AY Honors/Bacteria/Answer Key
1. What are the main characteristics of bacteria that distinguish them from other living beings?
Bacteria are single cell organisms (though some do form chains or other colonial groupings, each individual remains its own organism).
The have no membrane around their internal organelles - so rather than a nucleus containing genetic material, which has its own membrane keeping it separate from the rest of the cell contents, bacteria have a nucleoid, without a distinct membrane.
All but one group of bacteria have both a cell membrane and a cell wall.
The genetic material in a Bacteria is in a tangled loop in the nucleoid
Many bacteria also have loops of genetic material, called Plasmids, that can serve to transfer genetic information between organisms, and may provide new or useful characteristics for a bacteria, which in part explains why they are able to adapt so quickly as species.