Technological Institute of the Philippines

Quiapo, Manila

College of Engineering and Architecture

Chemical Engineering Department

CHE 320 - CHE31S1 - Molecular Biology

Submitted to:
Engr. Lina Dela Cruz

Submitted by:

Date:
May 18, 2021

"I affirm that I shall not give or receive any unauthorized help on this assignment and
that this work is my own"
Classification of Organisms

In biology, a domain refers to the largest of all groups in the classification of life. There are
currently 3 agreed groups at this level, the Archaea domain, Bacteria domain, and Eukarya
domain. Each domain contains a collection of organisms with similar properties and evolutionary
histories, as scientists have organized them. It should be noted that while the three domain
system is widely accepted and taught, it has been contested by a number of scientists. The
supposed relationships between the three domains is discussed below.

Domain in the Tree of Life

In the most widely accepted theme of the organization of life, a domain is the first subdivision,
as seen in the image below.

A domain is then further broken up into kingdoms. In the domain Eukarya, for instance, there
are four kingdoms: Animalia, Plantae, Fungi, and Protista. Each of these kingdoms is then
broken down into smaller groups, all the way down to individual species.

The Three Domains

Archaea

The Archaea are a domain of bacteria-like organisms, but they have a distinct biochemistry
which distinguishes them from bacteria. While they still have bacteria-like DNA and no
organelles, they also have several differences which put them into a completely different
domain. Their cell walls, and the RNA they produce, are significantly different from that found in
the domain Bacteria.

The organisms found in the domain Archaea are often extremophiles. These organisms thrive in
environments which other organisms find hostile. This could be a highly salty environment, one
of high or low temperature, or even one with chemicals that are toxic to other organisms. While
organisms in the domain Archaea were often considered distantly related to bacteria because of
their weird tendencies, other scientists have hypothesized that they are more closely related to
the organisms in the domain Eukarya.

Eukarya

The domain Eukarya represents, well, everything else. The organisms in this domain are
eukaryotic, meaning they have a membrane bound nucleus and organelles. In separating
different tasks of life into these membrane-bound chambers, eukaryotes are able to increase
their efficiency and host a different set of chemical reactions. For instance, mitochondria are
energy-transferring organelles which enable organisms in this domain to undergo aerobic
respiration. This allows them to process glucose, a necessary sugar for life, much more
efficiently. As such, the organisms in the domain Eukarya have expanded to a large number of
forms.

Kingdom

Historically, kingdom is the highest taxonomic rank, or the most general taxon used in
classifying organisms. However, in the new three-domain system introduced by Carl Woese in
1990, the domain is the most general taxon, and kingdom is only next.

The five-kingdom taxonomic classification of the world’s biota into Kingdom Animalia, Plantae,
Fungi, Protista, and Monera as proposed by Robert Whittaker in 1969 has become a popular
standard of classifying organisms. It became the basis for newer multi-kingdom systems such
as the six-kingdom system of Carl Woese and colleagues in 1977.
The five biological Kingdoms (by Robert Whittaker):

Kingdom Monera: the most primitive of the five kingdoms that includes all the bacteria, also
called monerans, which are single-celled prokaryotic organisms. (In six-kingdom system,
Kingdom Monera is split into two kingdoms:
(1) the Eubacteria, which are all bacteria apart from the archaebacteria, and
(2) the Archaebacteria, which are single-celled organisms that live under extreme environmental
conditions and have distinctive biochemical features)

Kingdom Protista: composed of single-celled and multicellular eukaryotes without the highly
specialized tissues. Protists include protozoa and some types of algae

Kingdom Fungi: includes multicellular, non-photosynthetic, saprotrophic organisms such as

slime moulds, mushrooms, smuts, rusts, mildews, moulds, stinkhorns, puffballs, truffles and
yeasts that absorb food in solution directly through their cell walls and reproduce through spores

Kingdom Plantae: members of this kingdom are multicellular, (mostly) autotrophic eukaryotes
that (usually) conduct photosynthesis

Kingdom Animalia: members of this kingdom are multicellular, heterotrophic eukaryotes that
digest food outside their cells and then absorb the digested nutrients

Phylum

Phylum is a taxonomic ranking that comes third in the hierarchy of classification, after domain
and kingdom. Organisms in a phylum share a set a characteristics that distinguishes them from
organisms in another phylum. The qualities that group animals into a phylum have changed
throughout scientific history, as better methods have arisen to determine how groups of animals
are related. Modern phylogenic systematics, or simply phylogenetics, uses a variety of traits to
map the changes between different groups of animals. Different hypotheses of how a phylum is
related to other phyla (plural of phylum) create different cladograms, which display the
relationships visually. The cladogram that is the most parsimonious, or has the fewest number
of changes, is usually accepted as the most likely hypothesis of the relationships between
different phyla. Plants, protists, and bacteria have also been categorized into divisions
historically. The word was later changed to phylum.

There are approximately 35 animal phyla, 12 plant phyla, and 7 phyla of fungi. The bacteria,
including the archaea, are grouped into roughly 34 phyla, although the relationships between
these groups are not as well established. The exact numbers of phyla are never known for sure,
as new evidence and techniques are discovered. For instance, with the advent of genetic testing
many groups that were thought to be monophyletic were found to have very different genetics.
Monophyletic is a term that describes a complete group, with all the common ancestors.
Polyphyletic groups contain organisms that do not share a recent ancestor, and many more
groups would have to be included to make the phylum monophyletic. In these cases, the phylum
is split into multiple phyla. Other times, two different phyla are found to be closely related and
will be combined into the same phylum.

Class

In biological classification of organisms, a class is a major taxonomic rank below the phylum (or
division) and above the order. For example, class Mammalia belongs to phylum Chordata.
Class Mammalia is comprised of various orders such as Chiroptera (bats), Primates (apes),
Carnivora (dogs, cats, jaguar, bears, etc.), Cetacea (whales), Proboscidea (elephants), and
many others.

Order

(1) (taxonomy) A taxonomic rank used in classifying organisms, generally below the class, and
comprised of families sharing a set of similar nature or character
(2) A succession or sequence, usually arranged in a series
Supplement
(Taxonomy) For instance, Class Mammalia includes Order Chiroptera (bats), Order Primates
(primates), Order Carnivora (meat-eating mammals), Order Cetacea (whales and purpoises),
Order Insectivora (insect-eaters), etc.
Order in a hierarchical classification of organisms is generally in between Class and Family.
However, in certain forms of classification, other taxonomic ranks in between include the
following:
Magnorder
⇓
Superorder
⇓
(Order)
⇓
Suborder
⇓
Infraorder
⇓
Parvorder

Family

(1) A taxonomic rank in the classification of organisms between genus and order.
(2) A taxonomic group of one or more genera, especially sharing a common attribute.
(3) A collection of things or entities grouped by their common attributes, e.g. protein family, gene
family, etc.
(4) A group of people descended from a common ancestor; a kin; a tribe.
Supplement
In taxonomy, a family is more precise than orders but less precise than genera. Organisms
belonging to the same family would have evolved from the same ancestors and share relatively
common characteristics.
Carolus Linnaeus used the word familia in his Philosophia botanica (1751) to denote major
groups of plants; trees, herbs, ferns, palms, etc. And in zoology, the family as a rank
intermediate between order and genus was introduced by Pierre André Latreille in his Précis
des caractères génériques des insectes, disposés dans un ordre naturel (1796).
Word origin: from the term familia was coined by French botanist Pierre Magnol in 1689 where
he called families (familiae) the seventy-six groups of plants he recognized.

Genus

Genus, plural genera, biological classification ranking between family and species, consisting of
structurally or phylogenetically related species or a single isolated species exhibiting unusual
differentiation (monotypic genus). The genus name is the first word of a binomial scientific name
(the species name is the second word) and is always capitalized. One example of a plant genus
containing many species is Rosa, which contains more than 100 species of roses. In contrast,
the genus Ginkgo is monotypic, containing only the common ginkgo (also called the maidenhair
tree). Among animals, for example, the species of horses and zebras form the genus Equus,
whereas the hawksbill sea turtle is the only member of the genus Eretmochelys.

Species

Species, in biology, classification comprising related organisms that share common

characteristics and are capable of interbreeding. This biological species concept is widely used
in biology and related fields of study. There are more than 20 other different species concepts,
however. Some examples include the ecological species concept, which describes a species as
a group of organisms framed by the resources they depend on (in other words, their ecological
niche), and the genetic species concept, which considers all organisms capable of inheriting
traits from one another within a common gene pool and the amount of genetic difference
between populations of that species. Like the biological species concept, the genetic species
concept considers which individuals are capable of interbreeding, as well as the amount of
genetic difference between populations of that species, but it may also be used to estimate
when the species originated.