleton cytoskeleton cytoskeleton cytoskeleton cytoskeleton cytoskeleton cytoskeleton cytoskeleton cytoskeleton cytoskeleton cytoskeleton cytoskeleton cytoskeleton cytoskeleton cytoskeleton cytoskeletonClickable drawing of a cell.

    As you learn more about eukaryotic cells, you will see that I have made a point of distinguishing animal and plant cells.  These are both eukaryotic cells.  However, animals and plants have some differences that show up even at the cellular level.  You see, animals can't make their own food-- they have to find it and eat it.  Plants, on the other hand, can make their own food.  The terms for these notions are:

bulletheterotrophic-- cannot make one's own food.  "Hetero-" means different, and "-trophic" refers to eating.  So a heterotroph has to eat from a different source than themselves.
bulletautotropic-- makes one's own food.  "Auto-" means self.   So, an autotroph can acquire food from itself to eat.

Animals are heterotrophic while plants are autotrophic.  There are some other organisms that are autotrophic in addition to plants, and you will be learning about those later this semester when we survey the organisms that exist in our world.

Some material to skip

    There are a few terms that your book uses that I don't care if you learn about right now.  Those terms include:  centrioles, endomembranal system, peroxisomes.  Also, I am not going to require you to read about viruses (in 4.4.3), because that section can be a little difficult right now.  We can come back to it later if you are interested.

 

© 2006 STCC Foundation Press, content by Dawn A. Tamarkin, Ph.D.

Last changed: January 21, 2007