Cell (biology)
basic structural and functional unit of all organisms
The cell is the basic structural and functional unit of all forms of life or organisms. The term comes from the Latin word cellula meaning 'small room'. A biological cell basically consists of a semipermeable cell membrane enclosing cytoplasm that contains genetic material. Most cells are only visible under a microscope. Except for highly-differentiated cell types (examples include red blood cells and gametes) most cells are capable of replication, and protein synthesis. Some types of cell are motile. Cells emerged on Earth about four billion years ago.
All organisms are grouped into prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Prokaryotes are single-celled and include archaea and bacteria. Eukaryotes can be single-celled or multicellular.
“Cell (biology)” enters the record as basic structural and functional unit of all organisms. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Cell, biology and basic can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7868. The Library of Congress control number is sh85021678. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cell (biology)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.