Similarity and difference between animal and vegetable cell

The cell is the morphological and functional unit of every living beingwith the ability to reproduce, grow, metabolize, relate to other cells and capture signals from the extracellular medium or program their own death. There are various types of cells.

A living being can have only one cell and be unicellular, as is the case of bacteria, or possess multiple cells and be multicellular, such as the case of animals and vegetables. Know more about this topic in this other ecology article about what are the 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 the signs that come from the external environment, so that an organism relates to its external environment.

Cells are also capable of regulating its growth before the signals you receive and program your own cell death before the accumulation of mutations or failures in its operation. An example of the importance of these responses is cancer, when the cell begins to get out of control due to its inability to stay coordinated with its environment and schedule their death.

But no study on the cell would have been possible without technological development and innovation in the optical and electronic field that allowed the development of microscopes to observe structures of the size of only a nanometer.

• Importance: One of the main similarities or similarities between these two types of cells is that they are basic morphological and functional units.
• Typology: Both the plant and animal cell are eukaryotic cells. Animal and plant eukaryotic cells, unlike prokaryotic cells (bacteria and arches), have an organized cell core with a cover that protects them, cell organelles, cytoskeleton (cell skeleton) and an organized genome and promosomes, among other things.
• Composition: They are surrounded by a semipermeable plasma membrane that delimits the cytoplasm.
• Size: oscillates between 10 and 100 µm. Animal cells can reach 30 µm, while vegetables, 100 µm a micra is a thousandth of a millimeter). Given its small size, the plant and animal cell can be observed with the naked eye and the help of microscopes is required.

This image of the animal and plant cell will be very useful as a scheme. Here you can see the main parts of the plant and animal cellso you can easily see which are similarities and differences between animal and plant cells.

Here you can discover more about the difference between eukaryotic and prokaryotic cell.

• Plasma membrane: One of the main differences between animal and plant cells is that 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 possess this cell wall but they have the plasma membrane. Some of the components of the plant cell wall have multiple commercial and industrial applications.
• Chloroplasts: Another difference between animal and vegetable cell is that the latter 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 have chloroplasts. Learn more about what is photosynthesis, its process and importance with this other post of ecology.
• Nutrition: 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.
• Energy: The difference between animal and vegetable cell according to its method to obtain energy. In photosynthesis, the plant cell is able to transform solar or luminous energy into chemical energy. In animal cells, energy is provided by mitochondria.
• Vacuolas size: Plant cells have their cytoplasm occupied by large vacuoles in 90% of their space, even sometimes as a single large vacuola. These vacuoles serve to store metabolism products and eliminate waste products. While animal cells have vacuoles, but small and that do not occupy so much space.
• Centering: Animal cells have an organelle called centers (in charge of separation of chromosomes to divide them between daughter cells), while plant cells, no.
• Shape: To finish the differences between animal and plant cell, it is worth mentioning that plant cells usually have a prismatic shape while animal cells can have different shapes.

In addition, as a summary, in this table or comparative chart with differences between animal and plant cells You can see it in a simple way. We also recommend that, so that you can expand this information in a practical way, read this other ecology article about the similarities and differences between plants and animals.

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