1.2 describe the common features shared by organisms within the following main groups: plants, animals, fungi, bacteria, protoctists and viruses, and for each group describe examples and their features as follows (details of life cycle and economic importance are not required)

Plants
- Are multicellular organisms
- their cells contain chloroplasts
- have cell walls made of cellulose
- they sort carbohydrates as starch or sucrose
-have a nucleus
- they can photosynthesise

Animals
- are multicellular organisms
- cells do not contain chloroplasts
- have no cell walls
-store carbohydrates as glycogen
- have a nucleus

Fungi
- some are multicellular, some are single celled
-have cell walls made of chitin
- store carbohydrates as glycogen
- their body is organised into a mycelium made from thread-like structures called hyphae which may contain nuclei
- can not carry out photosynthesis (and therefore do not contain chloroplasts). Instead they feed by saprotrophic nutrition (extracellular secretion of digestive enzymes onto food material and absorption of the organic product


Bacteria
- all are single celled
-have a cell wall
- lack a nucleus but contain a circular chromosome of DNA (a plasmid)
- some can carry out photosynthesis, must most feed of living or dead organisms

Protoctists
- all are single celled
- some have chloroplasts (but some don't)
- some have features like animals (for example, no cell wall) whilst others have features like plants (for example, have a cell wall)

Viruses
- they have no cellular structure (so are not even single celled)
- they have a protein coat
- they contain one type of nucleic acid (either DNA or RNA)
- can not photosynthesise. They are parasitic and can reproduce only inside living cells. They infect every type of living organism.

Examples

Plants - maize
animal - human
fungi - Mucor (multicelled), yeast (single celled)
bacteria - lactobacillus
protoctists - amoeba (plant like) chlorella (animal like)
viruses - influenza, HIV