Human Anatomy Structures and the Cell Types Each Requires

Biologists have misled us in many different ways. I describe dozens of those ways in my post here. One of the worst ways in which biologists have misled us is by again and again visually misrepresenting the degree of complexity and organization in cells.  Again and again in the books and articles and school lessons of biologists, we see phony cell diagrams that make cells look 1,000 times simpler than they are. Such diagrams give people the idea that cells contain only a few components called organelles.  Most of the more complex cells in the human body contain more than 100,000 organelles, of many different types.

Schematic diagrams of cells are constantly misleading us by depicting cells with only a few organelles. Specifically:

• A cell diagram will typically depict a cell as having only one or a few mitochondria, but human cells typically have many thousands of mitochondria, as many as a million.
• A cell diagram will typically depict a cell as having only only one or a few lysosomes, but human cells typically have hundreds of lysosomes.
• A cell diagram will typically depict a cell as having only a few ribosomes, but a human cell may have up to 10 million ribosomes.
• A cell diagram will typically depict one or a few stacks of a Golgi apparatus, each with only a few cisternae. But a cell will typically have between 10 and 20 stacks, each having as many as 60 cisternae.
• A cell diagram will rarely even depict a microtubule, although according to the paper here "cells can contain from just a few to many hundreds of microtubules (Aikawa, 1971; Osborn & Weber, 1976)." 
• The membranes of cells are extremely complicated structures, consisting of four layers, with each layer being populated by many types of proteins each consisting of hundreds of well-arranged parts.  Some of this complexity could easily be shown by a "closeup circle" in a cell diagram, showing a closeup of part of the membrane.  But we rarely see any such depiction of the complexity of the cell membrane,  and cell diagrams almost always have cell membranes depicted as featureless things looking as simple as the surface of a balloon. 
• The cytosol of a cell is typically depicted as if it were a simple fluid like water. But the cytosol is actually loaded with many types of complex protein molecules needed for cell function. 

There is no excuse for the continuation of misleading cell diagrams in the literature of biology. For the past twenty years it has been easy to use computer graphics to make very sophisticated high-resolution diagrams capable of properly representing the complexity of cells. But almost no one is creating such diagrams, and we continue to see most cell diagrams looking like something hand-painted in the 1950's.  

The type of cell diagrams we usually see in biology literature are misrepresentations as absurd as trying to depict gigantic skyscrapers like the Empire State Building or the 828-meter-tall Burj Khalifa tower  by using ridiculously simplistic diagrams like this:

It is easy to understand why such misrepresentations continue.  Addicted to socially constructed triumphal boasts that they understand biological origins, boasts that depict themselves as Grand Lords of Explanation, biologists do not want us to properly understand the mountainous degrees of organization and complexity in human bodies and all of the more complex types of human cells. The more we understand such stratospheric levels of organization and complexity, the less likely we will be to believe the claims of biologists that such things originated from blind accidental processes.  A very important relation you should remember is that the more functionally organized something is and the more hierarchically organized that thing is, the less credible is any claim of an accidental origin of such a thing.  For example, it is easy to construct a credible theory of how a "house of cards" consisting of only two cards diagonally leaning against each other might arise by accident, but impossible to construct a credible theory of how a triangular house of cards consisting of 18 well-arranged cards with three cards rows could ever arise by accidental processes such as someone throwing a third of a deck of cards into the air.

                    You can't get this accidentally 

On the day I started to write this post I read once again what I read many times every month: a glaring example of a biologist lying. The biologist who I won't name was attacking a very serious thinker who says that Darwinism is utterly insufficient to explain the origin of biological innovations. As part of his rebuttal, the biologist drew attention to a claim of the Darwinism critic, the claim that new anatomical structures require new cell types. The biologist told us that such a claim was false. But the biologist lied. In general, new types of anatomical structures do require some new cell types. Typically a new type of anatomical structure will require some combination of cell types used elsewhere in the body and also one or more cell types used only by that anatomical structure.  

To prove my point, I present the table below. In the left column, we see the main types of anatomical structures in the human body. In the right column we see only some of the cell types that are needed for such structures. Almost every type of anatomical structure listed requires at least one cell type used only by that structure. Most of the cell types that are listed are used by only one of the anatomical structures. My source for the information below is mainly the wikipedia.org article on human cell types, which you can read here.  The listing here is by no means comprehensive, and I'm sure a complete list would list many additional cell types in the "cell types required" column. 

Anatomical structure	Cell Types Required
Duodenum	Brunner's gland cell
Respiratory Tract	Insulated goblet cell, "ciliated, non-ciliated secretory cells, and basal cells" (link).
Digestive Tract	Insulated goblet cell, enterocytes, chief cells, enteric glial cells
Stomach	Foveolar cell, chief cell, parietal cell, Enterochromaffin cell, Enterochromaffin-like cell
Pancreas	Pancreatic acinar cell, Centroacinar cell, Pancreatic stellate cell, alpha cell, beta cell, delta cell, epislon cell
Small intestine	Paneth cell, tuft cells
Lungs	Type II pneumocyte, Club cell, Type I pneumocyte,  Kultschitzky's cells
Gall bladder	Gall bladder epithelial cell
Tongue	Von Ebner's gland cell, surface epithelial cell, taste receptor cells
Ear	Ceruminous gland cell, Planum semilunar epithelial cell, Organ of Corti interdental epithelial cell, Elastic cartilage chondrocyte, Inner pillar cells of organ of Corti, Outer pillar cells of the organ of Corti, Inner phalangeal cells of organ of Corti, Outer hair cells of vestibular system of ear, Inner hair cells of vestibular system of ear, Outer phalangeal cells of organ of Corti, Border cells of organ of Corti, Hensen's cells of organ of Corti
Nose	Bowman's gland cell,Olfactory epithelium supporting cells, Olfactory ensheathing cells
Cornea (eye)	Surface epithelial cell, Corneal fibroblasts
Iris (eye)	Smooth muscle cell, iris pigment epithelium, stroma
Retina (eye)	Retina horizontal cells, cone cells, rod cells, bipolar cells, ganglion cells, horizontal cells, amacrine cells
Adrenal gland	Chromaffin cells
Mouth	Surface epithelial cell, stromal cells, endothelial cells
Nasal cavity	Surface epithelial cell, squamous cells
Salivary glands	Striated duct cell, acinar cells, ductal cells, myoepithelial cells
Mammary glands, breasts	Lactiferous duct cell, myoepithetial cell
Central nervous system	Many types of neurons, stellate cell, microglial cell
Heart	White fat cell, cardiac muscle cell, SA node cell, Purkinje fiber cell
Ovary	Theca Interna cell, Corpus luteum cell, Granulosa lutein cells, Theca lutein cells
Male reproductive system (e.g. testes)	Leydig cell, seminal vessicle cell,Bulbourethral gland cell, duct cell, efferent duct cells, Epididymal principal cell, Epididymal basal cell, Spermatid, Spermatocyte,  Spermatogonium cell, Spermatozoon, Sertoli cell
Prostate gland	Prostate gland cell, duct cell
Female reproductive system	Oogonium/oocyte, granulosa cell,
Vagina	Bartholin's gland cell, basal cells, parabasal cells, superficial squamous flat cells
Uterus	Uterus endometrium cell
Urethra	Gland of Littré cell
Kidney	Macula densa cell, Peripolar cell, Principal cell, Mesangial cell, Kidney distal tubal cell, Intercalated cell, Interstitial kidney cells
Urinary system	Parietal epithelial cell,Podocyte, Proximal tubule brush border cell, Loop of Henle thin segment cell
Bladder	Transitional epithelium, urothelial cells,
Circulatory system	Endothelial cells, vascular smooth muscle cells, lymphatic endothelial cells
Tendons	Tendon fibroblasts,
Bones (including bone marrow)	Erythrocyte, monocyte,Bone marrow reticular tissue fibroblasts.Osteoblast/osteocyte, Osteoprogenitor cell, Megakaryocyte, osteoclast
Liver	Hepatic stellate cell, liver lipocyte, Kupffer cells, Cholangiocytes, progenitor cells, NK cells
Intevertebral disc	Nucleus pulposus cell
Adipose organ (fat system)	White fat cell, brown fat cell
Muscles	Red skeletal muscle cell (slow twitch), White skeletal muscle cell (fast twitch), Intermediate skeletal muscle cell,Nuclear bag cell, Nuclear chain cell
Endocrine glands	Myoepithelial cell
Immune system	Macrophages, dendritic cell, Epidermal Langerhans cell, Neutrophil granulocyte, Basophil granulocyte, Mast cell, Helper T cell, Regulatory T cell, Cytotoxic T cell, Natural killer T cell, B cell(/lymphocyte), Plasma cell, Natural killer cell
Skin and hair	Epidermal Langerhans cell, Keratinocyte, Epidermal basal cell, Melanocyte, Trichocyte, Medullary hair shaft cell, Cortical hair shaft cell, Cuticular hair shaft cell, Huxley's layer hair root sheath cell, Henle's layer hair root sheath cell, Outer root sheath hair cell
Thymus	Epithelial reticular cell,
Thryoid/Parathyroid	Thyroid epithelial cell, Parafollicular cell, Parathyroid chief cell
Peripheral nervous system	Schwann cells, Satellite glial cells,
Interneurons	Basket cells, Cartwheel cells, Stellate cells, Golgi cells, Granule cells, Lugaro cells, Unipolar brush cells, Martinotti cells. Chandelier cells, Cajal–Retzius cells, Double-bouquet cells, Neurogliaform cells
Pituitary gland	Corticotropes, Gonadotropes, Lactotropes, Melanotropes, Somatotropes, Thyrotropes

Pardon the imperfect formatting above, which is hard to avoid when doing so much copying from an external source which has this information in a table using a different format.  

We can see from the table above that our Darwin-defending biologist was telling us a big fat lie when he claimed that new types of anatomical structures do not require new cell types. In the great majority of cases, major new anatomical structures do require one or more specialized new cell types.  Probably many additional cell types could be listed in the second column of the table above. 

Our Darwinism-defending biologist told us a lie he needed to tell. I can understand exactly why a Darwinism-defending biologist would want to fool people into thinking that major new biological innovations do not require new cell types. The reason is that Darwinism has no credible explanation for the origin of new cell types. Darwinists claim that all the wonders of biology came from random mutations in DNA and its genes. One of the many gigantic problems with that idea is that DNA does not specify how to make a cell or any of the organelles that make up a cell. The diagram below tells the truth about what DNA does and does not specify. DNA does not specify how to make any cell or any of the organelles of such cells. DNA does not even specify how to make any of the protein complexes that are the constituent components of organelles. 

The fact is that Darwinism has no credible explanation for the origin of new cell types, which cannot be explained by imagining random mutations. Cells are enormously complex structures, and you could no more get a new cell type by random mutations than you could get a new type of well-functioning motor vehicle by random combinations produced when a tornado passed through an auto parts store. 

So what do you do if you are a Darwinist biologist faced with the problem of explaining the last seven rows in the pyramid shown above? You might feel the need to tell lies. One lie would be the lie that DNA and its genes are a blueprint or recipe or program for making a full human body. That lie has been told abundantly by Darwinist biologists for 70 years, although many other biologists and scientists confess it is false. Another lie might be one like I read on the day I started to write this post, in which a biologist attempted to claim that new types of  anatomical structures don't require new cell types. The table above shows how false such a lie is. 

The table below is derived from a table on this page of the Human Protein Atlas.  We see a list of the types of organelles in the cells of the human body, and how many types of proteins are needed to make up such organelles. The median number of amino acids in a human protein molecule is about 375.  The 2005 paper here gives numbers of 375 and 416 as the median number of amino acids in human proteins.  Each type of protein molecule is a fine-tuned special organization of hundreds or thousands of amino acids, which have to be arranged in a very special way for the protein to be functional, an arrangement as special as the arrangement of characters in a functional paragraph.  

By looking at the number in the second column, you can get an idea of how complex each organelle is. The larger the number in the second column, the more complex that organelle is. Lysosomes are relatively simple organelles, but organelles such as mitochondria and plasma membranes are vastly more complex. Each type of protein requires a special arrangement of hundreds of amino acids, which altogether involves a special arrangement of thousands of atoms. The more complex organelles in cells require a special arrangement of more than a million atoms. The arrangement involved is as special and as hard-to-achieve by chance as the arrangement of characters in a lengthy essay such as this blog post. 

ORGANELLE TYPE	NUMBER OF TYPES OF PROTEINS IN EACH ORGANELLE
Intermediate filaments	163
Actin filaments	237
Focal adhesion sites	138
Microtubules	262
Microtubule ends	6
Cytokinetic bridge	159
Midbody	53
Midbody ring	25
Cleavage furrow	1
Mitotic spindle	93
Centriolar satellite	194
Centrosome	396
Mitochondria	1121
Aggresome	19
Cytosol	4883
Cytoplasmic bodies	73
Rods & Rings	20
Endoplasmic reticulum	542
Golgi apparatus	1163
Vesicles	2238
Peroxisomes	23
Endosomes	17
Lysosomes	19
Lipid droplets	39
Plasma membrane	2074
Cell Junctions	330
Nucleoplasm	6166
Nuclear membrane	276
Nucleoli	1075
Nucleoli fibrillar center	311
Nucleoli rim	151
Nuclear speckles	493
Nuclear bodies	588
Kinetochore	6
Mitotic chromosome	74
Total number of types of proteins used in human cell organelles	13147

Pondering how many types of these organelles there are in human cells, and pondering how high the numbers are in the second column, you might then understand why authorities sometimes say that a human cell has a functional complexity comparable to that of a factory or a city.  Below is a relevant quote by physicist Anthony Aquirre, from page 338 of his book "Cosmological Koans":

"The most elaborate and sophisticated human-designed machines, while quite impressive, are utter child's play compared with the workings of a cell: a cell contains on the order of 100 trillion atoms, and probably billions of quite complex molecules working with amazing precision. The most complex engineered machines -- modern jet aircraft, for example -- have several million parts. Thus, perhaps all the jetliners in the world (without people in them, of course) could compete in functional complexity with a lowly bacterium."

A question closely related to the issue of whether new anatomy structures require new cell types is the question of whether new anatomy structures require new types of genes and new types of proteins.  Whatever answer we get to these questions sheds light on the topic of how easy or difficult it is for new useful anatomical structures to arise. In Table 1 of the paper "A comprehensive functional analysis of tissue specificity of human gene expression," we have the following list which tells us whether new anatomy structures require new types of genes and proteins.  In the paper the table has the same title as below.  The genes referred to are not the total number of genes used in a particular organ or body part, but the "tissue-specific genes" used only by that organ or body part. So, for example, there are apparently 22 genes used only by the liver, and 484 genes used only by the testis.  The "housekeeping" genes are genes not used only by one organ or body part. 

 

Table 1: Number of housekeeping and tissue-specific genes

Housekeeping 2374

Liver 22

Skeletal muscle 37

Fetal liver 16

Testis 484

Placenta 38

Bone marrow 63

Skin 75

Adrenal gland 13

Prostate 14

Trachea 16

Small intestine 35

Peripheral blood lymphocytes 49

Mammary gland 16

Tonsil 24

Thymus 4

Spleen 14

Fetal kidney 5

Thyroid 7

Brain 34

Heart 26

Lung 16

Salivary gland 17

Ovary 15

Pancreas 20

Fetal thymus 8

Colon 9

Spinal cord 24

Retina 190

Kidney 17

Uterus 12

Fetal brain 61

Average 43.8

Average, somatic tissues 30.9

It seems clear from the above table that most new body parts and anatomical innovations appearing in the history of life require multiple new genes, with a new type of body part requiring an average of about 30 new genes. Each new gene specifies a special very hard-to-achieve sequence of hundreds of amino acids needed to produce a new functional protein.  The average amount of new well-arranged genetic information required to make a new body part seems to be roughly equivalent to a special sequence of about 12,000 amino acids, which is about as hard to achieve by chance as 20 pages of functional well-written text, consisting of 30 paragraphs that each have about 400 characters or letters. And such a requirement is only a small fraction of the total innovation required, because the need for the new cell types (not specified in DNA or its genes) is a whole other requirement that is just as enormous. 

Clearly the Darwinist biologist I read was guilty of the most misleading language when he tried to insinuate that no enormous innovation is needed to get new types of anatomical structures. The mention in the table above of how merely one part of the eye (the retina) requires 190 genes used only by that part is a fact that helps to show the enormous failure of typical Darwinist discussions trying to explain the evolution of the eye by Darwinian explanations, discussions that fail to mention the number of eye-specific genes and eye-specific proteins and the complexity of such components.  

Information such as that given you in tables and bullet lists of this post give you the real scoop about the complexity of cells and body parts. Such "give you the real story" information is very hard to find by doing searches on the internet. It is as if for every writer trying to give you the most relevant facts revealing such complexity, there are twenty writers writing as if they were ignorant about such complexity, or were trying to hide such complexity from you.