All LIVING things (& things?) are connected...right? even plants?

Question

Plants are related as well .... right? and if so why because I don't get how I mean plants are living things but...still!

Answer 1

You _definitely_ need to tour the Tree of Life project pages:

http://www.tolweb.org/tree/

and especially:

http://www.tolweb.org/Green_plants/2382

Hope that helps expand your world view! :)

Answer 2

All things are connected because they all have cells. Wood is dead tree cells.

Soda cans are made out of dead cells. Plants are made out of plant cells and Animals/ Humans are made out of animal cells.

Answer 3

All life uses the same biochemistry in their life processes. Plants and animals share the same type of cellular plan so we are called the Eukaryotes or the true kernals. The protoplasm of the cell is where all vital activities takes place, activeties like assimilation, translocation, metabolism, & respiration. Plant and animal cells have nearly all of the most important cell structures in common.

Both plants and animals have vital biochemical pathways for energy, growth, and reproduction. On the most basic level they have cells with a nucleus and other internal cell structures that make them more like each other than like bacteria or what are called the prokaryotes. We share cellular respiration as the means of generating energy from stored food. Plants have the same respiratory paths using oxygen and giving off CO2, in exactly the same way animals do.

Genes code for protein and many of the most critical genes are the same in the most basic pathways. This genetic similarity is called homology. You may have heard we share 98% of our DNA with chimps. We also share 35% of the nearly 7,000 tested protein families (2,489/6,968)  with the algae Chlamydomonas and flowering plants.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/fu...

On the larger scale they develop from a sexually reproduced embryo and grow to maturity. Plants even have body plans with complex structures. They use hormones and complex secondary metabolites to interact with their environment.

Yet even the simple single celled creatures like yeast and cyanobacteria share the same encoding DNA pattern in their genes. Three DNA bases form a codon to translate into  a single amino acid in the  protein chain. So even here there is a connection at the biochemical level.