Question

explain why traditional taxonomic definitions and criteria don’t work well for Bacteria and Archaea.

Answer 1

Some of the features of bacteria and Archaea that distinguish one from the other.

The Archaea are prokaryotic organisms and lives in more extreme environment than bacteria. These do not have peptidoglycan in their cell wall. These have unique RNA and are not sensitive to antibiotics that affect bacteria but are some that affect eukarya.

The bacteria are prokaryotic and has peptidoglycan in their cell wall. These also have unique RNA and these are sensitive to traditional antibiotic. So,The organisms are grouped based on their differences in rRNA structures.

Traditional taxonomic definitions and criteria don’t work well for Bacteria and Archaea because Some species are similar organisms that can interbreed and produce viable offspring, and although prokaryotes can produce viable offspring they do not interbreed sexually but asexually. Prokaryote contains only two domains bacteria and archaea.In the traditional taxonomic classification all the prokaryotes were classified into a single domain called the largest taxonomic grouping and given the higher ranking. Bacteria are very diverse, ranging from disease causing pathogens to beneficial photosynthesizers and symbionts. These are found everywhere in the universe and in every ecosystem. Hence this is very difficult to identify their presence, hence later these bacterial domain was classified into 5 major groups. These both were classified based on the similarities in apperence, physiology, nutrition and the genes. This classification is no longer used because bacteria and archaea are so distant genetically.