You find a population of strange cells in a sample of pond water. You wish to determine first whether they are eukaryotic or pro
karyotic. You look for a membrane-enclosed nucleus and don't see one, but sometimes the nucleus is hard to spot without staining. What else could you look for to determine which cell type this is?
A prokaryotic cell lacks a membrane defined nucleus and all the membrane-bound organelles. A eukaryotic cell has a membrane-bound nucleus and other membrane-bound organelles such as mitochondria, chloroplasts, endoplasmic reticulum, lysosomes, Golgi apparatus, etc.
To determine if a cell is a prokaryotic or eukaryotic, one can look for the nucleus and the membrane-bound organelles. If the cell has a nucleus and membrane-bound organelles, it is a eukaryotic cell. The absence of these structures makes it a prokaryotic cell.
Mitochondria are made from the process called binary fission. This is the cell division utilized by the prokaryotes. It also has circular DNA that is similar in both size and structure in prokaryotic cells. Mitochondria also has its own DNA different than the DNA found in the nucleus of a cell.
