How many cells in a human?

[roger at kean.ucs.mun.ca]

In article <CD1s0w.86o at ncifcrf.gov>, tobin at fcs260c.ncifcrf.gov (Greg Tobin) writes:
> I would like to calculate the number of people needed to represent a
> mole of genomes.  Can anyone tell me how many cells in a human body?
> 
> Thanks ahead
> 
> Greg    Tobin at lcms-1.ncifcrf.gov
> 

	A gram of cells grown in culture contains something on the order of 
1.0E9 cells. Therefore 70 kg of cells (=1 human) would contain something 
like 7.0E13 cells.  However there are a lot (=/- quite a few) of red blood 
cells which are considerably smaller than average, so this number may be 
low.

Roger C. Green,	Faculty of Medicine               Phone: (709)737-6884
Memorial University , St. John's, Newfoundland    FAX  : (709)737-7010