Pearson Edexcel International GCSE Biology · specification 4BI1 · Paper 1 | Whole paper: Core content, all five topics · Free · no account needed
1(b) Variety of living organisms (4BI1 specification)
The features of the main groups of organisms — plants, animals, fungi, protoctists, bacteria and viruses — and one named example of each.
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The Incandio page that teaches this — each explained in full, then proved in marked questions, taught back to an AI pupil and defended in a debate. Completely free.
- Bacteria, Viruses and Pathogens — What a prokaryote is, why a virus is not classed as living at all, and what the word pathogen actually covers.
The teaching route this belongs to: Topic 1 · The nature and variety of living organisms (Biology) — the lessons in order, with every gate.
Specification coverage
Topic 1 The nature and variety of living organisms (b) Variety of living organisms — statements 1.3–1.10
Assessment objectives: AO1, AO2. Suggested learning time: 60 minutes.
Required knowledge
- Features of plants: multicellular, chloroplasts, photosynthesis, cellulose cell walls, store carbohydrate as starch or sucrose
- Features of animals: multicellular, no chloroplasts, no cell walls, usually nervous coordination, store carbohydrate as glycogen
- Features of fungi: not photosynthetic, cell walls of chitin, may be multicellular with hyphae, feed by extracellular secretion of enzymes (saprotrophic nutrition), store carbohydrate as glycogen
- Features of bacteria: microscopic, single-celled, cell wall, cell membrane, cytoplasm and plasmids, no nucleus but a circular chromosome of DNA
- Features of protoctists: microscopic single-celled organisms, some with features like an animal cell and some like a plant cell
- Viruses as particles, not cells, that can only reproduce inside living cells and have no cellular structure
- A named example from each group, and the pathogens named in the specification
Required skills
- Classify an unfamiliar organism from a description of its features
- Explain why viruses are not classed as living organisms
How it is examined
- Multiple-choice and short-answer recall
- Application of the content to an unfamiliar context
- Extended open-response, marked on the quality of a connected explanation
Common mistakes
- Calling bacteria 'plants without leaves'. Bacteria are prokaryotic: no nucleus, no membrane-bound organelles.
- Saying viruses are alive. They cannot carry out the characteristics of living organisms independently.
- Forgetting the carbohydrate stores, which is one of the specification's clearest discriminators between groups.
This page maps the specification. The pages above teach it, and the Biology lessons hold the whole course — completely free.