That’s a really good question, I’d never thought of that before.
I can’t really give you an answer because it’s not very clear how many cells there are in the human body. Some scientists suggest that there are maybe 30-40 trillion cells in human body, but then there’s loads of non-cell stuff too, including the bits between the cell (called extracellular matrix), and lots of water too.
I also found one report where they suggested that there are more bacteria cells inside our body than human cells! This could important to understand how some diseases work. But again bacteria cells are much smaller than human cells, so they don’t make up that much of a percentage.
PS I emailed all the scientists I work with to see if they knew. They pointed me towards a website from the university of Harvard which has lots of numbers related to biology. So here’s a very rough estimate for what percentage of our body is made up of cells:
The average mass of a human cell is 0.000000000001 kg
If there are 40,000,000,000,000 cells, then that the total mass of cells is roughly 40 kg
If an average human weight 70 kg, then this means about 57% of our body is cells.
PPS. Oh blimey, ok so I got A LOT of replies. Here’s a few more of their answers:
A biomaterials scientist (somebody who studies to make materials that work with biology) said around 60%.
A microbiologist (someone who studies bacteria) told me that there are roughly three times as many bacteria cells in our body than human cells.
A bioengineer (someone who uses biology to find solutions to problems) calculated it as 2% (not including water).
A biochemist (someone who studies the chemistry of living things) told me that 80% of our cells are red blood cells, but they’re really small. They thought maybe 20% of the body overall is cells.
Sometimes scientists don’t always know, so the next thing would be to design an experiment! (Hmm…how could we do that? It would be too hard to count every cell in your body!). But everyone was really interested in your question.
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Stuart commented on :
PS I emailed all the scientists I work with to see if they knew. They pointed me towards a website from the university of Harvard which has lots of numbers related to biology. So here’s a very rough estimate for what percentage of our body is made up of cells:
The average mass of a human cell is 0.000000000001 kg
If there are 40,000,000,000,000 cells, then that the total mass of cells is roughly 40 kg
If an average human weight 70 kg, then this means about 57% of our body is cells.
Harvard Bionumbers website: https://bionumbers.hms.harvard.edu/search.aspx
Stuart commented on :
PPS. Oh blimey, ok so I got A LOT of replies. Here’s a few more of their answers:
A biomaterials scientist (somebody who studies to make materials that work with biology) said around 60%.
A microbiologist (someone who studies bacteria) told me that there are roughly three times as many bacteria cells in our body than human cells.
A bioengineer (someone who uses biology to find solutions to problems) calculated it as 2% (not including water).
A biochemist (someone who studies the chemistry of living things) told me that 80% of our cells are red blood cells, but they’re really small. They thought maybe 20% of the body overall is cells.
Sometimes scientists don’t always know, so the next thing would be to design an experiment! (Hmm…how could we do that? It would be too hard to count every cell in your body!). But everyone was really interested in your question.