Microbial Plants Flashcards
What is a prokaryote?
Are usually small, single celled organisms that have a simple structure. Have a nucleoid that has 1 circular chromosome and lack organelles.
Bacteria and archaea.
What is a bacteria?
A single celled organism that has cell walls made of peptidoglycan.
Gram positive bacteria have thick peptidoglycan layer
Gram negative bacteria have a think peptidoglycan layer and a LPS outer layer.
What is binary fission?
Asexual reproduction in bacteria where each daughter cells is a clone
What is an endospore?
A dormant structure that some bacteria can use to protect themselves from harsh conditions
What is genetic recombination in bacteria?
The transfer of plasmids
What is conjugation?
Where plasmids are passed from one cell to the other by direct contact.
What is transformation?
When bacteria take up free floating plasmids from the environment.
What is transduction?
Where viruses transfer plasmids from cell to cell.
What is cyanobacteria?
A photosynthetic bacteria that contains multiple membranes and lives in aquatic environments
What are some of the specialized cells cyanobacteria can develop?
Gas vesticles
heterocysts
Akinetes
Phycobilisome
What are gas vesticles in cyanobacteria for?
Buoyancy
What are heterocysts for in cyanobacteria?
Nitrogen fixation in anaerobic environments
What are akinetes for in cyanobacteria?
They are dormant cells that allow the bacteria to survive harsh conditions
What is the phycobilisome for in cyanobacteria?
Antennae complexes that are used for light harvesting
What are prochlorophytes?
Photosynthetic bacteria that have chlorophyll a and b, carotenoids, and lack phycobilins
What are mycoplasmas and phytoplasmas?
Bacteria that lack cell walls and can cause disease in plants
What are archaea?
Single celled organisms that are extremophiles:
Halophiles, methanogens, and thermophiles.
What is a virus?
An infectious agent that is nucleic acid surrounded by a protein coat. It can replicate by infecting a host cell. They are made of either single stranded or double stranded RNA. They cause disease in all living organisms.
What is a capsid?
A protective protein coat that encapsulates the genetic material of a virus.
What is a viroid?
A small infectious particle that has single stranded RNA molecules that infect the host and work via RNA silencing. They can only infect plants.
What are prions?
Infectious proteins that cause other proteins to misfold. They are known to causes diseases in animals and fungi but not plants.
