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Lesson: Chapter 13 — The Living World

13.1. Protista and Fungi 1 of 6

Eukarya and its four kingdoms

The organisms of Domain Eukarya are made of eukaryotic cells — cells with an organised nucleus — and they are the prominent living things on Earth today.

They are organisms able to live under a variety of environmental conditions and not sensitive to antibiotics. That is, they cannot be destroyed by antibiotics.

The four kingdoms of Eukarya

1. Kingdom Protista

Unicellular organisms, or multicellular ones with no specialised tissue.

2. Kingdom Fungi

Fungi, whose cell walls contain chitin.

3. Kingdom Plantae

The multicellular organisms known as plants.

4. Kingdom Animalia

The multicellular organisms known as animals.

Why antibiotics do not harm you

You are a eukaryote too. An antibiotic destroys bacteria without destroying your own cells because what it targets is the prokaryotic cell, not cells in general. For the same reason an antibiotic does nothing to a virus.

This section takes the first two kingdoms. Plantae and Animalia have sections of their own.