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How Can You Tell the Difference Between Animal, Bacteria & Plant Cells by Looking at Them

With a microscope, scientists can readily discern the differences between plant cells, animal cells and bacteria. These striking differences are the visible expressions of profound differences between these three types of cells. Both plant and animal cells differ so widely from bacterial cells that plants and animals do not even share a domain with bacteria. These profound differences between cells allow observers to deduce a cell's type via process of elimination.

Things You'll Need

Microscope
Microscope slides

Instructions

- 1
  Look through the microscope's eyepiece at a prepared slide and bring the subject on the slide into focus. Adjust the coarse focus knob first, then adjust the fine focus as needed to show the sample clearly.
- 2
  
  The nuclei in this sample of fish blood mark them as eukaryotic cells.
  
  Note the presence or absence of a membrane-bound nucleus in the cells on the slide. The nucleus, a discrete package of genetic material that biologists refer to as the control center of the cell, separates plant and animal cells from bacterial cells. Scientists term cells without nuclei prokaryotes; organisms with cell nuclei, including plants and animals, are eukaryotes.
- 3
  Examine the outer edges of the cells. Plant cells have distinct, rigid cell walls that animal cells lack; because of their cell walls, plant cells may have a more regular appearance like bricks in a wall or compartments in a honeycomb. The presence of a cell wall eliminates the possibility that the cells had an animal origin.
- 4
  
  This model of a plant cell shows the scale of the cells' vacuoles.
  
  Look for the presence or absence of a large bubble or vacuole in the interior of the cell. Plant cells contain these large hollow spaces to give the cell structure or to store water or nutrients. While animal cells may exhibit vacuoles, the temporary small spaces within animal cells look distinctly different from the massive single spaces within plant cells.
- 5
  
  A plant's green hue indicates the chlorophyll it holds in its chloroplasts.
  
  Search for greenish flecks within the body of the cell; a cell that contains these green membrane-bound bodies is invariably a plant cell. Photosynthesis takes place in these chloroplasts, the organelles that define the living things that make up kingdom Plantae.

Nature