Question

Compare and contrast a few aspects of animal and plant cells. You can focus on intra- and extracellular structures they share or don't share, but also be sure to describe processes they both utilize or don't both utilize. Some things to consider: How they obtain 'food' (what is their organic carbon source?) What structures do they share that prokaryotes lack? What do they share that all living cells also share? Do they use CO2, and/or O2 in any processes?

Answer 1

Answer and explanation:

Although they share some similarities because they are both eukaryotes, plant cells and animal cells are quite different from each other, which is logical since they have distinct lives.

For example, animal cells and plant cells both have a cell membrane, but only the plant cells have a cell wall - which is thick and resistant, and this makes sense because they are more exposed to mechanical and osmotic stress.

Since animals can move towards sources of water but plants cannot, there's also a way in which plants store water in the cells: vacuoles. Animal cells have vacuoles as well although they are much smaller than the single huge vacuole that plant cells have.

All living organisms need the energy to sustain different cellular processes. The organelle in charge of the chemical reactions behind the obtention of energy is the mitochondria, which is present in all cells, but the mitochondrion needs a specific substrate: glucose. Glucose is obtained in diverse ways: animals move and find food that contains glucose in it, while plants produce their own glucose with a specific process called photosynthesis, for which they need an organelle called chloroplast, which animals do not have. In order to transform the glucose into energy, the mitochondria end up generating CO2, which animals expel from their bodies by exhaling. This CO2, now in the air, is used by plant cells as a substrate in photosynthesis (which needs sunlight as well) to produce glucose and also O2, that will be inhaled by animals and used by their tissues.

All living organisms have one thing in common: they possess DNA. DNA contains all of the genetic information of an organism, and it is present in almost every cell of that organism -if it happens to be a multicellular being-. While prokaryotes have their DNA condensed into a single circular chromosome, eukaryotes like plants and animals, have their DNA form many linear chromosomes (quantity varies according to the species) and these chromosomes are inside a very specialized organelle: the nucleus, which prokaryotes do not have.