STUDY QUESTIONS FOR:  CELLS SCIENCE 101

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  By the end of this section you need to be able to address the following:

1. Why and how do we classify organisms into different taxa?
2. What characteristics distinguish organisms in the five kingdoms?
3. Would you expect to find more different species of birds, for example, in a Class or in a Phylum?  in a Family or in a Genus?
4. What information, in addition to structural features, can be used by scientists to classify organisms?
5. How could a scientists determine if two similar organisms were members of the same species?
6. Many fungi resemble plants.  How could you determine if an unknown plant-like organism was a plant or fungus?
7. What tools do scientists use to learn about the microscopic structure of organisms?
8. How can you determine the size of an organism or structure viewed through a microscope?
9. What is the cell theory and what evidence supports the theory?
10. What organelles are found in eukaryotic cells and what is the function of each organelle?
11. What characteristics distinguish life from non-life?
12. What cellular structures distinguish plant cells from animal cells?
13. What characteristics distinguish prokaryotes from eukaryotes?
14. What is the symbiotic theory of the evolution of eukaryotic cells?  What evidence supports this theory?
15. In what ways does the size of a cell relate to its function(s)?
16. What scientific explanations exist for the evolution of multicellular organisms?
17. What happens to the ratio of surface area to volume as cells become larger?  How does the surface area-to-volume ratio limit cell size?  What differences would you expect in the functions of a relatively large cell compared with a relatively small cell?  why?