Biology Forum Cell Biology What is the difference between Vesicle, Vacuole, Lysosome?

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    • #12133
      lsc04361
      Participant

      What is the difference between
      vesicle, vacuole, lysosome, tonoplast

      thx

    • #94212
      JackBean
      Participant

      Tonoplast is the membrane of vacuole. Vacuole is storage area of the cell, contains all various stuff you like, like useless molecules, storage molecules, dyes etc.
      Lysosome contains all various hydrolytic enzymes and is responsible for break down of big molecules like proteins and stuff.
      Vesicles are small vesicles ( 😆 :roll:), which are responsible mainly for transport or storage of now-not-needed proteins like receptors, which can be fastly utilized in this way. They don’t have any enzymatic activity by themselves.

    • #94248
      MrMistery
      Participant

      just a correction: vacuole and lysosome are actually the same organelle, that has specialized somewhat in animals vs plants. Plant cells have no lysosomes and animal cells have no vacuoles. The fact that plant biologists call the membrane of the vacuole tonoplast doesn’t mean anything, it’s just a membrane. But they are the same organelle: indeed, the plant vacuole does carry out digestion function, just like the animal lysosome (though in plants the vacuole has specialized to carry out some storage roles as well). Yeast cells are said to have "vacuoles", but really their vacuoles are more similar to animal lysosomes than they are to plant vacuoles.
      The reason we call them two different things is that they were discovered independently in the two kinds of organisms, and they look different. Long ago how something looked like was the only thing you had to go by, so early biologists concluded they were two different things. Now we know better.

    • #94270
      lsc04361
      Participant

      thank you very much.

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