in today's video we're going to cover two really important Concepts first we're going to cover what specialized cells are and secondly we're going to cover how they become specialized through the process of differentiation now if we consider any complex organism whether it's an animal like a human or a plant like this P plant they're made up of loads of different types of cells we call these different types of cells specialized cells and in the case of animals examples include sperm cells muscle cells nerve cells and many many more in fact there are probably around 200 types of specialized cells in humans meanwhile examples in plants include root hair cells FL cells and xylm cells but again there are loads more to help us understand what it means to be a specialized cell let's take a closer look at a sperm cell the role of a sperm cell is to deliver genetic material to an egg cell in order to fertilize it and in order to achieve this the sperm cell has a number of adaptations that make it perfect for the job for example in its nucleus a sperm cell only has half as much genetic material as a normal adult cell which is important because because it has to combine with the eggs genetic material to form a normal cell's worth another adaptation is the fum on the end which acts like a tail and allows a sperm cell to swim through the uterus and fupin Tube to reach the egg and in a similar vein the fact that the overall cell is really streamlined will also help it to swim along they also have lots of mitochondria which provide the energy required for all of that swimming finally at the very front sperm cells have loads of digestive enzymes which are used to break a hole into the egg cell when the sperm reaches it so if we take a step back a minute and use this example to think about specialized cells more generally the key point is that specialized cells have a specific role in the body and to help them fulfill that role they generally have a specific shape and structure and they have specific amounts of different organal like mitochondria for example red blood cells and nerve cells have completely different shapes different structures and different assortments of organel because they're adapted to entirely different roles in the body now the last thing we need to cover is differentiation which is the process by which cells become specialized if we take humans as an example Life starts out as a single cell called a zygote which is basically just a fertilized egg cell this single cell then divides by mitosis into two cells which in turn divide into four cells and so on and so on at this point though the cells are all identical and none of them are specialized for specific roles yet so at some point they have to undergo the process of differentiation that turns them into specialized cells like a muscle cell a skin cell a nerve cell or a red blood cell if you want a definition you could say that differentiation is the process by which a cell changes to become specialized and as we saw earlier this normally involves changing the shape and structure of the cell as well as the combination of organel that it contains one very last thing to say is that cells like these ones in the middle that have the ability to repeatedly divide by mitosis and to differentiate into different types of specialized cells are called stem cells and we'll take a closer look at these in another video hey everyone Amad here I just wanted to let you know that we also have a learning platform where you can watch all of our videos practice what you've learned with questions and keep track of all of your progress for both The Sciences and maths it's completely free so if you haven't already you can check it out by clicking on our logo here on the right or if you'd like to do the lesson for this particular video we put the link to that in the description down below we've also arranged all the videos for this subject in a playlist for you here that's all though so hope you enjoy and we'll see you next time thanks