Question

Who differentiated prokaryotic cells and eukaryotic cells?
a. Huxley
b. Linnaeus
c. Whittaker
d. Dougherty

Answer 1

Hint: Prokaryotes are unicellular organisms that possess a cell wall that surrounds the entire organism and separate it from the outer environment. Eukaryotes are multicellular organisms which are composed of several membrane-bound organelles.

Complete answer:
> Option A: Huxley is known as Darwin’s Bulldog. In the nineteenth-century Huxley promoted Charles Darwin's theory of evolution to promote his theory which is the connection between the development of organisms and their evolutionary histories.

> Option B: Carl Linnaeus is known as The father of modern taxonomy. Linnaeus was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, and physician. He was famous for the naming of organisms by the modern system which is called binomial nomenclature.

> Option C: An American plant ecologist, Robert Harding Whittaker was famous for inventing the five-kingdom taxonomic classification. According to Whittaker's five kingdom classification organisms are classified into five groups, named kingdom Protists, Kingdom Monerans, Kingdom Fungi, Kingdom Plantae, and Kingdom Animals

> Option D: In 1957 Dougherty shows some fundamental differences between prokaryotic cells and eukaryotic cells.

Hence, the correct answer is option (D).

Additional information:
Prokaryotic cells are characterized by:
- Prokaryotic cells lack a true nucleus. Instead of the membrane-bound true nucleus, prokaryotic cells have a nucleoid region within the cytoplasm.
- Various membrane-bound organelles like mitochondria, Golgi body, lysosome, chloroplast are not found in a prokaryote.
- The prokaryotic cell comprises smaller Ribosomes.
Example: bacteria

Eukaryotic cells are characterized by:
- Eukaryotes carry out the true membrane-bound nucleus.
- Organelles like lysosome, mitochondria, Golgi body, chloroplast, etc are found within the eukaryotic cells. These organelles are surrounded by a plasma membrane which allows them to separate from each other within the cytoplasm
- Ribosomes of eukaryotes are relatively larger than the prokaryotic cell.

Note: There are some similarities also found between prokaryotic cells and eukaryotic cells. Both prokaryotic cells and eukaryotic cells comprise DNA as the genetic material, Cytoplasm that is responsible for carrying out the matrix, Plasma membrane which surrounds the cell from the external environment, and the ribosomes that are involved in protein synthesis.