Question

if you were given a slide containing living cells of an unknown organism .how would you identify the cells as either plant or animal?

Answer 1

Answer:

Plant cell and animal cell are eukaryotic cells that means they have membrane-bound organelle which have specialized functions. Plant cells are different from animal cells and the difference can be found if we see the plant and animal cells under the microscope.

Under the microscope, the cells having a cell wall outside the cell membrane are the plant cells and the cells not having the cell wall are animal cells. Plants and animal cells can also be recognized by some organelle like chloroplast is the organelle present in plant cells not in animal cells.

Animal cells have lysosomes which are rounded in shape found in animal cells, not in plant cell which can be seen under the microscope. A large vacuole can be seen in the center of the plant cell under a microscope which is not present in animal cells.

Therefore plant and animal cells can be distinguished under the microscope by presence and absence of some structure like cell wall, chloroplast, lysosome, vacuole.  

Answer 2

Only plant cells contain a cell wall and chloroplasts, so if the cell contains those organelles, then you can identify it as a plant cell. If the cell does not contain those two organelles, it is an animal cell