Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Vogel bomb here. From the outside, plants seem pretty different from animals. For instance, plants can't walk around and catch food like we do, they give up oxygen instead of carbon dioxide, and they don't have the same sensory organs that help us get out of the way of a fire or sniff out and hunt down a potential meal. But plants and animals are more similar than they might
seem from the outside. Under a microscope, a plant cell and an animal cell might seem so similar that in some cases you'd really have to know what you're looking at to tell the difference between them. This is because plants and animals both belong to the domain eukaryota, organisms with cells that are basically sealed baggies full of fluid, suspending little factories called organelles, which have different jobs in the cell depending on the needs of the organism. Plants, animals, fungi,
and protests are all eukaryotes. These organisms are made up of one or more cells with a variety of membrane owned organelles, including the nucleus, the big boss organelle that contains all the DNA and instructions for making that particular bear or ring worm, or ficus tree, or fruit fly
or human being. Even though a blueberry bush and a corgi don't seem to have much in common on the spectrum of things, their cells are way more similar to each other than they are to those of bacteria, for example, which are prokaryotes, single celled organisms that are generally smaller than a single eukaryotic cell, that contain only a few types of rudimentary organelles, and that lack a nucleus to hold their DNA. The word eukaryote means true kernel, referring
to that important nucleus. It's kind of a mess inside a prokaryotic cell, whereas eukaryotic cells are highly structured. But at the end of the day, eukaryotes and prokaryotes have more in common with each other than they do with a rock. So there's that. If plants and animals are so similar on a cellular level, why do they seem so different when you take a couple steps back. Well,
it's because plants and animals have different goals. Each of their eukaryotic cells is customized to make them great at being what they are. For instance, it's a plant's job to take carbon dioxide out of the air, which we animals just leave lying around every time we exhale or drive a car, and plants can simply add a little sunlight and water to that CEO two in order to
make literally everything they need to survive. Animals, on the other hand, require oxygen made by plants to breathe, but we can't make our own food like plants do, so we've got to go rustle up our own grub. This requires movement, which made it necessary for animals to evolve all kinds of crazy specialized cell types, tissues, and organs that a plant can't make because they simply don't need them.
Survival is based on getting basic needs met, and the outsourced requirements of an animal far surpass those of plants, even though their cells are constructed similarly, plants and animals have different cellular settings. A really obvious prints is in the outer shell of the cell. In addition to a cell membrane, plants have cell walls made out of tough compounds called cellulose and lignin, which makes them rigid and tough,
useful for keeping trees from collapsing into gelatinous piles. Animal cells, on the other hand, are contained within a thin cell membrane, a flexible container a lot like a semipermeable sandwich bag. It provides nothing in the way of structure, but it can regulate what comes in and out of the cell, and it can keep all the organelles contained within it. Animals have all kinds of fancy organelles that help them form some pretty mind blowing structures like bones, muscles, and nerves.
These organelles are what allow animals to build empires honestly, but one organelle animals don't have is the chloroplast, which allows plans to photosynthesize, or make sunlight into glucose compounds. So any green you see on a plant, the leaf, the stem, and the peel of an unripe banana all comes from the chloroplasts in their cells, turning light into food and try that animals. One other important difference between plant and animal cells can be found in another organelle
called a vacuule. Some animal cells contain vacuoles, but in a plant cell, they're really large and have an important job keeping the plant from wilting. Vacuoles are basically intercellular water balloons that keep the cell plumped up from the inside by creating turgore pressure of pushing the cell membrane against the cell wall, and helping the plant keep its shape. If you've ever seen a pitiful carrot at the bottom
of your crisper drawer, I'll floppy and on appetizing. It's the loss of turgore pressure and its vacules that ultimately landed it in the compost bin. And that's about all that separates you from a plant. Today's episode was written by Jesseline Shields and produced by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works.
For more in this and lots of other highly specialized topics because at our home planet, how stuff Works dot com and for more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or where or you listen to your favorite shows. M