Life Sciences Grd 11 Protista S 1

Welcome life sciences to yet another exciting life science lesson. We are busy journeying through the series microorganisms. if you have been following the series, we started off with viruses, looking at the impact that viruses had, the structure, the characteristics, and then the next one after that, we looked at bacteria and all the structure, the characteristics, and the different diseases that we're going to find in the microorganism called bacteria. And today we're going to look at kingdom of microorganisms called Protista. Protista or with an or Protists. Right, any which way you would be correct when you did that. Okay, this is bit of weird kingdom for me. kind of call it the file 13 kingdom. And what mean by that is it's got very two distinctive characteristics. It's kind of like on one side it's it's the beginning of the plant kingdom, right, where we're going to step up if we look at our when we look at our different kingdoms going into the plant biodiversity, right, it's it's one of the sections that is going to come in the next couple of lessons. And on the other side, belonging to this group is this whole weird animal kind of group, right, but we're going to get into those things later. So, the question that did ask you is that when we look at this concept of plant kingdom and animal kingdom, these guys are what are the starters. And often when we talk about evolution, we use the word common ancestors. And what we mean is they're like the very simple complex ones that kind of gave rise to the more complex, all right, plants and animals that are going to follow that. When we have look at the board, when we have look at our mind map, right, we follow the same procedure when we look at microorganisms. What do you need to know about the Protists? The first thing, what are their characteristics? In other words, what makes them, right, or what points, little boxes do we tick that are very specific to this kingdom, to these organisms, right, that put them in the Protist kingdom. Remember, though we're looking at microorganisms, each of them, and not viruses cuz they were not living, bacteria belong to the kingdom Monera, right? We're looking at microorganisms that belong to the kingdom Protista. We are then looking at specific structure, right, what do they look like? How are we going to be able to identify them? And as said here, it's going to be quite diverse in that we're looking at some plant-like and then some animal-like. And then each time we study microorganism, we need to look at disease. And the disease that we're going to look at when it comes to Protist, we're going to look at malaria. And when we look at the disease, we look at the effect that it has and how we're going to be able to manage that disease. Right, so guys, on the board, as always, there are lots of words, terms that are new to you to this section. Right, as said, I'm not going to go through each one of them as word, but take note, jot it down, right, and then go and check in your notes, go and check in your textbook. These are the words that you need to be able to use biologically. Do know what they are? Do know how to put it into specific content? Do know the meaning of that word? Okay, guys, so let's start off with, right, the characteristics. Now, if we have look at the characteristics, right, we are looking at what we're looking at is is what makes these organisms, right, part of this kingdom. Now, we dealt with this concept quite often, and this is this is one concept all Protists. Now, remember said to you we are going to see both animal and plant. All of the pro of the Protists are eukaryotes. Guys, and when we look at eukaryote, what are we looking at? We're looking at plant or an animal cell, okay, that both have nuclear membrane, unlike the bacteria, and they've also got whole host of membrane-bound structures. They could have they could have Golgi apparatus, they could have mitochondria. In the plants, they could have chloroplasts. So, we're looking at cell, right, that has far more complex structure than we were looking at bacteria. Very important, guys, they live in water. All right, they must live in somewhere moist. They are not adapted to live on land. And usually produce asexually. What does that mean? They do not need male or female, right, we usually by process called mitosis or cloning, and they make an identical copy of each other. Now, as said to you, when it comes to Protist, those things are common to all the Protists, regardless of whether you are animal-like or plant-like. All right, now let's going to get into the differences. And the differences are sometimes quite extreme. All right, that's why say to you it's it's it's it's it fits in there's lot of, right, characteristics that could fit into these criteria. Now, the first one, for example, is the opposite extremes. They can be microscopic, cuz remember we are looking at microorganisms, or they can be huge, all right, or they could be 100 long. And what we're talking about over here, you're going to see what falls into this category is going to be seaweed. All right, very often people think, all right, that seaweed is plant, it is not. Okay, what else do they vary with? All right, so some of them are autotrophic. And if they're autotrophic, that means they can make their own food. All right, they make their own food. But on the other hand, all right, some of them are going to be heterotrophic. They need to eat. All right, and usually what's going to happen is we're going to see that those that can make their own food are going to fall under the more plant-like, all right, Protists, and those that need to eat are going to fit under the animal-like Protists. Okay, guys, so let's start off when we use the word plant-like. Now, all of the, right, the plant-like Protists, we give name, and that is called algae, right? Algae belong to the kingdom Protists. And what are the characteristics of algae? Let's have look. All right, first of all, they have chlorophyll. So, algae, right, are usually going to be green. There are other ones like red and brown, but they all have the basis, right, of chlorophyll and can photosynthesize. And you're going to see that they're going to be really, really important, right, in aquatic food chains. That is in the water. They're going to be food for lot of the fish in the, right, and the micro some of the larger organisms that are in water. Okay, guys, they float. What does that mean? They are not plants, they don't have roots. They do not have roots to keep them, all right, anchored in the soil. They are going to float in water. And as we said before, they are going to reproduce asexually. What they usually going to do is this, they're just going to divide. We don't have male and we don't have female. So, we don't see typically male type algae and female type algae. All right, guys, have look at the the different kinds of structures, all right, these little round ones are really cool. Can you see here? These are unicellular algae. Now, these are all one single cell, all right, and these are called diatoms. And as said, they got green, they can they can photosynthesize, they got chlorophyll, all right, and they actually got really nice hard coat over here called silica, all right, and we often use silica when we build. This little guy is quite interesting. He is one cell, all right, and then they joined to each other. So, it's one like photo form. All right, so it's got all these ones and they make like one strip. And he gets his name Spirogyra. Can you see the chlorophyll? It's in spiral form. Can you see the green? Really quite funky. All right, so it's in spiral form. All right, that's all the cytoplasm and the All right, and the vacuole to keep it nice and floating. But, it's got that typical think it's such nice name, Spirogyra. All right, the spiral chloroplast. And each of these are one single cell. Even though they are joined together, the one cell is not technically reliant on the others. That one cell, all right, is simple unicellular cell and can work all by itself. Okay, so that's the first one, microscopic, nice and small. But, on the other hand, we've got seaweed. Now, seaweed as said to you are not part of the plant kingdom, guys. They don't have roots, they don't have stems, they don't have leaves. know that looks like that's roots, it's stems, and it's leaves, but it's actually not. It's just multicellular. It's mass of cells. All right, we don't see if you can remember when you might have done plant tissue, you're not going to see xylem, you're not going to be see phloem, you're not going to see collenchyma, sclerenchyma. All of those kind of secondary tissues here. So, what they are they're large masses of floating tissue, and these as said to you, all right, are multicellular. Large, lots of them together. They float, they photosynthesize, but they are not part of the plant kingdom. All right, now the animal ones. The animal part of protists are called protozoans. That's really important and sometimes bit of difficult word. All right, so when we had the the plant-like, that was algae. All the animal ones are called protozoans. Now, guys, this is where they are very different to plants. They are only unicellular. All right, they are not All right, multicellular at all. They are microscopic, we cannot see them. They're little animal-like things, and when they're animals, all right, they cannot make their own food and they need to eat. And that's what they spend most of their time doing. They need to swim around or to move, and they need to get the food. Whereas the algae part, chlorophyll, they could photosynthesize. These little guys, all right, need to get to where they need to go so that they were able to get food. All right, these are the groups that we are looking at when we get to these animal ones. This is an amoeba, all right, and what an amoeba is, it's an animal cell. It's single animal cell. So, here's cell membrane. All right. And inside we're going to see nucleus and the vacuole, but because it's an animal cell and that Remember when you looked at cells, animal cells don't have that restrictive cell wall. And the cytoplasm can change from more like jelly hard to water. And basically what these guys do is they slide along with these projections. The the cytoplasm like slings along, and that is how they're going to find their food. And they like put like these they're called pseudopodia, false feet, around what they're eating and they bring it up and then they're going to digest. All right, those are they're called the amoeboid cells. These guys over here are called ciliates. Now, these little cilia, they move. Little cilia hair-like structures. All right, so they move, they vibrate, and because of that those guys can swim. All right, those are your ciliates. These are your Giardia. Now, your Giardia you can see they've got like these little flagella. All right, little tails as well. And they are also able to move and swim around and go and find little things to eat. So, you've got your amoeboid that slings around, your cilia that's got all these little hairs beating that gets it on its way, and your Giardia Giardia over here, all right, which have got all these tails and are going to get it to move. Now, the next group don't move. All right, and these are your parasites. And this is the one that we are really going to look at. And the most important little guys that don't move, we call them Plasmodium. All right, and the Plasmodium are these guys over here. They see they're darker than the rest of them. Now, they don't move at all. All right, but they need to feed, and these are parasites. And when we use the term parasite, parasite is going to imply that it needs living host and that it actually is going to cause harm. If you look at the whole concept of symbiosis that we looked at, all right, parasitism, one organism is going to gain and the other one is going to be harmed. And this is the malaria Plasmodium. And this is the one we're going to look at, all right, when we look at the malaria. Now, also in this group of protists are really important little microorganisms called plankton. Now, I'm sure some of you might have watched little Finding Nemo or what those kind of, all right, cartoons where the whales ate the plankton. And again, what the plankton are, all right, are little microscopic structures that form the base of lot of aquatic food chains. They are eaten, all right, by lot of lot of organisms in the water, by fish, by the whales, they're also fish, by lots of, all right, turtles and all of those kind of animals that are going to live in the ocean. They're going to form huge important part, all right, of the ecosystem when we come to the food chains. And again, we're going to see that there are more plant-like plankton and there are going to be these more animal-like plankton. Now, the plant-like plankton are called phytoplankton. And as you can see over here, all right, they are all these unicellular structures. Even those chains, they're all unicellular structures, and they are eaten by lot of aquatic animals cuz that's where they're going to get their food cuz as you can see, they're green, all right, and that green means they can photosynthesize, so they are making starch, they are making energy. All right, the animal type ones. Zoo, let me just change my color of my pen quickly. All right, zooplankton. And that's what animals are. Animals belong in zoo. And if we have look at these creatures, you can see they are microscopic, they are unicellular, all right, and what they do is they are going to form the basis again of lot of the food chains in the aquatic environment. So, you've got the algae which form part of the plants, you form the protozoans which are part of the animal-like, and then you've got this group called, all right, plankton where you've got the plant ones which are called phytoplankton, and you've got the more animal-like structures called zooplankton. Okay, guys, that's all we've got for now. We're going to take quick break and we'll see you right back after this.