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Your typical cell is going to be classified as eukaryotic. This means it will have the usual innards you may have learned about in Biology such as the plasma membrane, cytoplasm, nucleus, and lots of busy little organelles. However, in your typical cell it is not organelles that are responsible for maintaining cell shape. Rather, it is a material called the cytoskeleton which is made up of protein filaments. The cytoskeleton is made of actin filaments (or microfilaments), microtubules and intermediate filaments. In a nerve cell, they're called neurofibrils. A nerve cell also has what is known as Nissl substance which, in a textbook picture, is going to look very much like lots of little organelles just taking up the 'empty' space, but they are not classified as organelles. Nerve cells are what I'm focusing on in med school right now so I'm not positive if other kinds of cells have their own equivalent of the Nissl substance perhaps by a different name. Either way, most of the cells you will be talking about have the abovementioned cytoskeleton at least.

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17y ago

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