He named them cells because of the box like structure of the cells reminded him of the small cells, or rooms that monks inhabited. 1.7K views. ·.
Robert Hooke is a Englishman who is known for naming cells. He cut thin slices of cork and looked through it using a microscope. When Robert Hooke looked through a microscope, he saw cells. He named them cells because of the box like structure of the cells reminded him of the small cells, or rooms that monks inhabited.
To take this logic further, cells that stop growing after differentiation could be called son cells , since they are unable to grow and divide further. Infact by this logic brain cells would be son cells- something that might incense more people and generate more questions of this kind in future!
To be stricter about the nomenclature we might just call them offspring cells but daughter cells are an understood, accepted, scientifically used term to generally describe cells generated after division. I wouldn’t mind discussions on semantics in biology but I don’t believe this one goes any deeper. Related Answer.
You see, the cell membrane is selectively permeable—meaning that it allows certain molecules to move between surfaces. Embedded within the cell membranes are the integral proteins (channel proteins on the picture) that have a plethora of functions! One of them is to transport molecules from/to outside the cell (ECF) to/from inside the cell (ICF).
And that, definitionally, makes the cell the basic structural unit of life (on earth), in the same way that the atom is basic structural unit for an element (and the molecule the same for a compound) because that is the smallest unit of the substance that still retains all the properties of the substance.
In particular RNA was the first molecule capable of trasmitting information and also provided with an enzimatic activity: this permitted to form macromolecular complex packed with information and enzimatic activity, so it was possible to build structural molecular conplexes using that information.