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Cleaning cooking surfaces and fully with the cell wall. Remember that
cooking food can also help. bacteria cell walls are made of
peptidoglycan.
Archaea
In archaea, the cell wall serves the
Archaea are group of organisms same purpose, protecting the cell,
that have many similarities to but is made of different proteins.
bacteria. Both groups are single- The cell membrane of archaea are
celled, microscopic prokaryotes. also made of different materials
Both have cell walls and a single than bacterial cell membranes,
circular ring of DNA. Finally, both although again, their job is
can have flagella to help them basically the same.
move.
Finally, the ribosomes of archaea
Archaea are so similar to bacteria are different than those in bacteria.
that for a long time, scientists In fact, archaea bacteria are
thought that bacteria and archaea similar to eukaryotes, which are
were the same thing. More cells that have a nucleus.
recently, technology has improved
and scientists have been able to How Do Archaea Get Food
study the DNA of these groups of and Energy?
organisms. This helped them to
see that they do have some Most archaea are chemotrophs.
important differences. Remember that chemotrophs get
their energy by breaking down
chemical compounds. Other
archaea are autotrophs, getting
their energy from the process of
photosynthesis.
Finally, some archaea form
mutualistic relationships with other
organisms, allowing both the
archaea and the other organism to
Figure 13 – Although these archaea look
very similar to rod-shaped (bacilli) benefit. Like bacteria, many
bacteria, DNA tests showed that they are archaea help with digestion. As far
actually quite different. as we know, there are not archaea
that are parasites.
The first difference between
archaea and bacteria has to do
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