A three foot cell?
In one of my fictitious planets, there are large cells that reside in the ocean and are 3 feet (almost 1 metre) in diameter. The cells themselves are aggregates of many amoeboid cells, have only one cell membrane, but many nuclei.
My question is: is such a large size for a single celled organism possible? If not, what modifications might I need to make to make it more plausible?
Egg yolks are single cells, and ostrich eggs are pretty big. There was a news story about giant fossilized dinosaur egg …
8y ago
Maybe. Giant cells actually exist. They occur when many cells fuse together, often to fight an infection. They typicall …
8y ago
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/36277. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
2 answers
You are accessing this answer with a direct link, so it's being shown above all other answers regardless of its score. You can return to the normal view.
Egg yolks are single cells, and ostrich eggs are pretty big.
There was a news story about giant fossilized dinosaur eggs found in Chechnya a few years back which where up to 3 feet wide. There is some doubt whether they were really eggs (especially since the largest verified dino egg is football sized*), and no one is guessing what laid them if they are actually eggs, but it is interesting.
So giant cells aren't unheard of here on earth. I don't see any reason why one couldn't develop in an alien sea if conditions were right.
* I don't know if they are talking about American gridiron football or European soccer football, but since it was found in France...
0 comment threads
Maybe.
Giant cells actually exist. They occur when many cells fuse together, often to fight an infection. They typically reach a maximum size of 120 micrometers - nowhere near your size - but I suggest that it might be possible in an extreme case.
Potential reasons for the formation of a giant cell of bacteria:
- A disease that threatens all bacteria that live on their own.
- Cells fuse together in part of an embryo in response to something, and when the embryo is born, part of it is fused together.
These are pretty far-fetched, but I wouldn't write them off entirely as impossible.
0 comment threads
0 comment threads