Hi and welcome back to freesciencelessons.co.uk. By the end of this video you should be able to describe the differences and the similarities between eukaryotic cells and prokaryotic cells. I'm showing you here a picture of an animal cell and a plant cell. Now both animals and plants are eukaryotes.
The most obvious feature of an animal or plant cell is is that they've got a nucleus and I'm showing you that here. The nucleus contains the genetic material of these cells, in other words the DNA. So this brings us to the definition of eukaryotic cells.
Eukaryotic cells contain their genetic material enclosed in a nucleus and it's really important that you learn that definition. I'm showing you here a drawing of a eukaryotic cell. Again we can see the genetic material enclosed in a nucleus but animal and plant cells also have two other features which you need to learn.
Around the edge of the cell we've got the cell membrane. Now it's really critical that you don't call this the cell wall as that's not correct. Within the cell membrane we've got the cytoplasm.
We're going to look at the functions of both the cell membrane and the cytoplasm in later videos. I'm showing you here a picture of a bacterial cell. Now unlike animals and plants bacteria are prokaryotes. In prokaryotic cells, the genetic material is not enclosed in a nucleus. And again, that's a key definition that you need to learn.
The second key fact is that prokaryotic cells are much smaller than eukaryotic cells. So I'm showing you here a drawing of a bacterial cell. Now, as I said before, prokaryotic cells, such as bacteria, do not have a nucleus. Their genetic material consists of a single loop of DNA. Bacteria may also have small rings of DNA which are called plasmids.
Prokaryotic cells have a cell membrane but they've also got a cell wall. Now it's important to remember that this is a bacterial cell wall. Don't get confused with the plant cell wall which we're going to look at in a later video.
Finally prokaryotic cells also contain cytoplasm. Remember that you'll find plenty of questions on eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells in my vision workbook. and you can get that by clicking on the link above.
Okay, so hopefully now you should be able to describe the differences and the similarities between eukaryotic cells and prokaryotic cells.