Do Complex Cell Structures Share a Fractal-like Organization

The extension of the concepts of the Fractal Geometry [Mandelbrot 1983] toward the life sciences has brought a significant progress in understanding complex functional properties and morphological features that characterise cells and tissues. It has even be argued that fractal geometry might provide a coherent description of the design principle underlying living organisms. Fractals fulfil a certain number of theoretic and methodological criteria including an high level of organization, shape irregularity, functional and morphological auto-similarity, scale invariance, iterative pathways and a non-integer peculiar fractal dimension. Through selected examples we will show that cell membranes and organelles at different functional states are fractals according to the above mentioned criteria and that the application of the fractal principle is much valuable for measuring various dimensional parameters of these complex irregular structures.