• Question: how many of each cell are you in your body?

    Asked by 12annrei to Clare, Mariana, Robert, Susanne on 21 Nov 2012.
    • Photo: Clare Taylor

      Clare Taylor answered on 21 Nov 2012:

      That’s an interesting question! Estimates say that we have 100 trillion human cells in our body, and that we have more than 200 different types of cell. But I’m afraid I don’t know how that 100 trillion is divided up. Something interesting though is that an adult male loses 96 million cells every minute because of natural cell death! But, these are replaced by new cells so overall, no cells are lost.

      Did you also know that although we have 100 trillion human cells in our body, we have 1000 trillion microbe cells in our body! That’s 10 times more! So we are actually 10 times more microbe than we are human!

    • Photo: Robert Insall

      Robert Insall answered on 21 Nov 2012:

      Hello annrei

      There is a whole wikipedia page on this topic. It doesn’t give the numbers. But it does let you realise how complex humans are!

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_distinct_cell_types_in_the_adult_human_body

    • Photo: Mariana Campos

      Mariana Campos answered on 21 Nov 2012:

      There are many estimates. Some say 10 trillion, some 50 and some 100 trillion. You ahve to think that these are only estimates and not that actually someone went to the trouble of counting them all. Imagine how long it would take?!
      Plus the number will vary from person to person, depending on their size. The number of cells in your own body is constantly changing, as cells die or are destroyed and new ones are formed, like Clare said. So even the number of cells in your own body is not static.

    • Photo: Susanne Muekusch

      Susanne Muekusch answered on 21 Nov 2012:

      Hi annrei,

      I just know that you have 10E11 nerve cells. If you write it in the normal way that is 100,000,000,000 nerve cells. Only the nerve cells, and already a number which is greater than anyone can picture!

      P.S.: I looked it up: Protons and neutrons in the nucleus are glued together by particles called “gluons”. You have to be forgiving here, but your questions were just too hard for me during chat! Particle physics is waaaaay of my area of expertise.

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