Final answer:
Prokaryotic cells typically have three release factors involved in protein synthesis termination, while eukaryotic cells have multiple release factors due to their complex translational machinery. The difference reflects the greater complexity of eukaryotic cells compared to prokaryotes, including genomic size and cell division processes.
Step-by-step explanation:
The number of release factors in prokaryotic and eukaryotic organisms differs. In prokaryotic cells, there are typically three release factors involved in the termination of protein synthesis. However, in eukaryotic cells, there is a greater variety, with multiple release factors corresponding to different tasks and stages of gene expression due to the complexity of the eukaryotic translational machinery. This complexity is reflective of the difference in organizational and genomic structure between eukaryotes and prokaryotes, where eukaryotic genomes are much larger and have multiple origins of replication, in contrast to the single circular DNA chromosome of bacteria. Additionally, eukaryotic cells go through a more complex process of cell division involving mitosis and cytokinesis, which requires a different set of cellular machinery and proteins compared to prokaryotic cell division.