Protists Flashcards
What are Protists?
All the Eukaryotes that are not Land Plants, Fungi, or Animals
What are key features of Protists?
- most are unicellular
- Several are colonial and multicellular with differentiated cells
- Have a nucleus and other specialized organelles
What are the 4 major Clades or Protists?
Excavata, SAR, Archaeplastida, and Unikonta
How did the ER and Nucleus come to be in Protists?
Gradual evolutionary process of the plasma membrane infolding led to endomembrane systems that became the ER and Nuclear Membrane
How did Protists get a Mitochondira?
Primary Endosymbiosis led to a alphaproteobacterium that evolved into a Mitochondrion
How did Protists get Plastids?
Primary Endosymbiosis of an ancestral cyanobacteria which then became plastids
What are key features of the Supergroup Excavata?
1.Heterotrophs or autotrophs
2. Flagella
3. Eyespot
4. No cell wall
Euflenozoans (have a flagellum containing a crystalline rod and a ring of microtubules)
What super group do Euglenozoans belong to and what are key features and an example?
Excavata
1. have flagellum containing a crystalline rod and a ring of microtubules
2. Trypanosoma brucei (cause African Sleeping Sickness)
What are key features and examples of Protists in the SAR clade, Stramenophile Brown Algaes?
- Multicellular with differentiated cells
- Resemblance to plants
- Described as “Seaweed”
- Lifecycle of alternation of generations where there are multicellular diploid AND haploid stages
Postelsia palmaeformis (Sea Palm), Macrocystis pyrifera (Giant Kelp)
What are key features and examples of Protists in the SAR clade, Alveolates Apicomplexans?
- All animal parasites
- Cells are specialized at one eld to penetrate host cells
- Flagella are found only in motile gametes
Species of the genus Plasmodium (malaria)
