22.

2 BIODIVERSITY

Biodiversity is the variation of life forms within a given ecosystem, biome or for the entire
Earth.

Biodiversity is often used as a measure of the health of biological systems.

Biodiversity found on Earth today consists of many millions of distinct biological species, which is
the product of four billion years of evolution.

The most straightforward definition is "variation of life at all levels of biological organization".

A second definition holds that biodiversity is a measure of the relative diversity among organisms
present in different ecosystems. "Diversity" in this definition includes diversity within a species and
among species, and comparative diversity among ecosystems.

A third definition that is often used by ecologists is the "totality of genes, species, and ecosystems
of a region". An advantage of this definition is that it seems to describe most circumstances and
present a unified view of the traditional three levels at which biodiversity has been identified:

 genetic diversity - diversity of genes within a species. There is a genetic variability among
the populations and the individuals of the same species. (See also population genetics.)
 species diversity - diversity among species in an ecosystem. "Biodiversity hotspots" are
excellent examples of species diversity.
 ecosystem diversity - diversity at a higher level of organization, the ecosystem. Diversity of
habitat in a given unit area. To do with the variety of ecosystems on Earth.

The 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro defined "biodiversity" as "the variability
among living organisms from all sources, including, 'inter alia', terrestrial, marine, and other aquatic
ecosystems, and the ecological complexes of which they are part: this includes diversity within
species, between species and of ecosystems". This is, in fact, the closest thing to a single legally
accepted definition of biodiversity, since it is the definition adopted by the United Nations
Convention on Biological Diversity.

If the gene is the fundamental unit of natural selection, according to E. O. Wilson, the real
biodiversity is genetic diversity. For geneticists, biodiversity is the diversity of genes and organisms.
They study processes such as mutations, gene exchanges, and genome dynamics that occur at
the DNA level and generate evolution.

For ecologists, biodiversity is also the diversity of durable interactions among species. It not only
applies to species, but also to their immediate environment (biotope) and their larger ecoregion. In
each ecosystem, living organisms are part of a whole, interacting with not only other organisms,
but also with the air, water, and soil that surround them.

1
2.2.1 Kingdom

From biological taxonomy, a kingdom or regnum is a taxonomic rank in either (historically) the
highest rank, or (in the new three-domain system) the rank below domain.

Each kingdom is divided into smaller groups called phyla (or in some contexts these are called
"divisions"). Currently, textbooks from the United States use a system of six kingdoms (Animalia,
Plantae, Fungi, Protista, Archaea, and Eubacteria), while British and Australian textbooks
describe five kingdoms (Animalia, Plantae, Fungi, Protista, and Prokaryota or Monera).

Carolus Linnaeus distinguished two kingdoms of living things: Animalia for animals and Vegetabilia
for plants (Linnaeus also treated minerals, placing them in a third kingdom, Mineralia). Linnaeus
divided each kingdom into classes, later grouped into phyla for animals and divisions for plants.

It gradually became apparent how important the prokaryote/eukaryote distinction is, and Stanier
and van Niel popularized Edouard Chatton's proposal in the 1960s.

Five Kingdom System

R. H. Whittaker recognized an additional kingdom for the Fungi. The resulting five-kingdom
system, proposed in 1968, has become a popular standard and with some refinement is still used
in many works, or forms the basis for newer multi-kingdom systems. It is based mainly on
differences in nutrition; his Plantae were mostly multicellular autotrophs, his Animalia multicellular
heterotrophs, and his Fungi multicellular saprotrophs. The remaining two kingdoms, Protista and
Monera, included unicellular and simple cellular colonies

22.1 Five Kingdom Classification System

Once upon a time, all living things were lumped together into two kingdoms, namely plants and
animals. Animals included every living thing that moved, ate, and grew to a certain size and
stopped growing. Plants included every living thing that did not move or eat and that continued to
grow throughout life.

It became very difficult to group some living things into one or the other, so early in the past century
the two kingdoms were expanded into five kingdoms: Protista (the single-celled eukaryotes);
Fungi (fungus and related organisms); Plantae (the plants); Animalia (the animals); Monera (the
prokaryotes). Many biologists now recognize six distinct kingdoms, dividing Monera into the
Eubacteria and Archeobacteria.

Kingdoms are divided into categories called phyla, each phylum is divided into classes, each
class into orders, each order into families, each family into genera, and each genus into
species. A species represents one type of organism, such as dog, tiger shark, Ameoba proteus
(the common amoeba), Homo sapiens (human being), or Acer palmatum (Japanese maple). Note
that species names should be underlined (written), in italics (typing).

2
Kingdom Monera / prokaryotae (includes Eubacteria and Archeobacteria)

 Individuals are single-celled, may or may not move, have a cell wall, have no
chloroplasts or other organelles, and have no nucleus.
 Monera are usually very tiny, although one type, namely the blue-green bacteria, look like
algae. They are filamentous and quite long, green, but have no visible structure
inside the cells.
 No visible feeding mechanism.
 They absorb nutrients through the cell wall or produce their own by photosynthesis.

Kingdom Protista

 Protists are single-celled and usually move by cilia, flagella, or by amoeboid

mechanisms.
 There is usually no cell wall, although some forms may have a cell wall.
 They have organelles including a nucleus and may have chloroplasts, so some will
be green and others won't be.
 They are small, although many can be recognized in a dissecting microscope or even with
a magnifying glass.
 Nutrients are acquired by photosynthesis, ingestion of other organisms, or both.

Kingdom Fungi

 Fungi are multicellular,with a cell wall, organelles including a nucleus, but no

chloroplasts. They have no mechanisms for locomotion.
 Fungi range in size from microscopic to very large (such as mushrooms).
 Nutrients are acquired by absorption.
 For the most part, fungi acquire nutrients from decaying material.

Kingdom Plantae

 Plants are multicellular and most don't move (immobile), although gametes of some
plants move using cilia or flagella.
 Organelles including nucleus, chloroplasts are present, and cell walls are present.
 Nutrients are acquired by photosynthesis (they all require sunlight).

Kingdom Animalia

 Animals are multicellular, and move with the aid of cilia, flagella, or muscular organs
based on contractile proteins.
 They have organelles including a nucleus, but no chloroplasts or cell walls.

 Animals acquire nutrients by ingestion.

3
A "mini-key" to the five kingdoms

Suppose you see something in freshwater that certainly appears to be living. How can you begin to
determine what it is? Here is a key (not quite perfect) that you might use to help determine the
kingdom to which it belongs.
 1. Is it green or does it have green parts?
o Yes - go to 2
o No - go to 3
 2. Could be a plant or a protist, or blue-green bacteria. Make sure that the green is really
part of the organism, though. An animal might have eaten something green, for example.
o Single-celled? go to 6
o Multicellular? Plantae. Look for cell walls, internal structure. In the compound
microscope you might be able to see chloroplasts.
 3. Could be a moneran (bacteria), protist, fungus, or animal.
o Single-celled - go to 4
o Multicellular (Look for complex or branching structure, appendages) - go to 5
 4. Could be a moneran or a protist. Can you see any detail inside the cell?
o Yes - Protista. You should be able to see at least a nucleus and/or contractile
vacuole, and a definite shape. Movement should be present, using cilia, flagella,
or amoeboid motion. Cilia or flagella may be difficult to see.
o No - Monera. Should be quite small. May be shaped like short dashes (rods),
small dots (cocci), or curved or spiral shaped. The largest them that is commonly
found in freshwater is called Spirillum volutans. It is spiral shaped, and can be
nearly a millimeter long. Except for Spirillum, it is very difficult to see Monerans
except in a compound microscope with special lighting.
 5. Animalia or Fungi. Is it moving?
o Yes - Animalia. Movement can be by cilia, flagella, or complex, involving parts that
contract. Structure should be complex. Feeding activity may be obvious.
o No - Fungus. Should be branched, colorless filaments. May have some kind of
fruiting body (mushrooms are a fungus, don't forget). Usually attached to some
piece of decaying matter - may form a fuzzy coating on or around an object. In
water, some bacterial infections of fish and other animals may be mistaken for a
fungus.
 6. Most likely Protista. If it consists of long, unbranched greenish filaments with no
apparent structure inside, it is blue-green bacteria (sometimes mistakenly called blue-
green algae), a Moneran.

Most green protists are flagellates, that is, they move rapidly with a spiralling motion. Unless you
get them to stop, you can't really see the flagella. Watch out for colonial protists, though, such as
Volvox, which forms a spinning ball of green cells. Don't be fooled into thinking it is a plant.

Remember, the more you observe the organism, the more sure you can be. Many living things
have stages that make them resemble members of another kingdom.

22.1.1 Kingdom Prokaryotae / Monera

4
Monera are bacteria and other mostly tiny, single-celled organisms whose genetic material
is loose in the cell.

The genetic material of plants, animals, and other eukaryotes (true nucleus), on the other hand, is
held in the cell's nucleus.

While the Monera were briefly understood to be one of five biological kingdoms, it is now
understood to comprise two kingdoms: the eubacteria and the archaebacteria.

The Monera kingdom included most organisms with a prokaryotic cell organization (that is, no
nucleus). For this reason, the kingdom was sometimes called Prokaryota or Prokaryotae.

Monera has since been divided into Archaea and Bacteria, forming the more recent six-kingdom
system and three-domain system. All new schemes abandon the Monera and now treat the
Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukarya as separate domains or kingdoms.

Prior to the five-kingdom model with its Monera kingdom, these organisms were classified as two
separate divisions of plants: the Schizomycetes (bacteria) were considered fungi, and the
Cyanophyta were considered blue-green algae. The latter are now considered a group of bacteria,
typically called the cyanobacteria and are now known not to be closely related to plants, fungi, or
animals.

1. Viruses

A virus (from the Latin virus meaning "toxin" or "poison"), is a sub-microscopic infectious agent
that is unable to grow or reproduce outside a host cell.

Each viral particle, or virion , consists of genetic material, DNA or RNA, within a protective
protein coat called a capsid.

The capsid shape varies from simple helical and icosahedral (polyhedral or near-spherical)
forms, to more complex structures with tails or an envelope.

Viruses infect all cellular life forms and are grouped into animal, plant and bacterial types,
according to the type of host infected.

5
Viruses are unusual, incredibly tiny particles that are either living or non-living organisms,
depending on your definition of 'life'. If they're floating around in the air or sitting on a rock, they're
inert ... not alive at all.

They don't do any of the normal things we associate with living organisms. But if they come into
contact with a suitable living cell, they infect and take over the cell, and reproduce
themselves.

A virus is a tiny bundle of genetic material - either DNA or RNA - carried in a shell called a viral
coat, or capsid, which is made up of protein.

Some viruses have an additional layer around this coat called an envelope.

When a virus particle enters a cell and begins to reproduce itself, this is called a viral
infection .

The virus is usually very, very small compared to the size of a living cell. The information carried
in the virus's DNA allows it to take over the operation of the cell, converting it to a factory to
make more copies of itself. For example, the polio virus can make over one million copies of itself
inside a single, infected human intestinal cell.

Examples of common human diseases caused by viruses include the common cold, influenza,
chickenpox, diarrhea and cold sores. Serious diseases such as Ebola, AIDS, avian influenza and
SARS are caused by viruses.

The relative ability of viruses to cause disease is described in terms of virulence.

Viruses have different mechanisms by which they produce disease in an organism, which largely
depends on the species. Mechanisms at the cellular level primarily include cell lysis, the breaking
open and subsequent death of the cell.

In multicellular organisms, if enough cells die the whole organism will start to suffer the effects.
Although viruses cause disruption of healthy homeostasis, resulting in disease, they may exist
relatively harmlessly within an organism. An example would include the ability of the herpes
simplex virus, which cause cold sores, to remain in a dormant state within the human body.
This is called latency, and is a characteristic of the herpes viruses including the Epstein-Barr virus,
which causes glandular fever, and the Varicella zoster virus, which causes chicken pox. Latent
chickenpox infections return in later life as the disease called shingles.

6
Eg: Epstein-Barr virus

The Epstein-Barr virus infects up to 95 percent of adults, which means you probably have it. This virus is normally
picked up in early childhood. However, most people don't know they have it; usually it just sits in your body quietly.

In some people, however, the virus becomes active, usually in the teenage years. The virus causes the sickness called
mononucleosis, which can be spread by saliva (giving it the nickname 'the kissing disease').

Some viruses can cause life-long or chronic infections, where the viruses continue to replicate in
the body despite the hosts' defense mechanisms.

Biologists debate whether or not viruses are living organisms. Some consider them non-
living as they do not meet all the criteria used in the common definitions of life. For example, unlike
most organisms, viruses do not have cells. However, viruses have genes and evolve by
natural selection. Others have described them as organisms at the edge of life.

Viral infections in human and animal hosts usually result in an immune response and disease.
Often, a virus is completely eliminated by the immune system. Antibiotics have no effect
on viruses, but antiviral drugs have been developed to treat life-threatening infections.

Vaccines that produce lifelong immunity can prevent viral infections.

All viruses only exist to make more viruses. With the possible exception of bacterial viruses,
which can kill harmful bacteria, all viruses are considered harmful, because their reproduction
causes the death of the cells which the viruses entered.

If a virus contains DNA, it inserts its genetic material into the host cell's DNA. If the virus contains
RNA, it must first turn its RNA into DNA using the host cell's machinery, before inserting it into the
host DNA. Once it has taken over the cell, viral genes are then copied thousands of times, using
the machinery the host cell would ordinarily use to reproduce its own DNA. Then the host cell is
forced to encapsulate this viral DNA into new protein shells; the new viruses created are then
released, destroying the cell.

All living things are susceptible to viral infections ... plants, animals, or bacteria can all be
infected by a virus specific for that type of organism. Moreover, within an individual species there
may be a hundred or more different viruses which can infect that species alone. There are viruses

7
which infect only humans (for example, smallpox), viruses which infect humans and one or two
additional kinds of animals (for example, influenza), viruses which infect only a certain kind of plant
(for example, the tobacco mosaic virus -TMV), and some viruses which infect only a particular
species of bacteria (for example, the bacteriophage which infects E. coli).

Sometimes when a virus reproduces, mutations occur. The offspring that have been changed by
the mutation may no longer be infectious. But a virus replicates itself thousands of times, so there
will usually be some offspring that are still infectious, but sufficiently different from the parent virus
so that vaccines no longer work to kill it. The influeza virus can do this, which is why flu vaccines
for last year's flu don't work the next year. The common cold virus changes so quickly that vaccines
are useless; the cold you have today will be a different strain than the cold you had last month!

Types of virus

DNA-containing Viruses:

1. Adenovirus

The adenovirus consists of a slender shaft with a globular head. Adenoviruses can infect humans,
and can cause respiratory illness or conjunctivitis ('pink eye').

2. Papillomavirus

The papillomavirus attacks human cells, and can cause ordinary warts, which are harmless. But
some varieties cause genital warts; these tumours can become malignant

3. Herpes Virus

8
Herpes viruses are found in a wide range of hosts; at least seven different species are known to
infect humans, including herpes simplex. Genital herpes has no cure.

4. Hepatitis B

Hepatitis B virus causes both acute and chronic liver infections in humans. An unusual feature
of these infections are the length of time they last; up to several months in acute infections, and
many years (or for life) in chronic infections.

RNA-containing Viruses:

1.Influenza

The influenza virus causes acute upper respiratory disease in humans, usually accompanied
by a fever. These viruses are roughly spherical, and about 200 millionths of a millimetre in
diameter.

2. Enterovirus

Enteroviruses belong to one of the largest families of viruses; others in this family include
rhinoviruses (which cause the common cold), cardioviruses, apthoviruses and hepatoviruses

9
(which cause hepatitis A). Enteroviruses usually reproduce in the intestine. An important
enterovirus is the one which causes polio.

3. Bacteriophages:

Some varieties of viruses attack only bacteria. These types are called bacteriophages. The
bacteriophage lands on the bacterium and cuts a hole in the cell wall with its 'injection tube'. It
then injects its genetic material into the bacterium. These inserted viral genes take over the
bacterium's genetic machinery, and tell the bacterium to begin making new virus parts. These
parts come together to make whole new viruses inside the bacterium. Then the bacterium bursts
open and dies, releasing all those new viruses to infect more cells!

Dealing with Viral Attacks

Antibiotics do not harm a virus; for this reason, many treatments for the "flu" or the common
cold virus (for example) just help ease the symptoms; they don't kill the virus.

In our body, the immune system can react to the surface of virus particles, and produce
neutralizing antibodies. Vaccines can be made from virus particles and injected into your body; the
small infection that results won't make you sick, but it allows your body's immune system to learn to
recognize the virus, so that if you are infected later with the real thing, your body can fight it.

However, mutations within viral DNA cause their surfaces to continually change shape, so that the
antibodies may not continue to be effective. This is particularly true with the common cold virus,
which is constantly changing, so a vaccine won't be much use.

The HIV virus is particularly dangerous because it attacks the cells of the immune system ... the
system that helps fight diseases! Although HIV does not itself directly cause the condition known as
AIDS, the eventual death of the immune cells in the body due to infection with HIV allows other
infections to harm a person.

Classification System

The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) developed the current classification
system and put in place guidelines that put a greater weighting on certain virus properties to
maintain family uniformity.

A universal system for classifying viruses, and a unified taxonomy, has been established since
1966. The 7th lCTV Report formalized for the first time the concept of the virus species as the
lowest taxon (group) in a branching hierarchy of viral taxa.

10
As defined therein, “a virus species is a polythetic class of viruses that constitute a replicating
lineage and occupy a particular ecological niche”. A “polythetic class” is one whose members have
several properties in common, although they do not necessarily all share a single common defining
property. In other words, the members of a virus species are defined collectively by a consensus
group of properties. Virus species thus differ from the higher viral taxa, which are “universal”
classes and as such are defined by properties that are necessary for membership.

The general taxonomic structure is as follows:

Order (-virales )
Family (-viridae )
Subfamily (-virinae )
Genus (-virus )
Species (-virus )

The ICTV has approved 3 orders, 56 families, 9 subfamilies, 233 genera and 1550 virus species.

Early virus classification was based on the diseases caused by viruses. This included the tissues
they infected, how they infected the tissue and how they could be passed on during an infection
(transmitted).

Today, viruses are assigned into a heirarchy (a ranked series) by the International Committee on
Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV; originally the International Committee on Nomenclature of Viruses) as
well as speciality groups and culture collections. The latter groups are closely involved in
classifying at the species level. The ICTV makes this data available through its online, universal
virus database (ICTVdB).

This Universal Scheme places viruses into the following named groupings:

Order Group Family Subfamily Genus species

subspecies/strain/variant/isolated..based upon multiple viral characteristics.

The correct use of this terminology is important to avoid confusion. Members of a

Genus/Family/Subfamily have an initial capital letter and are italicised, or underlined.

Species do not use an initial capital letter unless referring to a person's or Genus/Family/Subfamily
name, nor are they italicised. Additionally, the taxon name (Genus/Family/Subfamily) should
precede the taxonimic unit (species/subspecies/strain/variant/isolate). For example.. Order
Mononegavirales, family Paramyxoviridae, subfamily Pneumovirinae, genus Pneumovirus, human
respiratory syncytial virus.

Virus taxonomy has steered away from the Latinised binomial system adopted in the 18th century
and applied to the taxonomy of biological systems by Carolus Linneaus.Because taxon and
taxonomic unit names are sometimes the same, confusion results when virus names are written in
short-hand or used incorrectly in conversation. Such omissions can be avoided by adding the taxon

11
information eg blah is a species of the Genus xxxvirus, Family xxxviridae. Additional detail
describing Order/Subfamily is unecessary as this places the virus into a clear taxonomic position.

2. Bacteria

Bacteria (singular: bacterium) are unicellular microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in

length, bacteria have a wide range of shapes, ranging from spheres to rods and spirals.

Bacteria are often maligned as the causes of human and animal disease (like this one, Leptospira,
which causes serious disease in livestock). However, certain bacteria, the actinomycetes,
produce antibiotics such as streptomycin and nocardicin; others live symbiotically in the guts
of animals (including humans) or elsewhere in their bodies, or on the roots of certain plants,
converting nitrogen into a usable form.

Bacteria put the tang in yogurt and the sour in sourdough bread; bacteria help to break down dead
organic matter; bacteria make up the base of the food web in many environments.

Bacteria are of such immense importance because of their extreme flexibility, capacity for rapid
growth and reproduction, and great age - the oldest fossils known, nearly 3.5 billion years old,
are fossils of bacteria-like organisms.

Bacteria are ubiquitous in every habitat on Earth, growing in soil, acidic hot springs, radioactive
waste,seawater, and deep in the Earth's crust.

There are typically 40 million bacterial cells in a gram of soil and a million bacterial cells in a
millilitre of fresh water; in all, there are approximately five nonillion (5×1030) bacteria on Earth,
forming much of the world's biomass.

Bacteria are vital in recycling nutrients, and many important steps in nutrient cycles depend on
bacteria, such as the fixation of nitrogen from the atmosphere. However, most of these bacteria
have not been characterized, and only about half of the phyla of bacteria have species that
can be cultured in the laboratory. The study of bacteria is known as bacteriology, a branch of
microbiology.

There are approximately ten times as many bacterial cells as human cells in the human body, with
large numbers of bacteria on the skin and in the digestive tract. Although the vast majority of these
bacteria are rendered harmless by the protective effects of the immune system, and a few are
beneficial, some are pathogenic bacteria and cause infectious diseases, including cholera, syphilis,
anthrax, leprosy and bubonic plague. The most common fatal bacterial diseases are respiratory
infections, with tuberculosis alone killing about 2 million people a year, mostly in sub-Saharan
Africa.

In developed countries, antibiotics are used to treat bacterial infections and in various
agricultural processes, so antibiotic resistance is becoming common. In industry, bacteria are
important in processes such as sewage treatment, the production of cheese and yoghurt,
biotechnology, and the manufacture of antibiotics and other chemicals.

12
Bacteria are prokaryotes. Unlike cells of animals and other eukaryotes, bacterial cells do not
contain a nucleus and rarely harbour membrane-bound organelles. Although the term bacteria
traditionally included all prokaryotes, the scientific classification changed after the discovery in the
1990s that prokaryotic life consists of two very different groups of organisms that evolved
independently from an ancient common ancestor. These evolutionary domains are called Bacteria
and Archaea

Bacteria: Systematics

Classifying bacteria on the basis of their morphology is extremely difficult; bacteria are generally
quite small and have simple shapes, though there are some bacteria, notably the cyanobacteria
and actinomycetes, with sufficiently complex morphology to permit classification by shape. In
addition to shape, bacteria have traditionally been identified and classified on the basis of their
biochemistry and the conditions under which they grow. The advent of molecular biology has
made it possible to classify bacteria on the basis of similarities among DNA sequences, and has
revolutionized thinking in bacterial systematics. The cladogram above is based on DNA sequences
that encode ribosome structure.

13
 Bacteria: More on Morphology

A more or less typical bacterium, shown here, is comparatively much simpler than a typical
eukaryotic cell. View the typical bacterium, E. coli.

Bacteria lack the membrane-bound nuclei of eukaryotes; their DNA forms a tangle known as a
nucleoid, but there is no membrane around the nucleoid, and the DNA is not bound to proteins
as it is in eukaryotes. Whereas eukaryote DNA is organized into linear pieces, the chromosomes,
bacterial DNA forms loops. Bacteria contain plasmids, or small loops of DNA, that can be
transmitted from one cell to another, either in the course of sex or by viruses.

This ability to trade genes with all comers makes bacteria amazingly adaptible; beneficial genes,
like those for antibiotic resistance, may be spread very rapidly through bacterial populations. It also
makes bacteria favorites of molecular biologists and genetic engineers; new genes can be inserted
into bacteria with ease.

Bacteria do not contain membrane-bound organelles such as mitochondria or chloroplasts, as

eukaryotes do. However, photosynthetic bacteria, such as cyanobacteria, may be filled with tightly
packed folds of their outer membrane. The effect of these membranes is to increase the potential
surface area on which photosynthesis can take place.

The cell membrane is surrounded by a cell wall in all bacteria except one group, the
Mollicutes, which includes pathogens such as the mycoplasmas. The composition of the cell wall
varies among species and is an important character for identifying and classifying bacteria. In this
diagram, the bacterium has a fairly thick cell wall made of peptidoglycan (carbohydrate
polymers cross-linked by proteins); such bacteria retain a purple color when stained with a dye
known as crystal violet, and are known as Gram-positive (after the Danish bacteriologist who

14
developed this staining procedure). Other bacteria have double cell walls, with a thin inner wall
of peptidoglycan and an outer wall of carbohydrates, proteins, and lipids. Such bacteria do
not stain purple with crystal violet and are known as Gram-negative.

Methods for distinguishing and identifying bacteria are assembled into Bergey's Manual of Determinative Bacteriology

Category Disease
Genera Species
Treponema pallidum spirochete syphilis
Borrelia burgdorferi spirochete Lyme disease
Campylobacter Aerobic, motile, helical, Gram-negative [campylobacteriosis]
Helicobacter pylori Aerobic, motile, helical, Gram-negative peptic ulcer disease
Pseudomonas aeruginosa Gram-negative aerobic rods and cocci urinary tract infections, burns,
and wounds
Legionella Gram-negative aerobic rods and cocci pneumonia and other
respiratory infections
Neisseria gonorrhoeae Gram-negative aerobic rods and cocci gonorrhea; meningitis &
nasopharylngeal infections by
other species
Moraxella lacunata Gram-negative aerobic rods and cocci conjunctivitis
Bordetella pertussis Gram-negative aerobic rods and cocci whooping cough (pertussis)
Escherichia coli Facultatively anaerobic Gram-negative opportunistic infections of
rods colon and other sites
Shigella [dysenteriae, sonnei] Facultatively anaerobic Gram-negative bacillary dysentery
rods
Salmonella typhimurium Facultatively anaerobic Gram-negative typhoid fever, enteritis, and
rods food poisoning
Klebsiella pneumoniae Facultatively anaerobic Gram-negative respiratory and urinary tract
rods infections
Enterobacter aerogenes Facultatively anaerobic Gram-negative opportunistic infections
rods
Serratia marcescens Facultatively anaerobic Gram-negative opportunistic infections
rods
Proteus vulgaris Facultatively anaerobic Gram-negative urinary tract infections,
rods especially nosocomial
Yersinia pestis Facultatively anaerobic Gram-negative plague
rods
Vibrio cholerae Facultatively anaerobic Gram-negative cholera
rods
Pasteurella Facultatively anaerobic Gram-negative
rods
Haemophilus influenzae Facultatively anaerobic Gram-negative respiratory infections,
rods meningitis, conjunctivitis
Gardnerella Facultatively anaerobic Gram-negative vaginitis
rods
Bacteroides Anaerobic Gram-negative rod various infections from fecal
contamination
Rickettsia [prowazekii, rickettsii] Rickettsia and Chlamydiae typhus, Rocky Mountain
spotted fever
Chlamydia [trachomatis] Rickettsia and Chlamydiae trachoma, nongonococcal
urethritis
Mycoplasma pneumoniae Mycoplasmas walking pneumonia
Staphylococcus aureus Gram-positive cocci skin abscesses, opportunistic

15
 infections such as toxic shock
syndrome
Category Disease
Genera Species
Streptococcus [pyogenes] Gram-positive cocci strep throat and other
infections, puerperal fever =
childbirth fever
[Micrococcus] [luteus] Gram-positive cocci
Bacillus anthracis Endospore-forming Gram-positive rods anthrax
and cocci
Clostridium [botulinum, difficile, Endospore-forming Gram-positive rods botulism, tetanus, gas
tetani, perfringens] and cocci gangrene
Corynebacteriu diphtheriae Irregular nonsporing Gram-positive rods diphtheria
m
Mycobacterium [tuberculosis, leprae, Mycobacteria tuberculosis, leprosy
paratuberculosis] (Hanson's disease)
Streptomyces Streptomyces

The Differences Between Bacteria and Viruses


 Bacteria are much bigger than
Viruses are much smaller, with
viruses, and much more complex.
lengths measured in millions of a
 A typical bacterium has a rigid cell
millimetre.
wall containing a cell membrane,
 All viruses are made up of a core of
which holds the cytoplasm.
genetic material ... nucleic acid,
 Within this fluid are chromosomes
which is either DNA or RNA. This is
(made up of DNA) that hold the surrounded by a protein coat.
instructions for making new bacteria
 Some viruses may also be
and performing other functions.
protected by an outer spikey layer
 There may also be loose bits of called an envelope.
DNA called plasmids floating in the
 Viruses can't even reproduce by
cytoplasm, and ribosomes, which
themselves ... they need to take
are used for copying DNA so the
over another cell and get it to do it
cell can reproduce.

16
 Some bacteria have threadlike for them.
structures called flagella that they
use to move around.

17