cells

[blackeyed]

are 'all' or 'most' of the living organisms made up of cells?

[oldexpat]

'all'

[Sqad]

Organisms are either:
Unicellular.....one cell
Multicellular......many cells.

[oldexpat]

Sorry could I just add that an organism could be uni-cellular so it is made up of a 'cell' not 'cells'.

[blackeyed]

i thought that too, oldexpact and sqad, but i just read an authentic definition that says 'most living things are made of cells,,,' and that got me all confused..

[jake-the-peg]

Hmm that rather depends on your definition of living.

A virus when outside a host is simply a set of (rather complex) chemicals. It invades a host cell and hijacks the cells functions to reproduce.

You could argue that a virus is a life form that is not made up of cells.

However a virus uses cells (albeit not it's own) in order to perform the functions most commonly used to define life. Therefore a lot of people (me included) would say that a virus is only really alive when inside a cell and outside of a cell it's more like a seed with only the potential for life

[blackeyed]

@ jake so there must be people believing that viruses are living things even if outside a cell.Probably my book was just referring to that(hopefully).