What is the biggest single-celled organism? - Murry Gans
View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/what-is-the-biggest-single-celled-organism-murry-gans The elephant is a creature of epic proportions — and yet, ...
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The elephant is a creature of epic proportions, and yet it owes its enormity to more than 1,000 trillion microscopic cells, and on the epically small end of things, there are likely millions of unicellular species, yet there are very few we can see with the naked eye. Why is that? Why don't we get unicellular elephants, or blue whales, or brown bears? To find out, we have to peer into a cell's guts. This is where most of the cell's functions occur, enclosed by a cellular membrane that acts as the doorway into and out of the cell. Any resources the cell needs to consume, or waste products it needs to expel, first have to pass through this membrane. But there's a biological quirk in this set up. A cell's surface and volume increase at different rates. Cells ...
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The elephant is a creature of epic proportions, and yet it owes its enormity to more than 1,000 trillion microscopic cells, and on the epically small end of things, there are likely millions of unicellular species, yet there are very few we can see with the naked eye. Why is that? Why don't we get unicellular elephants, or blue whales, or brown bears? To find out, we have to peer into a cell's guts. This is where most of the cell's functions occur, enclosed by a cellular membrane that acts as the doorway into and out of the cell. Any resources the cell needs to consume, or waste products it needs to expel, first have to pass through this membrane. But there's a biological quirk in this set up. A cell's surface and volume increase at different rates. Cells ...
