With a partner consider the following questions and try to answer them. Then quickly scan the text to check your answers.

1. What is a cell?

2. Who discovered cells?

3. Do plant cells differ from animal cells?

■ Read the given text and make your essential assignments:

Cells were discovered in 1665 by the English scientist and inventor Robert Hooke. Hooke designed his own compound light microscope to observe structures too small to be seen with the naked eye. Among the first structures he examined was a thin piece of cork (the outer surface of bark from a tree). Hooke described the cork as being made of hundreds of little boxes, giving it the appearance of a honeycomb. He called these little boxes cells. It soon became clear that virtually all living things are made of cells, and that these cells have certain features in common.

The cell theory

The concept that cells are the basic units of life became embodied in a theory called the cell theory, which embraces the following main ideas:

·cells form the building blocks of living organisms

· cells arise only by the division of existing cells

· cells contain inherited information which controls their activities

· the cell is the functioning unit of life; metabolism (the chemical reactions of life) takes place in cells

· given suitable conditions, cells are capable of independent existence.