Re: Is there a cell that is abou the size of a basketball, and what is it call?

Greg,

Thanks for writing MadSci Network. I think the following information will shed some light on your question. Living organisms can be unicellular or multicellular. Bacteria and yeast are unicellular organisms; all the information and processes needed to live are in a single cell. Humans and other animals are multicellular, meaning that we need organized systems of cells to carry out the functions of our bodies.

The largest single cell which is part of another organism is an unfertilized ostrich egg, or ovum. However, the size of an ostrich ovum does not approach that of a basketball.

Nerve cells do not have the shapes of basketballs, but long skinny projections from the center of the cell, called axons, can extend over a meter in humans which is certainly longer than the diameter of any basketball I've met!

I'm including an archived response from MadSci Network that gives details about the sizes of large unicellular organisms which will further help you answer your question.

"I assume from your post that you are referring to Thiomargarita namibiensis , a massive sulfur-bacterium that lives in the oceanic silt off the coast of Namibia (Southwestern Africa). These bacteria attain their size (up to 0.8 mm) by storing excess nitrates in a huge vacuole that occupies most of the cell - without this vacuole, the bacterium is not much larger than a normal cell. While this is the largest bacterium yet discovered, it is far from the largest unicellular organism. That prize goes to the plasmodial slime molds, members of the eukaryotic Kingdom Protista. The best studied slime mold, Physarum polycephalum, grow to about 20 cm across, and is a single cytoplasm with millions of nuclei throughout its "body" (called a "Coenocyte"). These molds have given scientists unique insights into several intracellular processes. One of its cousins, Fuligo septica, created a scare it Dallas, Texas in 1973, when a single organism nearly a meter across convinced locals that an alien invasion was underway. Furthermore, depending on how strictly one adheres to the definition of cellularity, the largest organism in the world is a 10,000 Kg fungus, Armillaria bulbosa, from Michigan, which has septa throughout its branches (hyphae) that look cellular, although the cytoplasm is continuous throughout the organism."

Good luck!
-Tinsley