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Year 7 & 8 TOC

Cells to systems

Tissues & organs

LO: Examining the specialised cells and tissues involved in structure and function of particular organs

You’re a multicellular organism, but you’ve probably noticed you aren’t just two or three big cells, and the millions of cells you are made of, are hard to see. We are organised into increasingly complex parts. Starting with the basic building block, a cell, and ending in a complete organism. 

 In order, from least complex to most complex:

  • cells
  • tissues
  • organs
  • organ systems
  • organism

We’ve already spoken about specialised cells (select here if you need a refresher), now lets talk about what those cells come together to create! Tissues!

Tissue

Cells can form tissue. A living tissue are a group of cells that perform the same function, not scattered throughout the whole body. 

In the human body, we have 4 different types of tissue:

Muscle tissue is able to contract and become shorter and fatter. 

Tense your bicep, what you’ll notice is the muscle bulging when you contract it. 

  • Every muscle cell is able to contract, but you need thousands of them to move your body parts.
  • While muscles can contract they can’t expand. So they need another muscle to pull them back. Your bicep pulls your arm up while your tricep pulls it down. 

Organs

An organ is made up of 2 or more different tissues, which all work together to do a particular job. Every tissue has its role in an organ. Epithelial gives protection, skeletal gives support, muscle helps locomotion and neural conducting signals.

Here are some examples of organs in your body:

Heart

brain

lungs

Your small intestine is a great example of how different tissue types work together and make up an organ. 

Hover over the i icon on the image below to learn more about the different tissue types in the small intestine.