3 biology questions___ Can you please help????

Question

1.) How is it more difficult for a biologist to understand the diversity of prokaryotes as compared to plants and animals?

2.) Describe how viruses and prions can change the way a cell works?

3.) What are some traits scientists might have used when they decided to divide the prokaryotes into Archaebacteria and Eubacteria?

Please help me with some of these questions.

THANK YOU

Answer 1

1. prokaryotes are tiny and we have discovered only about 5% to start with. We generally classify things based on their morphology (ie looks) and they are VERY limited in structures we can see to do this (ie cell wall, shape, flagella present, number of flagella etc). So they have to use biochemical tests to see how they respond and get a profile. Remembering how few we actually can know about you may easily find 100 new species in one go (i did an experiement at university on bacteria, using these biochemical tests and could only identify 1 out of about 10 bacteria types and that was only to genus level....very frustrating for me!)

2. viruses use the cell to make more viruses. They literally take over the cell and stop it from working as it should and makes it make the different parts of the virus AND put it together using all the nucleotides and proteins that the cell has. I am not sure how much detail you need for this one (and I am a little rusty on this topic too). Remeber viruses are only nuclear material (with the code for how the virus is made) and a protein coat. They are not able to make themselves BY themselves. They need a living cell.

3. number 3 is like number 1. They have to use biochemical tests to see how the archae or eu bacteria run internally (as morphologically they look very similar) and look at their DNA. I know that these 2 groups are less similar genetically than we are from say other mammals. You may have to dig further to see what EXACTLY scientists use....I can't remember this either....

Hope some of this helps

Answer 2

Eukaryotes are more highly organized. There are bigger differences between prokaryotes than between eukaryotes.

Viruses hi-jack the protein making machinery of the cell for its own purposes. Prions also use the cell for making what it needs.

cell wall, nucleus, organelles, mitochondriae.