1.2 describe the common features shared by organisms within the following main groups: plants, animals, fungi, bacteria, protoctists and viruses

EDIT: Hi guys, I was just going through the blog and I CANNOT work out why the formatting on this post is so strange (the text keeps coming up as different fonts/colours) -  I wrote it all at the same time so I don't see why this is happening. I've tried to resolve but with no luck, sorry:(

For each group (plants, animals, fungi, bacteria, protoctists and viruses) you will need to be able to...

• give and describe the common features of the organism
• give examples

They are as follows...

Plants

• These are multicellular organisms
• Their cells contain chloroplasts and are able to carry out photosynthesis
• Their cells have cellulose cell walls
• They store carbohydrates as starch or sucrose
  

Examples include flowering plants, such as a cereal (e.g maize), and a herbaceous legume (e.g peas or beans)

Animals

• These are multicellular organisms
• Their cells do not contain chloroplasts and are not able to carry out photosynthesis
• They have no cell walls
• They usually have nervous coordination and are able to move from one place to another
• They often store carbohydrate as glycogen
  

Examples include mammals (e.g humans) and insects (e.g housefly and mosquito) 


Fungi

• These are organisms that are not able to carry out photosynthesis
• Their body is usually organised into a mycelium made from thread-like structures called hyphae, which contain many nuclei
• Some examples are single-celled
• Their cells have walls made of chitin
• They feed by extracellular secretion of digestive enzymes onto food material and absorption of the organic products
• This is known as saprotrophic nutrition
• They may store carbohydrate as glycogen
  

Examples include Mucor, which has the typical fungal hyphal structure, and yeast, which is single-celled

Bacteria

• These are microscopic single-celled organisms
• They have a cell wall, cell membrane, cytoplasm and plasmids
• They lack a nucleus but contain a circular chromosome of DNA
• Some bacteria can carry out photosynthesis but most feed off other living or dead organisms
  

Examples include Lactobacillus, a bacterium which is used in the production of yoghurt from milk, and Pneumococcus, a bacterium that acts as the pathogen causing pneumonia

Protoctists

These are microscopic single-celled organisms. Some, like Amoeba, that live in pond water, have features like an animal cell, while others, like Chlorella, have chloroplasts and are more like plants. A pathogenic example is Plasmodium, responsible for causing malaria

Viruses

• These are small particles, smaller than bacteria
• They are parasitic and can reproduce only inside living cells
• They infect every type of living organism
• They have a wide variety of shapes and sizes
• They have no cellular structure but have a protein coat and contain one type of nucleic acid, either DNA or RNA
  

Examples include the tobacco mosaic virus that causes discolouring of the leaves of tobacco plants by preventing the formation of chloroplasts, the influenza virus that causes ‘flu’ and the HIV virus that causes AIDS

YES this is a lot of information to remember, I find it easiest to remember by drawing up either a mind map or a table, that way you can easily see and compare which organisms store carbohydrate as glycogen, for example.