Question

What is the storehouse of the cell? Why is it called so?

Answer 1

Hint: Storehouse is the place where all the waste and useful products are stored in the cell. They are present even in the cell where the main products are stored that is utilized whenever it is required up by the body. They are one of the major components of the cell found mainly in the cytoplasm.

Complete answer:
Anton Van Leeuwenhoek was the first to see and describe a live cell. All organisms are composed of cells. Some are composed of a single cell and are called unicellular organisms while others, like us, composed of many cells, are called multicellular organisms. The cell is composed of many cells organelles such as mitochondria, endoplasmic reticulum, Golgi bodies, lysosomes, vacuole etc.

The vacuole is the membrane-bound space found in the cytoplasm. It contains water, sap, excretory products and other materials not useful for the cell. The vacuole can occupy up to 90 percent of the volume of the cell. In plants, the tonoplast facilitates the transport of a number of ions, and other material against the concentration gradient into the vacuole, hence their concentration is significantly higher in the vacuole than in the cytoplasm.

In some animals like, amoeba contractile vacuole is important for excretion. In many cells, as in protists, food vacuoles are formed by engulfing the food particles. Their main function is to get rid of harmful toxins or to clear the extracellular space of those harmful toxins by bringing them into the cell. They are formed by the fusion of multiple membrane vesicles and are most effective in just large forms of
them. These organelles do not have any basic shape or size, they fit and mould themselves according to the requirements of the cell.

Thus a vacuole is called the storehouse of the cell because they store water, mineral salts, nutrients as well as waste products.

Note: These vacuoles were first observed by Spallanzani in 1776 in protozoa. They were mistaken as respiratory organs. Dujardin named these organelles “stars"as vacuole. In late 1842, they were used as a term for the plant cell by Schleiden to distinguish the structure with cell sap from the rest of the protoplasm.