BIOL 1000 Study Guide - Antimicrobial Resistance, Glycerol, Safranin
Document Summary
The full extent of prokaryote diversity is unknown. Everything we know so far about prokaryotes is based on a tiny fraction of the total number of the species. We have only identified 6000 species, which is as low as 1% of the total number of species. There are entire habitats such as oceans (70% of earth"s surface) for which we know almost nothing about the prokaryote inhabitants. We have only been able to identify so few species of prokaryotes because we have been able to make detailed studies only of prokaryotes that we can grow in culture. Vast majority of prokaryotes cannot grow on the media and conditions we can provide. Prokaryotes thrive in extreme conditions, and we cannot yet create favorable growth conditions in our labs. Prokaryotes make up two of the three domains of life: Two domains of living organisms, archaea and bacteria, consist of prokaryotes (the third domain, eukarya, includes all eukaryotes)