Lower Kingdoms!A kingdom by kingdom look at viruses, fungus, bacteria and protozoa

Marshall Jiang5th Period • Chiles High School • March 27, 2008

Marshall Jiang • email: marshall.jiang@gmail.com • Biology 1

Virus

Pros Cons

The ability of virus to insert their DNA into cells allows gene therapy to take advantage of them

The viruses can easily replicate, evolve and evade cells at the cellʼs expense, some-times causing death or the organ-ism

Lytic Infection Lysogenic Infec-tion

The host cellʼs ma-chinery are con-verted to produce the virus. The ribo-somes and en-zymes make the various parts of the virus and the cell lyses to release the viruses

The virusʼs DNA is inserted into the cellular DNA so that the virusʼs DNA is replicated with the cell. The virus may escape from time to time, infecting other cells or may go into a lytic cycle.

A virus is not considered alive due to the fact that:1. they have no metabolism2. they form crystals, a property of

chemicals3. they are dependent upon a host

cell to reproduce4. They do not respond to stimuli

Possible defence/treatment of a viral infection is to use restriction enzymes that recognize the virusʼs DNA. The enzyme then will cut and remove the DNA, allowing the cell to resume normal operation.

Virus Defense

Dead or Alive?

Fungus

The most common types of edible fungus are mushrooms. Other edible uses for fungus in-cludes using their spores to foment the growth of mold in cheeses.

Some examples are: 1. Stilton Cheese 2. Portobello Mushrooms 3. Straw Mushrooms

In the 20th century, the destruction of elm trees in the United States and Europe was caused by the fungus Ceratocystis ulmi. The disease is mainly transferred through the Elm beetles.

The fungus, Phytophthora infestans, is responsible for the potato famine of the 1840ʼs. The resulting famine left over 1 million dead and more than 1.5 million left Ireland. This blight is currently also a big threat to po-tato crops now as a new strain appeared which is ex-tremely virulent and destructive.

Fungus rarely infect humans because most of them are facultative parasites. Some examples of human diseases caused by fungus includes:

• Conidiobolus coronatus - Nasal polyps and sinus infection• Ustilago maydis - skin lesions• Schizophyllum commune - A wood decom-posing mushroom sometimes found in finger nails

1. Deuteromycota - No spore, reproduces asexually

2. Chytridiomycota (chytrids) - Produces spores that are capable of movement with a flagellum

3. Basidiomycota (club fungi) - produces meiospores (produced by meiosis, hap-loid)

Past Infections Types of Fungus

Edible FungusHuman diseases

Bacteria

Eubacteria Archbacteria

1. Chemotrophs 1. Methanogens - CO2 and H2 to cre-ate CH4

2. Autotrophs 2. Extreme Halo-philes - ex-tremely salty places

3. Heterotrophs 3. Thermoacido-philes - Hot, acidic areas

In biological warfare, a nation could use recombinant DNA by inserting antibiotics resistant strands into the organism in use. Furthermore, one could implant more lethal elements into a bacteriaʼs DNA, creating a un-stoppable attack.

A type of bacteria culture that has potential benefit for humans are called probiotics. The most common ones are lactic acid bacteria as they are the ones responsible for cheese and yogurts. Also, some bacterial culture lives in our digestive tract that some claim to help strengthen the immune system. Other bacteria, such as TB or typhoid fever, can cause death is humans.

Botox is the trademarked name for botulinum toxin A, which is related to botulism. The way botox treats wrin-kles is under the concept that botu-lism paralyzes muscle and para-lyzed muscle canʼt form wrinkles. Other uses of the botulism bacteria is that of applying it in small amounts to overactive muscles such as “crossed eyes” and “uncontrolla-ble blinking.” Botulinum by itself, is extremely poisonous as it paralyzes the respiratory system, causing the person to not be able to breath.

Tuberculosis can become resistant to antibiotics because of the length required for a full TB treatment. Many people stop treatment in the middle, thus leaving the stronger ones alive for transmission. This is the same reason why most bacteria are gaining resistance to antibiotics.

Types of Bacteria Biological Warfare

Botox© and Botulism?

The Good and the Bad

Biological Warfare

Protozoa

Paramecium usually reproduces asexually by splitting into two, almost identical organ-ism. In this type of reproduction, no genetic material is exchanged and is called “fission.” Sometimes conditions such as overcrowd-ing or other stress causes paramecium to reproduce sexually. In a process called con-jugation, two paramecium line up side by side, fuse together, and the nucleus divides. This cause the chromosomes to mix and cause diversity. The paramecium then made go to asexual fission.

Paramecium movement is propelled by thousands of little cilia on itʼs body. On the other hand, Euglena moves by using a single flagellum. Amoeba moves using pseudopods; to get food, the amoeba surrounds the food with the pseudopods and store it in a vacuole

Human Diseases

Malaria (Plasmodium)

African Sleeping Sickness (Trypano-soma)

Leishmaniasis

Toxoplasmosis

Giant seaweeds are part of the Protista Kingdom because they lack a specialized vascular system, such as roots, stems, leaves and enclosed reproductive structures like flowers and cones. The discussion over this classification is controversial is because seaweeds, like true plants, uses chlorophyll to go through photosynthetic.

Reproduction

Seaweeds, Plantae?

Movement