Why are cells small?
burrito.bio
Why are cells small?
1–10 of 86 posts
Re: Why are cells small?
#2Re: Why are cells small?
#3Another answer is: They're not - at least in some plants:
Re: Why are cells small?
#4Cells are small? compared to what? An ostrich egg is a single cell
Re: Why are cells small?
#5> A simplistic answer is that evolution has made each cell the size best suited to its function.
Yeah. That's probably it. Really, it probably is the right answer.
Re: Why are cells small?
#6Cells are small? compared to what? An ostrich egg is a single cell
I don't know for sure here, but isn't the ostrich IN the egg a multicellular animal? I would assume the first point where the egg contains anything that will become the ostrich, mitosis is happening to make more ostrich cells. I'm assuming there's always cell walls and nucleuses every step of the way here, and the egg and ostrich are never just one big cell.
I could be off base here though, I'm really channeling grade 9 bio class from decades ago!
Re: Why are cells small?
#7Nitpick maybe, but I don't think oocytes are the largest cells, it pretty much has to be some sort of neuron. A sensory neuron for eg. someplace in the foot will be almost as long as the person is tall, and even if the neuron is extremely thin, it's gotta beat the oocyte for volume.
Re: Why are cells small?
#8Cells are small? compared to what? An ostrich egg is a single cell
I don't know for sure here, but isn't the ostrich IN the egg a multicellular animal? I would assume the first point where the egg contains anything that will become the ostrich, mitosis is happening to make more ostrich cells. I'm assuming there's always cell walls and nucleuses every step of the way here, and the egg and ostrich are never just one big cell. I could be off base here though, I'm really channeling grad…
You're correct, but only for fertilized eggs. Unfertilized eggs are single cells.
Re: Why are cells small?
#9Cells are small? compared to what? An ostrich egg is a single cell
I don't know for sure here, but isn't the ostrich IN the egg a multicellular animal? I would assume the first point where the egg contains anything that will become the ostrich, mitosis is happening to make more ostrich cells. I'm assuming there's always cell walls and nucleuses every step of the way here, and the egg and ostrich are never just one big cell. I could be off base here though, I'm really channeling grad…
The trick is that the egg is a ball with one small cell (the ovum) that happens to have also a huge reservoir of food for the future ostrich. There is a moment when there is only once cell in the egg, just after the fussion of the ovum and the sperm cell.
Re: Why are cells small?
#10Not all are? Largest eukaryote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valonia_ventricosa largest prokaryote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiomargarita_namibiensis
> Cell sizes are not fixed, however, even within a single species. Cells often swell as they increase their production of proteins and metabolites in preparation for division. This is in line with biology’s only rule: namely, there are exceptions to every rule!
> Case in point: a giant bacterium called Thiomargarita magnifica can extend about one centimeter in length, so large that it can be seen by the naked eye. It does so by breaking the surface area-to-volume rule, filling between 65–80 percent of its internal volume with an empty vacuole. In other words, it pushes most of its molecules to the cell periphery, thus shortening diffusion distances.
There is also a captioned image of bubble algae in the post.