You are working in a microbiology lab that has identified a number of unique mic

Question

You are working in a microbiology lab that has identified a number of unique microorganisms from the arctic ice shield. Your job in the lab is to determine if the organisms are eukaryotic or prokaryotic. You grow two cultures of the unknown organisms, one is prokaryotic and the other is eukaryotic. You then isolate the phospholipids from 23 mg of cells from each culture and obtain the following results.

culture A          148 mg of phospholipid

culture B          15 mg of phospholipid

Which culture most likely contains eukaryotic cells and which culture most likely contains prokaryotic cells? Why?  

Explanation / Answer

Phospholipids are the major constituents of prokaryotic microorganisms’ cell wall. The eukaryotic microorganisms which have cell walls are algae and fungi and these cell walls are made of majorly cellulose or chitin. So the difference is occurred is culture A and B. the culture A is prokaryotic microorganisms’ culture while culture B is eukaryotic microorganisms’ culture.

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