We participate in everything you do. You lifts a suitcase and thinks your arm is doing the job. Actually, it’s invisible muscle cells, contracting. You shaves your face : nerve and muscle cells perform the entire operation. For that matter, the facial hair you chops off were produced by other cells. My task as a rod cell in the eye is to catch faint light - say the twinkle of a star - simplify it and change it into an electrical signal which I then send to your brain. If enough signals arrive, you see the star.
Since each of us 250 million rod cells in your eyes contains 30 million molecules of light catching pigment, we naturally use a lot of electricity. To generate it, I have some thousand sausage-shaped power stations that burn sugar, produce electricity and leave water and carbon dioxide behind. In this complex chemical process they synthesize a substance called adenosine triphosphate (ATP) for short.
Tags: Cell