How does cellular respiration differ in plants and animals?
1 Answer
The process is the same, but they get their food source in different ways.
Explanation:
The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. It's responsible for cellular respiration in both plants and animal cells. The difference is that plants also have chloroplasts that perform photosynthesis.
Animals get their energy by eating food, digesting it, and turning it into the base sugars, proteins, and lipids that the cells can burn to perform cellular respiration (which makes ATP).
Plants, instead of eating the food, assemble the food themselves using the energy from photosynthesis and nutrients and water from the soil. The basic chemical process for plants is they take CO2 from the outside air and water from the soil, and use sunlight to break the molecules and turn them into glucose (C6H12O6) and oxygen as a byproduct.
Bottom line, we eat food and digest it down to something our cells can burn, plants eat CO2 and water and build it into something they can burn.
