• Question: What are organs made of??

    Asked by anon-202180 to Rebecca, Matthew, Marie, Gareth on 14 Mar 2019. This question was also asked by anon-202697.
    • Photo: Rebecca Gosling

      Rebecca Gosling answered on 14 Mar 2019:

      Really interesting question! Organs are made up a combination of different cell types and every organ is slightly different. Cells are the basic building blocks in our body. Each one is tiny, so small that you would only be able to see with a microscope. We have around 37 trillion (that is a lot!!) of cells in our body. So each organ is made of lots of these! Different types include muscle cells, skin cells, nerve cells, fat cells, bone cells, blood cells! It is the combination of all of these that determine what the organ is like and how it works!

    • Photo: Matthew Smith

      Matthew Smith answered on 14 Mar 2019:

      This is kind of hard to explain! Organs are made of cells. Each cell has a job to do. For example, in the pancreas there are cells that make little machines (we call them enzymes) that help us break down our food. There are other cells that release something called insulin, that controls the amount of sugar in our blood which controls how much energy we have (when you eat sweets this goes up, that’s why you have lots of energy after eating sweets). These cells are very different but they work together and often help each other.

      This is one of the reasons the body is so amazing, there are so many different parts working together to make us tick!

    • Photo: Gareth Nye

      Gareth Nye answered on 14 Mar 2019:

      Organs are made up of groups of cells that all do very similar things to help do one job – like the heart it made up of cells to help pump blood around the body or the stomach is made up of cells that make acid to break down our food. Every organ has a nearby supply of blood to provide oxygen and nutrients

    • Photo: Marie Cameron

      Marie Cameron answered on 14 Mar 2019:

      In addition to the excellent answers given by the others, the various cells are then grouped into 4 types of tissue (muscle, connective [includes bone and blood], epithelial [tends to line or coat things] and nervous tissue. Combinations of these 4 tissue types make up all of our organs. 🙂

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