Cell growth

Cell growth (English cell growth) is the size and increase in volume of individual cells. She is genetically controlled and takes place primarily between successive cell divisions. Requirement for cell growth is a viable cellular metabolism, a process in which the cells process nutrient molecules.

The maximum size increase results from the ratio of surface to volume. Since the surface mathematically only the volume but is growing to the square, the cube, has a cell at some point there is not enough surface to deliver sufficient nutrients and pollutants. Therefore, the size of individual learning is limited. This limit is probably also responsible for the development of multicellular organisms.

In medicine, especially in oncology, the term cell growth is often equated with the increase in cell number (e.g., in a tumor). Here grow (except for size changes during cell division ), the individual cells are not, but only the cell culture ( for example, bacterial strains ). Specifically, tumor growth often follows in good approximation to the well-known Gompertz equation:

This corresponds to the exponential decrease of the growth rate of a poor supply of nutrients inside a solid tumor.