Monera (original) (raw)

The Monera are a biological kingdom, including all living things which have a prokaryotic cell organization. Prior to its creation these were treated as two separate divisions of plants: the Schizomycetes or bacteria, including most prokaryotes and considered as fungi, and the Cyanophyta or blue-green algae. The latter are now considered a group of bacteria, typically called the cyanobacteria. Recently DNA and RNA sequence analysis has demonstrated that there are actually two major groups of prokaryotes, the Bacteria and Archaea, which do not appear to be closer in relationship to each other than they are to the eukaryotes. These may be treated as subkingdoms, but most new schemes tend to abandon the Monera and treat these as separate domains or kingdoms.