Question

Compare and contrast eukaryotic cells with prokaryotic cells. Which type of cell might have been the first one to evolve and explain why this may have been the first.

Answer 1

Eukaryotic cells and prokaryotic cells contain a cytoplasm and ribosomes. Eukaryotic cells have organelles and a nucleus.

Prokaryotic cells were most likely to evolve first because of the simple structure.

Answer 2

Answer:

Prokaryotic cells are single-celled organisms that lack membrane-bound organelles and eukaryotic cells contain membrane-bound organelles.  

Prokaryotic cell lack nucleus and its genetic material is circular in form which is present in its cytoplasm while eukaryotic cell has a membrane-bound nucleus which contains linear DNA.

Prokaryotic cells might have been the first ones to evolve because prokaryotic cell is simple in organization while eukaryotic cell are more complex.  

Eukaryotic cells contain some organelle like mitochondria and chloroplast which resembles the prokaryotic cell because both have linear DNA and 70s ribosome.  

So it supports endosymbiotic theory which says that a large prokaryotic cell engulfs a small prokaryotic cell and both remained in symbiotic association with each other and evolved to form eukaryotic cells.