Describe features you would look for under the microscope to determine if a cell is prokaryotic or eukaryotic. If you knew your specimen belonged to Kingdom Protista, would that make it a prokaryote or a eukaryote?
Structure and Composition of Cell Membrane
Despite differences in structure and function, all living cells in multicellular organisms are surrounded by a cell membrane. Just like the outer layer of the skin separates the body from its environment similarly, the cell membrane, also known as 'plasma membrane,' separates the inner content from its exterior environment.
Cell Membrane
The cell membrane is known by different names like plasma membrane or cytoplasmic membrane, or biological membrane. The term "cell membrane" was first introduced by C. Nageli and C. Cramer in the year 1855. Later on, in 1931, the term "plasmalemma" for cell membrane was given by J. Plowe. The cell membrane separates the cell's internal environment from the extracellular space. This separation allows the protection of cells from their environment.
Prokaryotes vs Eukaryotes
The cell is defined as the basic structural and functional unit of life. The cell membrane bounds it. It is capable of independent existence.
Describe features you would look for under the microscope to determine if a cell is prokaryotic or eukaryotic. If you knew your specimen belonged to Kingdom Protista, would that make it a prokaryote or a eukaryote?
Cells are the basic unit of life as no living organism can have life without being cellular because cell is a unit of both its structure and function. All life begins as a single cell.
The unifying features of all the cells are presence of plasma membrane which separates the cellular components from the outer environment and is semipermeable, hereditary information in the form of a chemical code which replicates by templated polymerization, presence of ribosomes that help in the translation of genetic information into polypeptides, presence of cytoplasm in which all the cellular components are present.
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