An ill-conceived question

I am not a representative of any committee, if exists, that works upon the genuity of questions in the entrance exams or interviews for PhD admission at IISER-Mohali. Nor I expect neither I will be entertained if I try to correct the questioners on the spot. However, I can be vocal enough on my blog.  Dear PhD aspirants, please beware of following question if asked in the IISER-Mohali's PhD/int-PhD interviews:

Cell size in nature remains constant, but the cell number increases. An example of human and elephant will be projected

The statement proves the popular notion in quantum mechanics, "Everything that can go wrong, will go wrong if you wait long enough". However, I did not need to wait long enough to wait see the wrong. Since I joined my present institution, I see this question popping up in one or the other interview.

Cell size is not a constant property of living beings.  In eukaryotes only, it varies by 300,000 fold. Throughout biology cell-size/shape matters. It is under adaptive selection. Think of a blood cell that has to pass through thin capillaries and think of a axon that spans through your spine. Think of a oocyte and think of a sperm.  Think of xylem, think of phloem. Think of stomatal guard cells, think of root hair cells. Think of collenchyma, think of sclerenchyma.  One can argue that comparison between same cell-types in different species should be made. Fair enough, think about cardiomyocytes of human and mice? And hold on, I have not been extreme in my examples, else I could cite the comaprison of amoeboid to a virus cell.  Cells are different in size and shape for the obvious reason, perhaps not that obvious to questioners, this thing called adaptive selection in evolution. Sounds familiar?

But then why the question is being asked and what answer are the questioners looking for? I do not frankly know the correct answer to "why", may be a typical case of verbal diarrhea or an ignorance of utterly arrogant nature. The answer they are looking for is the surface area to volume ratio of the cells. If the volume increases, surface area increases rather slowly and therefore transport rate, and hence the growth rate, will be compromised. However, the nature had other plans.  The observed decline in growth rate is very very shallow, suggesting that  either the transport rate is not the limiting factor or it is compensated by higher production of transporters and channels.

If at all, you are looking for a cellular property which largely remains constant, it is "karyoplasmic ratio" and again not for the reasons they cite. It is to keep the balance between nuclear and cytoplasmic processes like transcription and translation rates. The news for the questioners is that the noncoding DNA seemingly expanded or contracted in genomes to keep the karyoplasmic ratio constant!