6.02 Bacteria: Life Inside One Cell

Time to Reflect

This has been a great first day on the ranch. It is time to get settled in and rest up for tomorrows adventures.

Bacteria can live in just about any environment. Even though they have only one cell, they have special adaptations and a couple of ways to reproduce that allow them to be very successful organisms. Bacteria can be both harmful and beneficial organisms. As our adventures continue, we will discuss the benefits of bacteria further.

• Bacteria are the largest group of living things.
• Bacteria have special adaptations to help them survive in a wide variety of environments.

Activity Summary Questions: Some Questions to Answer

You should have a pretty good understanding of bacteria at this point. Take a few minutes to check your notes and complete the following four items. You will submit these as the assessment for this activity, so you may want to copy and paste these into a word processing document and save it as an .rtf for easy submission later.

1. List three places bacteria can be found. (3 points)
2. A bacterium that lives in the deep ocean vents where hot, mineral rich water and lava emerge from the ocean floor would be classified into what kingdom of bacteria? (2 points)
3. Explain how endospores have allowed some bacteria, like tetanus, to be a successful species. (5 points)
4. Compare and contrast binary fission and conjugation; list at least two ways they are alike and two ways they are different. (5 points)

Tour Debrief

You have completed this activity if you have:

• added the new terms and their meanings to your Module 6 Glossary Sheet
• watched the review video on bacteria
• completed the Activity Summary Questions and are ready to submit them