Reading: Bacteria

Key Points

-Structure, Morphology, and gram staining
-Binary Fission
-Mobile elements (DNA, plasmids, viruses) and their modes of transfer (transformation, conjugation, transduction)
-DON’T memorize the metabolism

Note from the Professor:

This week, we will be touching on a few topics of microorganisms – bacteria, viruses, and fungi.  We will start with bacteria today.  Focus on the key points as listed here.  There is mention of archae – the other branch of prokaryotes, which we will not focus on now.  Just know that they have some different characteristics from bacteria, but do not study the details of their structure, etc. There is a bit of talk about how long bacteria have been around, how we are related to bacteria, etc – feel free to ignore this as you desire.  The origin of them and us is not the focus!