Question

You have discovered a new microorganism and would like to classify it as a eukaryote or a prokaryote. To investigate this question you prepare a slide with a simple stain and view it with a light microscope with a 40X objective lens and 10X ocular lens. You also prepare a control slide using Saccharomyces cerevisiae (a unicellular eukaryote). You can see the cells on your control slide, but you don't see cells when you look at your unknown microorganism. What can you conclude from this experiment?
A) The experiment failed to visualize the organism because the stain killed it.
B) Your new unknown microorganism is probably a virus.
C) The cells of the new unknown microorganism may be too small to see with the objective and ocular lenses you used.
D) The new unknown microorganism is probably an archaeon.

Answer 1

Answer:

C) The cells of the new unknown microorganism may be too small to see with the objective and ocular lenses you used.

Explanation:

A microscope can visualize the microbes of various size only when the suitable lens with the required resolving and magnification powers are used. In the given experiment, control slides were observed under the microscope but the cells of the unknown organism were not visible. This means that the sample contained the microbial cells of a very small size that could not be seen with 40X and 10X lenses. The use of lenses with more magnification power would have helped here.