What is Living?

The living beings live in different types of habitats like

forests, mountains, deserts, oceans, freshwater bodies, hot
springs, polar regions, etc.
There are certain distinctive characteristics exhibited by
living organisms which distinguish them from non-living.
Unique Characteristics of Living Organisms
Growth Metabolism & Cellular
Increase in mass and no. of individuals Organization
are characteristics of growth and can Metabolism= Anabolism+ Catabolism. Metabolic reaction
be exhibited by both living and non- occur inside the cell, it means cellular organization is strictly
living things. Therefore, growth is not a required for metabolism. Metabolism and cellular organization
defining feature of living things is a characteristic and defining feature of all living things.

Consciousness Reproduction
The state of being aware of what is around you Organisms reproduce by both sexual
and able to sense environment. From prokaryotes and asexual means. Organisms like
to most complex eukaryotes all organisms can mules, worker bees, etc are unable to
sense environmental stimuli and react to them. reproduce. Therefore, reproduction is
Therefore, consciousness becomes the defining not a defining feature of living things.
feature of living things
 Diversity in the Living World
● Biodiversity refers to the number and types of different organisms present on
earth. There are 1.7-1.8 million known species int the world.
● Based on characteristics, all living organisms can be classified into different taxa.
This process of classification is taxonomy.
Taxonomy includes :
 Characterization – it is based on the understanding of characters of organisms like
external and internal structure, structure of cell, developmental process and
ecological information.
 Identification – the correct description of organism
 Classification – the placing of an organism or a group of organisms into different
categories
 Nomenclature – the naming of living organisms such that a particular organism is
known by the same name all over the world
 Systematics – this branch of study focused on determining the evolutionary
relationships between organisms
Binomial Nomenclature
 Binomial nomenclature was proposed by Carolus Linnaeus.
 ICBN - International Code For Botanical Nomenclature
 ICZN – International Code Of Zoological Nomenclature

Universal rules of nomenclature :

● Biological names are generally in Latin and written in italics.
● The first word in biological name represents the genus while
the second component denotes the specific epithet.
● Both the words in a biological name, when handwritten are
separately underlined, or printed in italics to indicate their
Latin origin.
● The first word denoting the genus starts with a capital letter
while the specific epithet starts with a small letter.
● The name of the author is written in abbreviated form after
the specific epithet.
Taxonmic Categories
 Herbarium

Manuals,
Botanical
Monograph
Garden
& Flora

Taxonomical
Aids

Key Museum

Zoological
Parks
The Biological
classificaTion
 Identification of differences among organisms and placing
them into groups that reflect their most significant features
and relationship is called biological classification.
 Father of biology : Aristotle
On basis of simple morphological features:
1. Plants- Trees, Herbs and Shurbs
2. Animals- With Blood (Enaima) and
Without Blood (Anima)
 The purpose of biological classification is to organize the
vast number of known plants into categories that could be
studied easily.
Classification of Living Organisms
Two Kingdom Classification – Carolus Linnaeus
•Plantae & Animalia

Three Kingdom Classification - Haeckel

•Plantae, Animalia & Protista

Four Kingdom Classification - Copeland

•Plantae, Animalia , Protista & Monera

Five Kingdom Classification – R. H. Whittaker

•Plantae, Animalia, Protista, Monera & Fungi
Three Domain System
– Carl Woese
Kingdom
 All prokaryotic organisms were grouped together under Kingdom Monera.
 Bacteria are the sole members of the Kingdom Monera. They are the most
abundant micro-organisms.
  Cell wall is made up of peptidoglycan except
archaebacteria and mycoplasma.
 Genetic material is naked DNA known as nucleoid.
Histone, nuclear envelope, nucleoplasm,
nucleolus and chromatin are absent.
 All membrane bound organelles are absent.
 Contains 70 S type of ribosomes.
General  Since mitochondria are absent, therefore
Characteristics: respiratory enzymes are associated with plasma
membrane (mesosome).
 Nutrition is autotrophic (chemosynthetic and
photosynthetic) and heterotrophic
(saprophytic/parasitic).
 Reproduction takes place by asexual methods
only.
Nutrition in Bacteria :
 Autotrophs- These bacteria use chemical energy for their own food synthesis. On the basis
of source of energy autotrophs are of following two types:
(i) Photosynthetic autotrophs- They use light energy for photosynthesis.
(ii) Chemosynthetic autotrophs- They use chemical energy instead of light energy for food
synthesis. Chemical energy is obtained from oxidation of inorganic or organic compounds.
 Heterotrophs- Most of the bacteria are heterotrophic i.e., they can not manufacture their
own food. They receive their own food from dead organic matter (saprophytic) or living
organisms (parasitic)

Habitat:
 They show cosmopolitan distribution.
 They are found everywhere, i.e., in air, water, soil and in plants and animals.
 They also live in extreme habitats such as hot springs, desert, snow and deep
ocean where very few other life forms can survive.
 Many of them live in or on other organisms as parasites.
 Types Of Bacteria
On the basis of
their shape

COCCUS BACILLUS SPIRILLUM VIBRIUM

(spherical shaped) (rod shaped) (spiral shaped) (comma shaped)
ARCHAEBACTERIA
 Most primitive form of life.
 These bacteria are special since they live in most
extreme environmental conditions such as extreme salty
areas (halophiles), hot springs (thermoacidophiles) and
marshy areas (methanogens).
 Archaebacteria differ from other bacteria in having a
different cell wall structure and this feature is
responsible for their survival in extreme conditions.
 Methanogens are present in the gut of several
ruminant animals such as cows and buffaloes and thus
are responsible for the production of methane (biogas)
from that dung of these animals.
EUBACTERIA
 There are thousands of eubacteria or true
bacteria .
 They are characterized by the presence of a rigid
cell wall and if motile, a flagellum.
Mycoplasma
 Mycoplasma are organisms that completely lack a cell wall.
 They are the smallest living cells known and can survive
without oxygen.
 Many mycoplasma are pathogenic in animals and plants.
Cyanobacteria
 The cyanobacteria (also referred to as blue green algae) have chlorophyll
a similar to green plants and are photosynthetic autotrophs.
 The cyanobacteria are unicellular, colonial or filamentous freshwater /
marine or terrestrial algae. The colonies are generally surrounded by
gelatinous sheath.
 They often form blooms in polluted water bodies. Some of these
organisms can be fix atmospheric nitrogen in specialized cells called
heterocysts, e.g., Nostoc and Anabaena.
 Chemosynthetic autotrophic bacteria oxidize various inorganic
substances such as nitrates, nitrites and ammonia and use the released
energy for their ATP production. Heterotrophic bacteria are most
abundant in nature.
Economic Importance Of Reproduction
Bacteria
 The chemosynthetic autotrophic play a great  By binary fission - It takes place
role in recycling nutrients like nitrogen, during favorable conditions.
phosphorous, iron and sulphur.  By spore – It takes place in adverse
 The majority of heterotrophic bacteria are conditions. The spore is thick walled,
important decomposers. highly resistant and surrounded by
 They are helpful in making curd from milk, protective layers.
production of antibiotics, fixing nitrogen in  By sexual reproduction - They also
legume roots, etc. produced by sort of sexual reproduction
 Some are pathogens causing damage to human by adopting a primitive type of DNA
beings, crops, farm animals and pets. Cholera, transfer from one bacterium to the
typhoid, tetanus, citrus canker are well known other.
diseases caused by different bacteria.