Bacteria Basics
This tough survival structure helps some bacteria live through heat, dryness, or lack of food.
What is an endospore?
This tiny particle is made of genetic material inside a protein coat.
What is a virus?
This group includes organisms that are not plants, animals, fungi, or bacteria.
What are protists?
Mushrooms, molds, and yeasts all belong to this group.
What are fungi?
This tiny reproductive cell can grow into a new fungus.
What is a spore?
This organism breaks down dead plants, animals, and waste.
What is a decomposer?
Category: God’s Design in Tiny Organisms
Question:
A forest has dead leaves, fallen logs, mushrooms, bacteria in the soil, and small organisms living in pond water nearby. Explain how at least three groups from this unit — bacteria, viruses, protists, or fungi — could affect this environment. Include at least one helpful role and one harmful role.
Bacteria and fungi can act as decomposers by breaking down dead leaves and logs, which returns nutrients to the soil for plants to use again. Some protists in pond water can be plankton and provide food for aquatic animals. Some bacteria help plants by making nitrogen usable. However, some organisms can also be harmful: viruses can infect host cells, some bacteria can cause disease, and some fungi can act as parasites or cause infections. This shows that tiny organisms have important roles in God’s creation, both helpful and harmful.
This is the process bacteria use when one cell splits into two identical cells.
What is binary fission?
This protein coat protects a virus’s genetic material.
What is a capsid?
Some protists use these tiny hairlike structures to move.
What are cilia?
These long, threadlike structures make up most of a fungus.
What are hyphae?
This stalklike mushroom part supports the cap.
What is the stipe?
This organism feeds on dead or decaying matter.
What is a saprophyte?
This small circle of extra DNA can be found in some bacteria.
What is a plasmid?
A virus must use this type of cell in order to reproduce.
What is a host cell?
An amoeba moves and captures food using this temporary “false foot.”
What is a pseudopod?
This is the top part of a mushroom.
What is the cap?
This type of fungus can reproduce both sexually and asexually.
What is a perfect fungus?
This organism lives on or in a host and often harms it.
What is a parasite?
This process allows one cell to transfer genetic material to another cell.
What is conjugation?
This is one major difference between bacteria and viruses.
What is bacteria are cells, but viruses are not cells?
These tiny drifting organisms are an important food source in aquatic ecosystems.
What are plankton?
These thin layers under the mushroom cap often produce spores.
What are gills?
This type of fungus is known to reproduce only asexually.
What is an imperfect fungus?
This is a close relationship between two different organisms living together.
What is symbiosis?
Bacteria can reproduce quickly, but they do not take over the whole earth because these resources become limited.
What are food, water, oxygen, and space?
Viruses cannot reproduce by binary fission because they are missing this important feature of living organisms.
What is being made of cells?
Protists are different from bacteria because protists are this type of cell, meaning they have a nucleus.
What are eukaryotic cells?
This visible part of a fungus produces spores; a mushroom is an example.
What is a fruiting body?
Fungi do not make their own food; instead, they get nutrients this way.
What is absorbing nutrients from their surroundings?
This partnership forms when a fungus lives with algae or cyanobacteria.
What is a lichen?