Microorganisms are similar to more complex organisms in that they need a variety of materials from their environment to function and accomplish two primary goals-supply enough energy to manage their processes and extract building blocks to repair themselves or procreate. In addition to what they take in, microorganisms also thrive in particular environments. These…
Top It is the most common mode of asexual reproduction. The cytoplasm and nucleoid of a bacterial cell divide equally into two, following replication of DNA. The cell wall and cytoplasm also split resulting in the formation of two daughter cells. Under favourable conditions, a bacterial cell divides by fission once in every 20 minutes. fig. 8.4 - Fission in Bacteria…
Antibiotics only treat bacterial infections. Viral illnesses cannot be treated with antibiotics. When an antibiotic is not prescribed, ask your healthcare professional for tips on how to relieve symptoms and feel better. Antibiotics Aren’t Always the Answer Common Condition: What’s got you sick? Common Cause Are antibiotics needed? Bacteria Bacteria or Virus Virus…
Despite sharing the title of microorganisms, the organisms in the three subgroups vary physically and biologically. Fungi include mushrooms and mold, along with smaller single-celled organisms. The fungi group includes the largest organisms of all microbe classes. They play important ecological and biological roles, helping break down and recycle decomposing plant…
Smooth muscle cells and pericytes, together called mural cells, coordinate numerous vascular functions. Canonically, smooth muscle cells are ring-shaped and cover arterioles with circumferential processes, whereas pericytes extend thin processes that run longitudinally along capillaries. Nearly a century ago, Zimmerman described mural cells with mixed features of…
Chloroplasts and a cellulose cell wall are unique to plants – but plant cells have much in common with fungi, bacteria and animal cells too How come plants can make their own food but animals can’t? It’s all down to the green, pigment-packed chloroplasts that help plants to turn carbon dioxide and water into glucose. Modern-day chloroplasts were, according to endosymbiotic…
Bacteria are found in every living habitat on earth and play an essential role with regards to composting. In fact, without compost bacteria, there would be no compost, or life on planet earth for that matter. Beneficial bacteria found in garden compost are the garbage men of the earth, cleaning up trash and creating a useful product. Bacteria are able to survive…
The Golgi Apparatus Model. David Gunn / Getty Images The following are examples of structures and organelles that can be found in typical plant cells: Chloroplast - the sites of photosynthesis in a plant cell. They contain chlorophyll, a green pigment that absorbs energy from sunlight. Endoplasmic Reticulum (ER) - extensive network of membranes composed of both regions…
Mushrooms are often mentioned as examples of fungi but a mushroom is really part of a fungus. Mushrooms are the fleshy spore-bearing fruiting bodies of many species of gilled fungi. That is, they are the reproductive part of those fungi. See Structure of Mushrooms Fungi ( plural , the singular noun is fungus) are classified within the Biological Fungi Kingdom, so…
Found mainly in Gram negative organisms, Fimbriae or pili ( singlular: pilus ) are hair like filaments (tiny hollow projections) that extend from the cell membrane into the external environment. A pilus is composed of subunits of the protein pilin. Bacteria use adherence fimbriae (pili) to overcome the body’s defense mechanism and cause disease. Pili are small hairs…
Our bodies are pretty amazing. Day after day, they work hard — digesting food, pumping blood and oxygen, sending signals from our brains and much more. But there is a group of tiny invaders that can make our bodies sick — they re called germs. Some kids may think that germs are bugs or cooties or other gross stuff. Actually, germs are tiny organisms, or living things…
†Department of Physics, and ‡Department of Chemistry, Umeå University, 901 87 Umeå, Sweden Langmuir, 2016, 32 (18), pp 4521–4529 DOI: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.5b03845 Abstract Bacterial cells display a diverse array of surface organelles that are important for a range of processes such as intercellular communication, motility and adhesion leading to biofilm formation…
A protocol to isolate bacterial colonies is a crucial tool for any life scientist to have in their toolbox. There are several different variations of a procedure called streaking (insert funny comments here.) I would like to go over one I used countless times during my studies for my biomedical engineering degree. That procedure is called the Streak Plate Method using…
B. PROKARYOTIC CELL ANATOMY In this section on Prokaryotic Cell Anatomy we are looking at the various anatomical parts that make up a bacterium. As mentioned in the introduction to this section, a typical bacterium usually consists of: We will now look at the bacterial chromosome located in the nuclear region called the nucleoid. A. Structure and Composition of the…
