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Biology
Cells, Genes & Evolution
From the inside of a cell to the logic of natural selection.
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What is generally considered the basic unit of life?
Inside the Living Cell
A cell is not a bag of fluid. It is a crowded workshop with departments, delivery routes and a waste disposal system, and this quiz walks through the main ones.
About this topic
The parts of a cell were named long before anyone knew what they did. Nineteenth-century microscopists could see shapes in stained tissue and gave them descriptive labels, so we ended up with a Golgi apparatus named after the man who spotted it and an endoplasmic reticulum named for looking like a net. The functions were worked out much later, mostly after the electron microscope arrived in the 1930s. What the modern picture shows is division of labour. Proteins are built in one place, modified in another, shipped in bubbles to a third, and broken up somewhere else entirely when they wear out. These ten questions cover the departments that matter most and the molecules that keep the whole thing running.
Questions & answers
Inside the Living Cell: all 10 questions and answers
Every question in this quiz is listed below with its correct answer and the reasoning behind it. Play first if you would rather not see the answers — or read through as a study sheet.
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1Which cell structure assembles proteins from amino acids?
- A The Golgi apparatus
- B The lysosome
- C The vacuole
- D The ribosome Correct
Answer: D. The ribosome
Why: Ribosomes read messenger RNA and link amino acids into a chain in the order the message specifies. They are the one piece of machinery found in every known cell, including bacteria.
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2What is the main job of the Golgi apparatus?
- A Breaking glucose down to release energy
- B Storing water and dissolved minerals
- C Modifying and packaging proteins for delivery Correct
- D Copying DNA before the cell divides
Answer: C. Modifying and packaging proteins for delivery
Why: The Golgi receives proteins from the endoplasmic reticulum, adds finishing touches such as sugar groups, then sorts them into vesicles for dispatch. Camillo Golgi described it in 1898 and many biologists spent the next fifty years insisting it was a staining artefact.
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3Which material makes a plant cell wall rigid?
- A Collagen
- B Cellulose Correct
- C Chitin
- D Keratin
Answer: B. Cellulose
Why: Cellulose is a long chain of glucose units laid down in criss-crossing fibres, which is why wood holds its shape. Chitin does the same structural job in fungal walls and insect exoskeletons.
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4What do lysosomes mainly do?
- A Digest worn-out cell parts and waste Correct
- B Store the cell's genetic material
- C Build sugars using sunlight
- D Generate the cell's electrical charge
Answer: A. Digest worn-out cell parts and waste
Why: Lysosomes hold digestive enzymes that dismantle damaged organelles and material brought in from outside. Their interior is kept at around pH 5, acidic enough that a leak does little harm because the enzymes stop working in the neutral cytoplasm.
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5The cell membrane is built mainly from which type of molecule?
- A Nucleic acids
- B Polysaccharides
- C Amino acids
- D Phospholipids Correct
Answer: D. Phospholipids
Why: Each phospholipid has a water-attracting head and two water-repelling tails, so in water they arrange themselves into a double layer without any help. Proteins float in that layer and handle almost all traffic across it.
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6What does the term osmosis describe?
- A A cell actively pumping ions against a gradient
- B Gases exchanging across a moist surface
- C Water moving across a membrane towards the more concentrated solution Correct
- D Salt crystals dissolving evenly through a liquid
Answer: C. Water moving across a membrane towards the more concentrated solution
Why: Water crosses the membrane in both directions but flows on balance towards the saltier side until the concentrations even out. It is why a plant wilts in dry soil and why a red blood cell placed in pure water swells until it bursts.
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7Which molecule do cells use as their main short-term energy currency?
- A Cholesterol
- B ATP Correct
- C Glucose
- D Haemoglobin
Answer: B. ATP
Why: Adenosine triphosphate releases usable energy when one phosphate group is snapped off, and the cell immediately recycles the product. An adult turns over roughly their own body weight in ATP over the course of a day.
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8What is the defining feature of a prokaryotic cell?
- A It has no nucleus or membrane-bound organelles Correct
- B It has no genetic material of its own
- C It cannot reproduce without a host
- D It has no outer membrane
Answer: A. It has no nucleus or membrane-bound organelles
Why: Prokaryotes keep their DNA loose in the cytoplasm in a region called the nucleoid rather than sealed inside a nucleus. The split between prokaryotes and eukaryotes is the deepest structural divide in the living world.
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9Who first used the word "cell" for the units he saw under a microscope?
- A Antonie van Leeuwenhoek
- B Louis Pasteur
- C Theodor Schwann
- D Robert Hooke Correct
Answer: D. Robert Hooke
Why: Hooke published his drawings of thin slices of cork in Micrographia in 1665, naming the compartments after the small rooms of a monastery. What he was actually looking at were the empty walls of long-dead cells.
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10What does the cytoskeleton do?
- A Copies the genome ready for division
- B Stores fat for use between meals
- C Gives the cell its shape and moves cargo around inside it Correct
- D Carries oxygen into the cell from the blood
Answer: C. Gives the cell its shape and moves cargo around inside it
Why: It is a network of protein filaments that acts as scaffolding and as rails, with motor proteins walking along them dragging vesicles from one part of the cell to another. The same filaments pull chromosomes apart when the cell divides.
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