Molecular Biology of The Cell, Childrens Style Short Story

Cellia toils everyday with her brothers and sisters to keep the environment in which they live healthy and safe from intruders. She has many cousins too. They help to support the environment in which Cellia lives, providing strength and structure to her home. Cellia appreciates them very much, because without them, her house would collapse.

Cellia’s parents and grandparents run the show from the upper levels of the house. They make sure that the proper instructions are sent throughout the many wires within the home. In this way everything can run as smoothly as possible. Sometimes though, there is a mix up in the instructions, but thankfully Cellia’s house hasn’t had any major problems.

Today is another day in the house and because Cellia barely ever sleeps, she sets about checking all her inner parts for the 1 billionth time. Inside Cellia’s body are all the parts needed for her to do her job correctly. Sometimes errors have occurred, but she has been provided with the ability to autocorrect many of these errors and dispose of them.

The first thing that she checks is her bodys cell membrane. This structure is very important to Cellia, because without it all her inner parts would flow out into the rest of the house. She would cease to exist. That would be upsetting to her parents for sure. The cell membrane, also known as the plasma membrane, not only keeps Cellia’s inside from falling out, but keeps out the elements in her home environment that she does not want to let in. Embedded in the plasma membrane are the special proteins that receive the instructions sent by her parents and grandparents. She can also get messages from her siblings too. All seems to be in working order here.

Moving on to the next item on her check list, Cellia investigates the power supply house for her body. Mito produces the fuel needed for many of Cellia’s functions. Cellia likes to call her power supply house “mito”, which is short for its real name, Mitochondria.

“That’s too complicated a name. I want to keep names as simple as I can”, Cellia would tell her family. “The processes are difficult enough, simplifying as much as I can makes it easier to remember.”

Mito is a life form that sits within Cellia. She produces her own proteins, because she has her own ribos, short for ribosome’s, and circular DNA.

“You invaded my ancestors as bacteria a long time ago didn’t you”, Cellia asked Mito?

For whatever reason, thought Cellia, her ancestor and Mito’s found it more beneficial to live together in harmony, then to destroy each other, like most other bacterial invaders do. Because Mito is special in that way, she is almost independent of Cellia, which she thinks is pretty cool.

Cellia is now checking out her Golgi apparatus, affectionately referred to as just Golgi of course. Golgi is rather large and it is located right near Cellia’s brain. She loves Golgi, because of his looks and his ability to get so much work done. Not to mention he is mysterious and complex, working just as much as she does. Constantly, he is distributing and shipping chemicals essential to Cellia and to the environment outside her plasma membrane. His looks remind her of stretched out party balloons that are often made into animal and flower shapes.

Not too far away from Golgi is ER (endoplasmic reticulum). Cellia thinks he is ok, but he is moody. He has a real rough side to him, but he also has a smooth side too. It’s just that Cellia never knows which side she is going to run into, and she finds that most times his demeanor is on the rough side. He works closely with Golgi sending out proteins that help Cellia’s environment or other working parts within her. Cellia often wonders how Golgi can put up with ER. But seeing as ER basically surrounds Cellia’s brain, she knows that working together is the key to everything, no matter the mood of the other.

After checking out the larger participating partners within her body, Cellia makes sure to check her smaller friends that also aid her body function. She never likes to leave anyone out. Cellia has never been left out, but she can imagine that it must feel awful. She continues to float around the cytoplasm within her body, that’s just the fluid that holds all her friends in place, checking on her friends. It wasn’t long before she bumped into Lye, Peri, and Endo.

Lye, is short for lysosome. He is often hungry. There have not been to many times that Cellia has not run into him and there wasn’t something in his mouth. Cellia is thankful that he likes to eat the way he does, because without him, her insides would fill up with waste products. Not to mention he is useful in digesting intruders and if her plasma membrane needs some repair, he is right there to help. “I am so glad to have you on my side”, Cellia would tell Lye. He would just nod back with a smile full of food.

Peri, also known as peroxisome, she is very smart. She studied Organic Chemistry in college. She graduated with a degree in Chemistry. Like many of the smart people Cellia knows, Peri doesn’t have time for idle chatter. This makes her quite awkward on social occasions. That’s okay. Cellia doesn’t mind a bit. Sometimes Cellia like to watch Peri work, as she adds oxygen molecules and takes away hydrogen molecules. It’s a wondrous process to watch.

Endosome, a.k.a Endo, is the organizer and the transporter too. Cellia sees her bringing products over to Lye all the time. Basically, she brings him his food. She also works for Golgi though, sorting and organizing. After a short time Endo will bring the items back to Golgi. Cellia loves seeing everyone working together for the greater good. If she had a heart, it would be overflowing with pride.

Cellia now weaves her way through the cytoskeleton back to the comforts of her own head. The cytoskeleton is like the human skeleton, in that it helps give Cellia her shape and can direct movement of all kinds of things through her cytoplasm. All looked held together and moving along in all the right directions. “That is fantastic”, thought Cellia to herself. “Now I can take a moment to rest. I will check out my brain function after a sweet nap.”

Cellia should have taken the few short moments to check out her brain function before deciding to rest. Somewhere within her brain, there was a miss print happening. She needed to wake up fast!

(to be continued)

References:

Albert, B. and et. al., 2008. New York, NY. Garland Science, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. “Molecular Biology of The Cell” Fifth Ed. pg 615-620.

N.I.H., 2006. Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Development. “Human cells 101”. Retrieved from web Jan. 9, 2012. http://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/pubs/fragileX/sub3.cfm

Davidson, Michael., 2004. Molecular Expressions. “The Golgi apparatus”. Retrieved from web Jan. 10, 2012. http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/cells/golgi/golgiapparatus.html