Cell Biology Essentials: 250 Structures and Processes
250 definitions, and 145 name the term they get confused with.
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| 表 | 裏 |
|---|---|
| Cell theory — what is it? | All living things are made of cells, the cell is the basic unit of structure and function, and every cell arises from a pre-existing cell. Germ theory, which says microorganisms cause disease. Both came out of nineteenth-century microscopy, but they answer different questions. |
| Prokaryotic cell — what is it? | A cell with no nuclear envelope and no membrane-bound organelles, whose chromosome sits directly in the cytoplasm. The idea that prokaryotic means primitive. Archaea are prokaryotic, yet their transcription and translation machinery resembles the eukaryotic version more than the bacterial one. |
| Phospholipid — what is it? | A lipid with a phosphate-containing hydrophilic head and two hydrophobic fatty acid tails. Triglycerides, which carry three fatty acids and no phosphate group, so they store energy instead of forming membranes. |
| Integral membrane protein — what is it? | A protein embedded in the hydrophobic core of the bilayer, usually crossing it completely as a transmembrane protein. Peripheral proteins, which sit on a surface and can be stripped off by changing salt or pH without disturbing the bilayer. |
| Cytoskeleton — what is it? | The network of protein filaments that gives a cell its shape, holds organelles in place, and provides tracks for movement. A static scaffold. Microfilaments and microtubules assemble and disassemble constantly, which is what lets a cell change shape, crawl, and divide. |
| Centrosome — what is it? | The main microtubule-organizing center of an animal cell, holding a pair of centrioles surrounded by pericentriolar material. The centriole, which is only one component. The nucleating activity lies in the surrounding material, not in the centriole itself. |
| Cilium — what is it? | A short hair-like projection built around a microtubule axoneme, usually present in large numbers and beating with a back-and-forth stroke. The eukaryotic flagellum, which has the same internal structure but is longer, usually solitary, and undulates rather than beating in strokes. |
| Extracellular matrix — what is it? | The network of proteins and polysaccharides that cells secrete and then live within. It is not just packing material. Signals from the matrix reach the cytoskeleton through integrins and can change which genes a cell expresses. |
| Integrin — what is it? | A transmembrane receptor that binds extracellular matrix proteins outside the cell and connects to the cytoskeleton inside it. Cadherin, which binds cells to each other rather than to the matrix. |
| Electrochemical gradient — what is it? | The combined driving force on an ion, from its concentration gradient and from the membrane potential together. A plain concentration gradient, which is all that acts on an uncharged solute such as glucose. |
| Active transport — what is it? | Movement of a solute against its electrochemical gradient, powered by an energy source. Facilitated diffusion. The test is direction. Active transport runs uphill, and cutting off the cell's energy supply stops it. |
| Endocytosis — what is it? | Uptake of material by folding a patch of plasma membrane inward and pinching it off as a vesicle. It is how a cell takes in anything too large to cross a membrane, and it removes membrane from the surface, which exocytosis puts back. |
| Cell signaling — what is it? | The process by which a cell detects a chemical or physical signal and converts it into a change in its own behavior. The signal molecule usually never enters the cell. Its message is relayed inward by proteins. |
| G protein — what is it? | A relay protein that is active while bound to GTP and inactive once it has hydrolyzed that GTP to GDP. Built-in hydrolysis makes it a self-timing switch, so the signal shuts itself off without needing a separate off signal. |
| Apoptosis — what is it? | Programmed cell death, in which a cell dismantles itself in an orderly way and is packaged for phagocytosis. Necrosis, which is uncontrolled death from injury. There the cell swells, bursts, and provokes inflammation. |
| Cell cycle — what is it? | The ordered sequence a cell runs through from its own formation to its division, made of interphase followed by the mitotic phase. Almost all of it is interphase. Mitosis is the short, visually dramatic minority of the time. |
| Cytokinesis — what is it? | Division of the cytoplasm into two separate cells. It works differently in the two kingdoms. An actin and myosin ring pinches an animal cell, while a plant builds a new wall outward from the middle. |
| Oncogene — what is it? | A gene whose overactive product drives cell division, formed from a normal proto-oncogene by mutation, amplification, or relocation in the genome. A tumor suppressor gene, which normally restrains division and causes trouble when it is lost rather than when it is overactive. |
| Nucleotide — what is it? | The building block of a nucleic acid, made of a five-carbon sugar, a phosphate group, and a nitrogenous base. The sugar is what separates the two nucleic acids, deoxyribose in DNA against ribose in RNA, and that extra hydroxyl is part of why RNA is the less stable of the two. |
| Gene expression — what is it? | The use of the information in a gene to build a functional product, usually a protein. Every cell in a body carries the same genes, so what makes cells different is which genes are expressed and how strongly. |
| Genetic code — what is it? | The set of rules assigning each of the 64 nucleotide triplets to an amino acid or to a stop signal. The idea that redundancy makes it sloppy. Redundancy buffers mutation, since many changes in the third position leave the amino acid unchanged. |
| Transcription factor — what is it? | A protein that binds DNA and raises or lowers the transcription of particular genes. It is the main way a cell controls gene expression, and it is how a signal arriving at the cell surface ends up changing which proteins the cell makes. |
| Metabolism — what is it? | The complete set of chemical reactions in a cell, organized into pathways in which each step is catalyzed by a specific enzyme. Because every step needs its own enzyme, a pathway can be regulated by controlling a single one of them. |
| Cellular respiration — what is it? | The catabolic pathway that oxidizes organic fuel to make ATP. Glucose is not burned in one step. Its energy is released gradually and captured mostly as electrons carried by NADH and FADH2. |
| Glycolysis — what is it? | The pathway that splits one glucose into two molecules of pyruvate through ten enzyme-catalyzed steps. It needs neither oxygen nor an organelle, which is why essentially every cell has it and why it is thought to be very old. |
| Pyruvate oxidation — what is it? | The link step in which each pyruvate loses a carbon as carbon dioxide, is oxidized to an acetyl group, and is joined to coenzyme A. A step of the citric acid cycle. It is a separate reaction that happens before the cycle begins. |
| Fermentation — what is it? | The regeneration of NAD+ from NADH without oxygen, so that glycolysis can keep running. Anaerobic respiration, which does use an electron transport chain but ends it on an acceptor other than oxygen, such as sulfate or nitrate. |
| Calvin cycle — what is it? | The stage in which carbon dioxide is fixed onto a five-carbon acceptor, reduced using ATP and NADPH, and the acceptor is regenerated. Being called the dark reactions. It does not require darkness and it stops in the dark anyway, because it depends on what the light reactions supply. |
| Photorespiration — what is it? | The pathway that follows when rubisco binds oxygen instead of carbon dioxide, producing a two-carbon compound the cell has to salvage at a cost in ATP and fixed carbon. It becomes significant on hot dry days, when stomata close, carbon dioxide inside the leaf falls, and oxygen builds up. |
| Cell fractionation — what is it? | Breaking cells open and separating their components so that one organelle can be studied on its own. Assigning a function to an organelle usually means purifying it and showing that the activity travels with it. |
このデッキについて
Cell biology goes wrong in a predictable place. The terms are easy to recognize and hard to keep apart: smooth against rough ER, the centromere against the centrosome, facilitated diffusion against active transport, anaphase against anaphase I. Each pair reads as familiar right up to the moment a question asks which one you meant. That is what these 250 cards are built for. Every one opens with a clean definition, 209 add the line that makes it usable, and 145 name the term it actually gets confused with and say what separates the two. That last part is the difference between a deck you recognize and a deck you can answer from, because a note that restates the definition teaches nothing you did not already have. Coverage runs from membrane structure and the organelles through transport, signaling, the cell cycle, DNA replication and gene expression, to respiration, photosynthesis and the methods a first course actually uses. Every card carries a topic tag, so you can run just membrane transport, just the cell cycle, or just photosynthesis instead of the whole subject at once. Import it and the deck joins your spaced-repetition schedule. Terms you already know stretch out and drop out of sight, and the ones that keep slipping come back until they stop slipping.
よくある質問
- Can I import the whole deck on the free plan?
- Yes. Importing a saved deck runs no new AI generation and does not use your AI allowance, so the free plan imports every card. You can study, edit and delete them afterwards.
- Will importing it twice create duplicates?
- No. Cards you already have are skipped and only cards added in a revision come through. Including re-imports after deleting it, one official deck can be imported three times per account.
- Does it work on the web and in the mobile app?
- Yes. The deck is added to your account, so the web app, the iOS app and the Android app all show the same cards and the same progress.
- Can I edit the cards after importing?
- Yes. Once imported they are your cards: edit either side, delete the ones your course does not cover, retag them, or move them into another deck.
- What is on each card?
- A term or process on the front. On the back, a definition on all 250, where in the cell it belongs on 35 where location is the point, why it matters on 209, and on 145 the term it is most often confused with. Each line is labeled, so the back reads as a short structured answer rather than a paragraph.
- How is the deck organized for studying one topic at a time?
- Every card carries a topic tag and a finer one below it, covering cell basics, membranes, organelles, the cytoskeleton, cell junctions, membrane transport, cell signaling, the cell cycle, DNA and chromosomes, gene expression, metabolism, cellular respiration, photosynthesis and lab methods. Filter by a tag to drill just that block.
- What is the level, and what is deliberately left out?
- It is written for an introductory or first-year college course. It leaves out exam questions, clinical guidance and advanced research protocols, and it covers laboratory methods only as concepts, not as procedures you could run.
- What if a card does not match the way my course puts it?
- Conventions differ between courses and textbooks, especially over which stage a process belongs to and which name is preferred. Once imported the cards are yours, so edit the back to match the way your course puts it, and study from that.
Compiled 2026-08-21. Cards are written by Memly.