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Prokaryotic cells are one of the most basic kinds of cells that are out there in Biology. They are
the cells of bacteria, so let¶s take a look at what makes up the key characteristics of a prokaryote.

Now their name tells you one of their most important things; pro means before kary means
nucleus, so this tells you that this is what cells that evolved before the nucleus came about look
like, so they do not possess internal organelles inside their cells that have double membranes
around them like the nucleus or the mitochondria or the chloroplast. Similarly unlike Eukaryotes
they only have one chlorop- one chromosome in them and it¶s actually a circular molecule now
it¶s called ³naked´ not because it¶s going around there flashing the other organelles. It is because
it¶s because it does not have a lot of proteins wrapped around it to help organize it, since they
only have a little bit of DNA compared to a Eukaryotes so there¶s no need for that kind of
organization.

Lastly they have their own special kind of ribosomes that are different from the Eukaryotic star
ribosomes that your cells have or plant cells or fungi, so let¶s take a look at the structure of a
Prokaryotic or bacterial cell.

Now these labels here are little bit small for you to see but they give you the right basic idea.
This is a kind of bacteria here and you could see here is the DNA all kind of floating around
inside the cytoplasm of the cell. Now they will have a cell membrane but that is often wrapped in
an external wall sometimes called a capsule or a cell wall. Now this can be made out of various
many various kinds of materials whether it¶s bacteria glycen or sorry bacteria peptide or glycen
or other kind of molecules. You¶ll see the ribosomes those are the small little things floating
around and then they may have a few other small organelles like some small little vacuoles or
vesicles but that¶s pretty much it, the one thing that is a little bit different on the outside is they
have flagella much like our cells do but our cells do this kind of motion called undulation.
Bacterial cells their fungi rotate like a bored motor to make them go and that¶s a Prokaryotic cell.


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Eukaryotic cells are one of the two major kinds of cells in the world of Biology. Now their name
actually gives you their key characteristic cause "Eu" means true or good, "kary" means nucleus
and that ties into the basic characteristic for all eukaryotic cells is that they have an organelle
within the cell itself that has its own membrane and that is the nucleus. Now most eukaryotic
cells also have mitochondria and those that can do photosynthesis will have the membrane bound
organelle called the chloroplast.
Now another thing that generally all the eukaryotes have is that they hav4 many DNA molecules
or chromosomes and because they have so much DNA in order to fit into the small space inside
of the nucleus, they have to wrap those DNA molecules around specialized proteins called
histones and that means that a DNA molecule which in eukaryote is linear has to be wrapped or
bound on these histone proteins.

Lastly they have their own special kind of ribosomes that different from the prokaryotes and
generally you could just call them eukaryotic style ribosomes. Now the two most common kinds
of eukaryotic cells are the animal cells and the plant cells.

Now I know in this diagram the labels are kind of hard kind of small and hard to see but let¶s
focus in on some the key things that you¶ll see in an animal cell. You¶ll see it has the membrane
around it with the nucleus that has you can see its own membrane wrapped around it. The other
key eukaryotic organelle here is the mitochondria, now animal cells differ from plant cells in that
they also have these things here, these two barrel shaped things that are 90 degrees to each other,
those are called centrioles and a common question on a Biology test is to try to identify
organelles that are unique to animal cells and the answer would be centrioles. Now I¶m going to
let you know one of the trick questions. The trick question is they'll also include an option where
you can choose centrioles and mitochondria because most kids know that plants do
photosynthesis so of course they could be using chloroplast and animal cells break down sugar
from photosynthesis in order to get the energy and that¶s done by the mitochondria, so a lot of
kids will think plants have chloroplast only animal cells have mitochondria and that¶s not true.

If we take a look at this plant cell you can see it has mitochondria why? Because just like you, it
wants to get the energy that¶s in the sugar that came from photosynthesis. Now photosynthesis is
done by that cell there oh! Sorry that organelle there called the chloroplast and you can see it has
its own double membrane around it just like the mitochondria has two membranes in and out of
it. Now something else that makes a plant cell different from an animal cell is that plant cells
have this large thick cell wall wrapped around them to give them the structure and stability that
animal cells don¶t need remember animal cells are all about moving so they don¶t need a plant
cell wall around them cause that would keep them boxed in and what do we use for structure and
stability? Our own skeleton so whether you¶re insect and you wear your skeleton on the outside
or you¶re jelly fish and you use water that¶s on the inside of you as a hydrostatic skeleton. We
have our own structural support built in to the entire body we don¶t need every cell to have its
own skeleton.

Another characteristic you¶ll commonly see in plant cells is that they¶ll have this large vacuole
and that¶s usually filled up with water and that¶s how they are able to get all filled and it¶s called
turgid and if the water in the water vacuole starts to leak out that¶s when a plant cell will start to
wilt and the entire plant will start to deflate and wilt as well. That¶s eukaryotic cells.