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As more techniques are developed in Cell Biology, we learn more about the great mysteries and secrets that cells hold. Knowing plant and animal cells is very important to understand the functioning of living beings, understand the diseases they suffer, develop therapeutic techniques against these diseases or obtain products of commercial interest.
It is also important to understand the similarity and difference between animal and plant cell. In this Green Ecologist article we explain them easily and with diagrams and tables that help you better understand and study it.
What is a cell
There are various Cell types, but what are they to begin with? The cell is the morphological and functional unit of every living being, with the ability to reproduce, grow, metabolize, interact with other cells and capture signals from the extracellular environment or program its own death. A living being can have a single cell and be unicellular, as is the case of bacteria, or have multiple cells and be multicellular, as is the case with animals and vegetables. Learn more about this topic in this other Green Ecologist article on What are unicellular and multicellular living beings with examples.
In the multicellular organismsCells are not individual compartments but are capable of communicating with each other through signals to coordinate and respond to signals that come from the external environment, so that an organism interacts with its external environment. Cells are also capable of regulating their growth due to the signals they receive and of programming their own cell death due to the accumulation of mutations or malfunctions. An example of the importance of these responses is cancer, when the cell begins to spiral out of control due to its inability to stay coordinated with its environment and to program its death.
But no study on the cell would have been possible without the technological development and innovation in the optical and electronic field that allowed the development of microscopes to observe structures as small as one nanometer.
Similarities between animal and plant cells
Thus, after knowing what a cell is, we explain that the similarities between plant and animal cells are:
- One of the main similarities or similarities between these two types of cells is that they are the basic morphological and functional units.
- Both plant and animal cells are eukaryotic cells. Eukaryotic animal and plant cells, unlike prokaryotic cells (bacteria and archaea), have an organized cell nucleus with a covering that protects them, cell organelles, cytoskeleton (cell skeleton) and a genome organized and packed in chromosomes, among others. things. Here you can discover more about the Difference between eukaryotic and prokaryotic cell.
- They are surrounded by a semipermeable plasma membrane that delimits the cytoplasm.
- Size ranging from 10 to 100 µm. Animal cells can reach 30 µm, while plant cells, 100 µm a micron is one thousandth of a millimeter).
- Given their small size, they cannot be seen with the naked eye and require the help of microscopes.
Is picture of animal cell and plant cell It will be very useful as an outline. Here you can see the main parts of the animal and plant cells, so you can easily see those that are similar and those that are different.
Differences between animal and plant cells
Now that we have mentioned the similarities, we detail that the differences that we can find between plant and animal cells are:
- Plant cells have a cell wall outside the plasma membrane. This wall gives them great rigidity and is composed of cellulose, lignin, among other components. Animal cells do not have this cell wall. Some of the components of the plant cell wall have multiple commercial and industrial applications.
- The plant cell has chloroplasts inside. These chloroplasts contain pigments such as chlorophyll or carotene and allow the process of photosynthesis. Many of these pigments have commercial or industrial applications. Animal cells do not possess chloroplasts. Learn more about what photosynthesis is, its process and importance with this other post from Green Ecologist.
- Plant cells have the ability to produce their own food from inorganic components through the phenomenon of photosynthesis, which is called autotrophic nutrition.
- Animal cells do not have the ability to produce their own food from inorganic components, which is called heterotrophic nutrition.
- In photosynthesis, the plant cell is capable of transforming solar or light energy into chemical energy.
- In animal cells, energy is provided by the mitochondria.
- Plant cells have their cytoplasm occupied by large vacuoles in 90% of their space, sometimes even as a single large vacuole. These vacuoles serve to store metabolic products and to eliminate waste products. Whereas animal cells have vacuoles, but they are small and do not take up as much space.
- Animal cells have an organelle called the centrosome (responsible for the separation of chromosomes to divide them between daughter cells), while plant cells do not.
- Plant cells usually have a prismatic shape while animal cells can have different shapes.
Also, by way of summary, in this table or comparative table of differences between an animal cell and a plant cell you can see it in a simple way. We also recommend that, so that you can expand this information in a practical way, you read this other article by Green Ecologist about the Similarities and differences between plants and animals. And, finally, below the table you can see a video from our YouTube channel with a summary on this topic of animal cells and plant cells.
If you want to read more articles similar to Similarity and difference between animal and plant cells, we recommend that you enter our Biology category.
