Lab 13

Everything alive is built out of these

A cell is a chemical factory a hundredth of a millimetre across, and it runs itself. Click any part to find out what it does โ€” and switch between animal and plant to see which parts a plant needs that you do not.

Organelle
Pick a part
Jump to
Cell division

Mitosis, one frame at a time

Every cell in your body came from another cell splitting in two, and the copy has to be exact โ€” all 46 chromosomes, no more, no less. Scrub through the process, or let it run.

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Phase
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Scale

How small is small

Each step along this line is ten times bigger than the one before it. A typical animal cell is about a hundred times wider than a flu virus, and about a hundred times narrower than a full stop.