Question

What are the salient features of monera?

Answer 1

Salient features of Kingdom Monera:

• Size: The organisms included in this kingdom are microscopic, unicellular and prokaryotic.
• Occurrence: These are omnipresent. They are found in all types of environment which are not generally inhabited by other living beings.
• Nucleus: These organisms do not have well-defined nucleus. DNA exists as a simple double-stranded circular single chromosome called as nucleoid. Apart from the nucleoid they often show presence of extrachromosomal DNA which is small circular called plasmids.
• Cell wall: Cell wall is made up of peptidoglycan (also called murein) which is a polymer of sugars and amino acids.
• Membrane-bound cell organelles: Membrane-bound cell organelles like mitochondria, chloroplast, endoplasmic reticulum are absent. Ribosomes are present, which are smaller in size (70S) than in eukaryotic cells.
• Nutrition: Majority are heterotrophic, parasitic or saprophytic in nutrition. Few are autotrophic that can be either photoautotrophs or chemoautotrophs.
• Reproduction: The mode of reproduction is asexual or with the help of binary fission or budding. Very rarely, sexual reproduction occurs by conjugation method.
• Examples:
  Archaebacteria: e.g. Methanobacillus, Thiobacillus, etc.
  Eubacteria: e.g. Chlorobium, Chromatium, and Cyanobacteria e.g. Nostoc, Azotobacter, etc