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Asked by anon-354690 to John on 8 Mar 2023.
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John Clark-Corrigall answered on 8 Mar 2023:
Hi Seat481tee, Just like you and me bacteria are made up of DNA. Small building blocks labelled A,T,C and G make up most living organisms. Genes are a sequence of these blocks that help organisms carry out different jobs. Bacteria are just less complex than we are and bacteria they have fewer genes.
Germs, I think are a broad term for bacteria and viruses that cause disease and these too are made out of DNA or RNA (simpler building blocks) aswell.
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Comments
Edward commented on :
All animals an plants are made up of lots of cells that work together as a team. Your body has brain cells that help you think, cells in your eye that can detect light, cells in your muscles that shrink and expand to help you move, and so on. Bacteria are also cells, but they can live separately from each other. So, your body is like an orchestra and each musician in the orchestra is a cell (they play different instruments, just like our cells in our body do different jobs). Bacteria, instead, are more like the individual musicians you sometimes see playing alone on the street in city centres.
Orode commented on :
Hello Edward, I really like that idea of bacteria being “individual musicians you sometimes see playing alone on the street in city centres” 😁.
I will also add that germs can be bacteria, fungi (like that fluffy thing you see on spoilt bread), viruses, and many other microorganisms which are too small to be seen with our eyes. They are everywhere some bad some good (we use bacteria in the making of yoghurt and cheese). Bacteria also help us digest food and we have lots of good bacteria in our bodies. There is a theory that cells accumulated substances, plus many other steps, from the environment and some of these became bacteria. Some bacteria can divide very fast (by binary fission) for example every 20 mins which helps them to be in large numbers wherever they are able to live.