When a person dies, how long are each individual cells in their body alive for? How do they know to die too?
In: Biology
We should think about what it means to ‘die’ first. Generally when we say someone has died, we mean that brain activity has dropped to nothing and their heart has stopped beating. However, many of the cells in their body will still be alive. Without the heart and lungs, oxygen will not be moved around the body, and all cells need oxygen to survive, so the cells will start to die. How long this takes depends on several factors such as how cold the body is, but generally the longest would be somewhere around an hour or so, unless steps are taken to keep the cells alive like you would do if you wanted to preserve tissue for an organ transplant (in which case the cells can be kept alive for longer).
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