Cellular compartment

Cellular compartments in cell biology comprise all of the closed parts within the cytosol of a eukaryotic cell, usually surrounded by a single or double lipid layer membrane. These compartments are often, but not always, defined as membrane-enclosed organelles. The formation of cellular compartments is called compartmentalization.

Both organelles, the mitochondria and chloroplasts (in photosynthetic organisms), are compartments that are believed to be of endosymbiotic origin. Other compartments such as peroxisomes, lysosomes, the endoplasmic reticulum, the cell nucleus or the Golgi apparatus are not of endosymbiotic origin. Smaller elements like vesicles, and sometimes even microtubules can also be counted as compartments.

It was thought that compartmentalization is not found in prokaryotic cells., but the discovery of carboxysomes and many other metabolosomes revealed that prokaryotic cells are capable of making compartmentalized structures, albeit these are in most cases not surrounded by a lipid bilayer, but of pure proteinaceous built.

Types

In general, there are 4 main cellular compartments, they are:

The nuclear compartment comprising the nucleus

The intercisternal space which comprises the space between the membranes of the endoplasmic reticulum (which is continuous with the nuclear envelope)

Organelles (the mitochondrion in all eukaryotes and the plastid in phototrophic eukaryotes)

The cytosol

Function

Compartments have three main roles. One is to establish physical boundaries for biological processes that enables the cell to carry out different metabolic activities at the same time. This may include keeping certain biomolecules within a region, or keeping other molecules outside.