Bacteria General Overview – Imaluop

Hi, now we are going to discuss different characters and classification in bacteria general overview along with reproduction of bacteria. 

Basic Idea About Bacteria: 

It is believed that bacteria were the first organisms who lived on our primitive earth and they have played a great role in making our primitive earth environment into the present day earth environment which is suitable for living advanced organisms like humans.

They were able to tolerate very high temperatures and very high pressure and salinity which helped them to live in such extreme conditions in our primitive earth and they are also present today in such habitat which is impossible to live for other organisms.

So their adaptation power makes us think of the great possibility of life in every condition like hot water spring, saline water bodies and deep ocean where the pressure is unbearable for almost all organisms. 

Basic Structure of Bacteria: 

• As bacteria are prokaryotic organisms so they do not have well defined nucleus bound by a double layer of nuclear membrane and different membrane bound cell organelles are also absent in them, and they are unicellular organisms. 
• They have a cell wall outside of their plasma membrane like a plant cell but here the cell wall is not similar to that of the cell wall of a plant because here the cell membrane is formed by a special protein peptidoglycan which is not available in other groups of animals. 
• In some cases outside of their cell wall an extra protective capsule layer is present which gives them protection against different external harmful chemicals but in some cases they do not have cell walls like animal cells as seen in mycoplasma. 
• On the outside they have flagella which helps them to move from one place to another place through their growing medium and some thread like structure pilli is present on their outside which helps them to attach to the host cells. 
• Inside the cell they do not have well developed membrane bound nucleus so they do not have any true nucleus, genetic material remain directly open in cytoplasm and they have ribosomes as cell organelles which take part in protein synthesis in the bacterial cells. 

Classification of Bacteria: 

Bacteria can be classified into different ways on the basis of different criteria, for example we can classify them on the basis of composition of cell wall, shape, mode of nutrition and mode of respiration. 

Classification of Bacteria on the Basis of Cell Wall Composition: 

Cell wall composition is not the same in all bacteria, some bacteria cell walls are mainly made of peptidoglycan which are known as gram positive while some other bacteria have cell walls made of lipopolysaccharide which are known as gram negative bacteria. 

Classification of Bacteria on the Basis of Shape: 

Different bacteria also show diversity in their cell shape, for example in some bacteria their cells are rod shaped which are known as bacillus, some are round in shape who are known as coccus, some show a special comma shape and are known as vibrio while some bacteria show spiral appearance which named as spirilla. 

Classification of Bacteria on the Basis of Nutrition: 

Some bacteria like blue green algae are capable of producing their own food so they are known as autotrophic bacteria but some bacteria are not able to produce their own food so they collect food from other organisms and most of the time they cause different diseases in the host, they are known as heterotrophic bacteria. 

Classification of Bacteria on the Basis of Mode of Respiration: 

Some bacteria respire through aerobic process while some respire through anaerobic process so they can be divided into two groups on the basis of mode of respiration, aerobic bacteria and anaerobic bacteria. 

Read More: Bacterial Conjugation and Transduction