The human body is made up of a complex community of trillions of cells of diverse shapes and sizes, all working together to keep you alive. The smallest of these cells, like platelets and red blood cells, are dwarfed by massive muscle cells. When it comes to size, it’s like comparing a shrew to a blue whale.
Now, after collecting data on all of the major types of cells in the body, researchers have revealed a familiar mathematical pattern in these cells’ relationship. There is an inverse relationship between cell size and number, meaning smaller cells are more numerous than larger cells. What’s more, cells of different size classes all have a similar total mass, such that small, numerous cells such as red blood cells contribute the same amount to the body’s total mass as the largest cells, the researchers report September 18 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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