What determines size of a cell?

[Tiny_Explorer]

What factor determines size of cell ? From Ostrich egg to mycoplasma ? Is the genes ?

 

[berkeman]

Can you post links to the reading you have been doing to try to answer your question? Thanks.

 

[Tiny_Explorer]

Can you post links to the reading you have been doing to try to answer your question? Thanks.

It was a Standard 11 Biology Textbook , it says "Cells differ greatly in size, shape and activities. For example,Mycoplasmas, the smallest cells are only 0.3 µm in length while bacteria could be 3 to 5 µm. The largest isolated single cell is the egg of an ostrich .Among multicellular organisms, human red blood cells are about 7.0 µm in diameter. Nerve cells are some of the longest cells. Cells also vary greatly in their shape. They may be disc-like, polygonal, columnar, cuboid, thread like, or even irregular. The shape of the cell may vary with the function they perform." (NCERT - Class 11 Biology Textbook - Chapter 8 - Cell : The Unit of Life, page no.88-89)

 

[BillTre]

There are probably many many different overlapping controls on cells size. The differences in cell size your question refers to are differences among different cell types. Their size has been selected for whatever purpose was adaptive to the organisms. There are probably a lot of different control mechanisms for this.
There are other controls that offset all of these differences.

• A difference in DNA content of cells is well known to control cell size. If an animal's DNA content is reduced by 50% (such as in a haploid in stead of a diploid cell), then the cells volume is reduced. This effects at least most cell types in a body. Doubling DNA content increases the cell size.
• Rapidly dividing cells early in development (blastomeres) have to wait for their DNA to double before they divide. There are many possible signals for this besides the existence of the amount of DNA.
• There is another kind of cell size control. Minute mutations of Drosophila reduce protein production because they are mutations in tRNAs that supply amino acids to the translation process that makes new proteins. This reduces the size of the flies as well as the size of their cells. there are lots of minute mutations because there are lots of tRNA genes.

A good college level cell biology book should have a lot info on this and lots of references.