You are viewing a free preview of this lesson.
Subscribe to unlock all 10 lessons in this course and every other course on LearningBro.
This lesson covers cell growth and differentiation in animals and plants as required by the Edexcel GCSE Combined Science specification (1SC0). You need to understand how organisms grow, why cells differentiate and the differences between growth and differentiation in animals and plants.
Multicellular organisms grow by increasing the number of cells and the size of cells. Growth involves:
In animals, growth mainly involves an increase in cell number (through mitosis) followed by differentiation. In plants, growth also involves significant cell elongation, where cells absorb water into their vacuoles and stretch.
Differentiation is the process by which a cell changes to become specialised for a particular function. When a cell differentiates, it develops specific structures and features that allow it to carry out its role effectively.
Before differentiation, cells are unspecialised — they have the potential to become many different cell types.
Subscribe to continue reading
Get full access to this lesson and all 10 lessons in this course.