How Should Unknown Organisms Be Classified Lab Report

How Should the Unknown Organism Be Classified?

Introduction:

In science taxonomy is used to classify different organisms into the hierarchy of taxonomy, this helps separate organisms by species, genus, family, class, phylum, kingdoms and domains and allows for comparing and contrasting of different organisms. The question presented to our group was "How should the unknown organism be classified?". With this question we were presented three known cells and one unknown cell; the known cells were that of cheek cells (taken from group member, animal cell), elodea leaf (plant cell) and a euglena (protist cell). The three known cells were then looked under a microscope at varying degrees of magnification to determine certain traits of each cell.

1. We first collected the samples of the three known cells and the unknown and labeled a piece of paper to put under them so we didn't confuse them. We also had to take a cheek cell sample, requiring one member to take a tooth pick and swab it against the cheek with some pressure for a few seconds as to make sure a sufficient amount of the cheek cells was obtained.

2. Once the cheek cell and other cells were collected we put two of the known cells and the unknown cell on the microscope slide and placed a slide cover on by dropping it from a 45-degree angle and making sure no air bubbles were present.

3. With the cheek cell we had to put a drop of methylene blue on top of the smeared sample on the slide we collected, so the animal cell nucleus would be more visible under the microscope and then put the slide on again starting at a 45-degree

We then observed each cell one by one under the microscope at x4 magnification. We wrote down characteristics of the cells we saw; not much was able to be determined except for basic structure i.e. cell wall, no cell wall, or cell membrane and was it able to move at all.

5. After the x4 we then looked at the three known cells under x10 this allowed us to see more organelles and defined structure of the cell, including the nucleus and some other organelles. The characteristics of the three cells were then recorded.

6. We then looked at the three cells under the highest magnification of x40 this allowed a clear picture of its structure, organelles and shape to fully be determined to compare to the unknown cell.

7. We then took the unknown cell and observed it x4, x10, x40 to determine its characteristics of shape, mobility, structure, organelles and color. We did the unknown last as to have an understanding of what the different cells looked like under a microscope to better help us determine the classification of the unknown cell.

8. After all of the characteristics were recorded we then looked at all of the slides again and began ruling out slides of the known cells that didn't appear to be similar. We narrowed it down between a protist and animal cell. We then compared the known and unknown cells under microscopes and looked further for more