Let's go!
Bacteria are procaryotic cells.
Protista, Fungi and Plants and Animals are (kingdoms of) eukaryotic cell structures.
Eukaryotic cells contain membrane-bound organelles such as the nucleus. Prokaryotic cells DO NOT.
We'll only see eukaryotic cells today:
Kingdom of Protista
Protista are unicellular or simple multicellular.
They are too simple to be classified as plant, animal or fungi.
Most protista live in the water.
We'll study the: Paramecium caudatum
Paramecium caudatum is found in stagnant water bodies like ponds or pools where plant material decomposes.
We can breed it in the lab using hay-infuse.
Paramecium caudatum's size ranges between 150-250μm (micrometers).
It swims and rotates using vibrating hairs (cilia) along its surface.
Paramecium eats using cytopharynx. That's a groove (a hole) where the food is inserted. Then the food enters a vacuole and gets digested.
Paramecium caudatum lives in a hypertonic environment, so new water enters inside it all the time through osmosis (osmosis is a process not a feature).
It has tiny sort of pumps called 'contractile vacuoles' that remove the excessive water.
Also, it has TWO nuclei:
A macronucleus to synthesize proteins in and so control the metabolism & growth.
A micronucleus that 'plays an important role in propagation' whatever that means.
We'll draw that pal in scale!
Kingdom of... Fungi! (e.g yeast cells, magic mushrooms)
Fungi are mostly multicellular organisms.
They decompose organic material like crazy.
The only unicellular Fungi are the yeasts!
There are many kinds of yeasts, the most known is Saccharomyces cerevisiae used to make beer and bread.
Most yeasts are spherical and divide forming buds.
We can easily observe the dividing yeast cells, they are like an '8'.
Yeasts eat sugar.
In an anaerobic environment (lack of oxygen) yeasts convert sugar to CO2 and ethanol. This process is called fermentation.
Did you know that during baking bread not only CO2 that grows its volume but also alcohol is produced? Only to evaporate off my loaf sadly.
We'll create a yeast culture!
The kingdom of Plants!
Plant cells are way larger that Protista and Fungi.
They have a robust cell wall made of cellulose.
Inside the plant cells we'll find relatively massive vacuoles that take up about 95% of the cell's space.
Vacuoles are filled with water, waste products, pigments, salts and more.
We'll also find chloroplasts that do the photosynthesis yeah! They contain chlorophyll which is... wait for it... IT'S GREEN!
We'll study Elodea canadensis.
It's a haplodiplontic plant (?) That's a remark related to it's reproduction circles but the lab text is messed up and makes no sense. Skip it!
Elodea is a plant of fresh water aquaria (aquariums as I'd mistakenly say).
The Kingdom of 'Yo Mama'
or Animals
Animals can't photosynthesize so they have to find food and break it down/ convert it to useful nutrients so they are called 'chemo-hetero-trophic' (one word).
They have a diplontic life cycle.
Animal cells ain't surrounded by any cell walls so they take various, changeable shapes.
Epithelium is called an outer cell layer of an organism or some organ. That layer is renewed a lot.
The 'old' cells peel off easily.
We'll study: Mouth Mucosa (OUR MOUTH JESUS!!!)
The epithelium of the mouth is called 'mouth mucosa'.
We'll scrape off, color and study cells from our mouth!
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