In a paragraph or two explain: If your instructor gave you a culture containing

Question

In a paragraph or two explain:

If your instructor gave you a culture containing one species of a microorganism, how would you be able to tell whether it was an archaean, a bacterium, a fungus, or a protist?

Identify and explain characteristics you could use that would allow you to distinguish amongst these types of microorganisms.

Assume that you would have available any equipment or technologies needed to identify each organism.

If your instructor gave you a culture containing one species of a microorganism, how would you be able to tell whether it was an archaean, a bacterium, a fungus, or a protist?

Identify and explain characteristics you could use that would allow you to distinguish amongst these types of microorganisms.

Assume that you would have available any equipment or technologies needed to identify each organism.

Explanation / Answer

Bacteria is a prokaryotic organisms are identified by microscope. by using bacteria motility using hanging drop method. Salmonella, E.coli, vibrio are seen in dark background microscopy and phase contrast microscopy.
Most useful methos to visual the bacteria is gram staining. Gram +ve bacteria have thick cell wall so it appear as purple. Gram -ve bacteria have cell membrane outside a thin cell wall looks pink or red stain. Also based on shape we identified the bacteria coccus, spiral, bacillus, rod shaped bacteria under the microscope.

Protist are seen under microscope where the motion are clearly visible. The Amoeba moves by extending part of its cell. This extruding part is the pseudopod, and allows the Amoeba to drag itself from one place to another. Shape of amoeba is not constant.

There is no biochemical tests for the identification of archaea. We need to use 16srRNA gene with archaeal specific primers for PCR to analysis the archea. In normal microscope not able to visulalize the archea bacteria so we need to use electron microscope for structure identification.

Fungi is easily seen by light microscope. Congo Red - stain used to seen the fine details of hyphal structures. Lactophenol Cotton Blue is used to stain chitin.

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