Variety of living organisms
Plants: these are multicellular organisms; their cells contain chloroplasts
and are able to carry out photosynthesis; their cells have cellulose cell
walls; they store carbohydrates as starch or sucrose. Examples include
flowering plants, such as a cereal (for example, maize), and a herbaceous
legume (for example, peas or beans).
Animals: these are multicellular organisms; their cells do not contain
chloroplasts and are not able to carry out photosynthesis; they have no
cell walls; they usually have nervous coordination and are able to move
from one place to another; they often store carbohydrate as glycogen.
Examples include mammals (for example, humans) and insects (for
example, housefly and mosquito).
Fungi: these are organisms that are not able to carry out photosynthesis;
their body is usually organised into a mycelium made from thread-like
structures called hyphae, which contain many nuclei; some examples are
single-celled; their cells have walls made of chitin; they feed by
extracellular secretion of digestive enzymes onto food material and
absorption of the organic products; this is known as saprotrophic nutrition;
they may store carbohydrate as glycogen. Examples include Mucor, which
has the typical fungal hyphal structure, and yeast, which is single-celled.
Protoctists: these are microscopic single-celled organisms. Some, like
Amoeba, that live in pond water, have features like an animal cell, while
others, like Chlorella, have chloroplasts and are more like plants. A
pathogenic example is Plasmodium, responsible for causing malaria.
Bacteria: these are microscopic single-celled organisms; they have a cell
wall, cell membrane, cytoplasm and plasmids; they lack a nucleus but
contain a circular chromosome of DNA; some bacteria can carry out
photosynthesis but most feed off other living or dead organisms.
Examples include Lactobacillus bulgaricus, a rod-shaped bacterium used
in the production of yoghurt from milk, and Pneumococcus, a spherical
bacterium that acts as the pathogen causing pneumonia.
Viruses: these are not living organisms. They are small particles, smaller
than bacteria; they are parasitic and can reproduce only inside living cells;
they infect every type of living organism. They have a wide variety of
shapes and sizes; they have no cellular structure but have a protein coat
and contain one type of nucleic acid, either DNA or RNA. Examples include
the tobacco mosaic virus that causes discolouring of the leaves of tobacco
plants by preventing the formation of chloroplasts, the influenza virus that
causes ‘flu’ and the HIV virus that causes AIDS.
