Plants: More like you than you know

Today, we looked at Elodea, a freshwater pond plant, under the microscope to observe some of its large organelles - the cell wall, chloroplasts, and central water vacuole.  Although on the surface plants look quite different from us, when you get down to it, we really have a lot in common.  After all, we're both Eukaryotes (we have nuclei), and our cells share many of the same organelles - mitochondria, endoplasmic reticuli, golgi apparati, plasma membranes, ribosomes - plants have them all too.


Here's a light micrograph of Elodea (another nice thing about light microscopy is that it produces color images):

And here's a nifty electron micrograph of a plant cell, with less color but much more detail:

Homework
R4 should complete their annotated drawings of Elodea to turn in tomorrow.  R6 should complete the homework on Prokaryotes posted on Monday, September 21st.


Please note that there will be a quiz on cell parts (2.2 and 2.3) on the Tuesday we get back from our long weekend.


Best,
Mr. Hill