Whom should you thank for the gift of life, the Enzyme or God, choice rest with you.

Cell is to life as atom is to matter (Part – 1)
To be alive is nothing short of a miracle. Infact this is the very important reason while our ancestors worshiped almighty God. The belief in existence of Devine power have their origin in such a remarkable features that life possesses. Even now, 21st century most people, except for may be few scientist, still believe and willing to bet that only God can create life.
Life, that is being alive, is a complex non-equilibrium dynamics of bio-chemical reactions. Life involves a synchronized functioning of heart beat, valves pumping of blood from heart, breathing from lungs, blood running around for Km along arteries maintaining systolic and diastolic blood pressure in the right range, PH, right amount of water balance in body, body temperature being maintained. The brain receiving and giving out appropriate signal to various part of body with neural activities going on in brain so, that we can see, and more importantly perceived and comprehend the world around us.
Life both at macro level as well as cellular level can only exists if certain stringent conditions are maintained dynamically. Being alive is not a static situation by this what we mean that for Ex. The furniture of a house will not change its properties like rigidity just because the environmental temperature surrounding it is low or high. However, family members of the house need to maintain their body temperature and humidity etc. using air conditioning. Same is true in a much more sensitive way for the cells a living body is made up of. For cells to function optimally there are many parameter which have to be maintained within a certain range. Homeostasis is the name given to such set of required condition.
This being the case all the biochemical reaction that going on in a body that is metabolic activities must take place at a necessary rate without any of the above parameter required for homeostasis going out of critical range.
Ex. body temperature which has to be maintained around 37oC what it implies is that the rate of a particular chemical reaction. In a laboratory environment rate can be increase by raising the temperature say to 62oC if needed. However, the same reaction if needed by a living body has to achieve reasonable rate without raising the temperature and similarly for PH range also. Almost all biochemical reaction in order to achieve a reasonable rate under restriction imposed by Homeostasis almost invariably required a Catalyst i.e a enzyme. While catalyst for a chemical reaction may be a matter of convenience and efficiency. Enzyme for Biochemical reaction are a essential necessity. Life cannot exist without Enzymes.
The cell, building block of life
Organization is what is necessary whenever we wish to carry out any function properly. We have so many human made organization like Educational institutes, armed forces. Life to put it simply is also an organization of cells, the basic building block of life. The function that this organization can carry out are: Metabolism, growth, adaptation, responses, reproduction. Even a single cell can carry out these function, while living organism as could be as multicellular or even more complex.
As the block can be joined in many ways to make the building having rooms, halls, conference room of different sizes and purposes. In the same way all living organism are made of different group of cells known as tissue and organs. Cell can be found in different sizes and shape varying from 1 – 100 micrometer in diameter.
Just as the invention of telescope extended human vision to planets and stars, so did the microscope opened the smaller world of smaller organisms like bacteria and viruses showing what they made up of.
The cell was first discovered and named by Robert Hooke in 1665 by handmade microscope. He remarked that it looked strangely similar to cellula or small room thus driving the name Robert c. Hooke was 26 years old when he took the assignment from wren and joined the Royal society for scientist. A self educated child prodigy, he showed technical aptitude by recreating the entire inner workings of a clock out of wood, then assembling it to run. Hooke’s technical efforts created magnification of 50x, enabling insight to a world not yet known in the 1600s. Hooke looks everything from fabric, leaves, mica, glass and even frozen urine. He also stung himself with nettles to see where and how the poison was pumped into his hand. When Hooke viewed a thin cutting of cork ( dead cell), he discovered empty spaces contained by walls, and termed them pores, or cells. The term cells struck and Hooke gained credit for discovering the building blocks of all life.
The first man to witness a live cell under a microscope was Anton van Leeuwenhoek, who ground his own lenses. Van Leeuwenhoek was apprenticed to textile merchant, which is where he probably first encountered magnifying glasses, which were used in the textile trade to count thread densities for quality control purposes. In 1676, Van Leeuwenhoek observed water closely and was surprised to see tiny organism the first bacteria observed by man. As well as being the father of microbiology he discovered blood cells and microscopic nematodes.
If you may wonder why such a 1600 happening are reproduced here the reason is to emphasis that even today it is important to make your own research equipment enjoy and playing with, nothing deep can ever be discovered by using automated push button type equipment imported from abroad. Those planning startup should seek inspiration from achievements of Hooke and Leeuwenhoek.
Everyone has to struggle to innovate. New ideas come only to those as Sant Kabir says “Jin Khoja tin payiya ghare pani…”
Ultrastructure of cell
Ultrastructure is the architecture of cells and biomaterials that is visible at higher magnifications, not visible through light microscope. An analogy of a factory producing product may be useful to understand the ultrastructure of a cell.
The cell wall is the outermost lining of the cell like the wall of factory protect the cell and maintained its shape. Cell membrane is similar to doors of factory. It controls what comes in and goes out of the cell. Cytoplasm is the jelly like fluid like the floor of factory. Nucleus is the part of cell that controls and direct all the activity like the CEO of the factory. Mitochondria known as the power house of cell provide energy rich molecules like the local power plant in a factory. Ribosomes makes proteins, and are located on the Endoplasmic reticulum (ER) similar to factory workers, since they both create products. Rough Endoplasmic reticulum like the assembly line as in factory. Golgi bodies like the shipping and packaging department because it takes the final product and ships to where they need to go.
This is part-1 in next part the article will introduced metabolism and metabolic pathway. If you find this article informative please do comment.
Sugandh Sharma is a biology Major, Ashish Kumar Gupta is a IT professional, V. K. Tandon is a Ex-IIT Faculty.