Plant cells are eukaryotic cells that differ in several key aspects from the cells of other eukaryotic

organisms. Their distinctive features include:

A large central vacuole, a water-filled volume enclosed by a membrane known as the tonoplast[1]
[2]

that maintains the cell's turgor, controls movement of molecules between the cytosol and sap,

stores useful material and digests wasteproteins and organelles.

A cell wall composed of cellulose and hemicellulose, pectin and in many cases lignin, is
secreted by the protoplast on the outside of the cell membrane. This contrasts with the cell walls
of fungi (which are made of chitin), and of bacteria, which are made of peptidoglycan. Cell walls
perform many essential functions: they provide shape to form the tissue and organs of the plant,
and play an important role in intercellular communication and plant-microbe interactions [3]

Specialized cell-to-cell communication pathways known as plasmodesmata,[4] pores in the

primary cell wall through which the plasmalemma and endoplasmic reticulum[5] of adjacent cells are
continuous.

Plastids, the most notable being the chloroplast, which contains chlorophyll, a green-colored
pigment that absorbs sunlight, and allows the plant to make its own food in the process known
as photosynthesis. Other types of plastids are the amyloplasts, specialized
for starch storage, elaioplasts specialized for fat storage, and chromoplasts specialized for
synthesis and storage of pigments. As in mitochondria, which have a genome encoding 37 genes,
[6]

plastids have their own genomes of about 100120 unique genes[7] and, it is presumed, arose

as prokaryotic endosymbiontsliving in the cells of an early eukaryotic ancestor of the land

plants and algae.[8]

Cell division by construction of a phragmoplast as a template for building a cell plate late
in cytokinesis is characteristic of land plants and a few groups of algae, notably
theCharophytes[9] and the Order Trentepohliales[10]

The sperm of bryophytes and pteridophytes, cycads and Ginkgo have flagella[11] similar to those
in animal cells,[12][13] but conifers and flowering plants lack flagella andcentrioles.[14]