Meet Eli the E. coli
This here is Escherichia coli, or Eli for short! He has agreed to take a break from his petri dish and go on a field trip with us.
Eli here is a bacterium. Bacteria are prokaryotes. Prokaryotes are single-celled organisms with free floating DNA and no membrane-bound nucleus or cell parts. This means that bacterium do not have a layer of covering that surrounds the parts of their cell and their DNA just floats around in their one cell. Unlike bacteria, humans are eukaryotes. Eukaryotes, on the other hand, have a membrane-bound nucleus and their DNA are found inside the nucleus. So far, we've only seen cartoons of bacteria, but what do they really look like? Let's follow Eli to his favorite microscope and find out! |
ELI |