Plant and animal cells are very similar when it comes to their structures for the reason that they are both eukaryotic cells. Both plant and animal cells have membrane-bound organelles such as the mitochondria, nucleus, golgi apparatus, endoplasmic reticulum, peroxisomes and lysosomes. They also both have similar cytosol, membranes, and cytoskeletal elements. However, the few differences that exist between plant and animals are very substantial and show a significant difference in the functions of each cell.
One of the major differences between the two is that, plant cells can be larger than animal cells. The standard range for an animal cell differs from 10 to 30 micrometers whereas that for a plant cell varies from 10 to 100 micrometers. Aside from size, the key structural differences between plant and animal cells lie in a few additional structures found in plant cells. The said structures comprise of the cell wall, vacuoles, and chloroplasts. On the contrary, in animal cells, the mitochondria produces the majority of the cells energy from food and it does not have the same purpose in plant cells. Plant cells use sunlight as their source of energy, then the sunlight will turn into energy inside the cell in a process called photosynthesis; and chloroplasts are the structures that complete this task.
