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Redefining the Kingdoms of Life

Did you know that the kingdoms of life that are typically taught in most schools is not the most up-to-date method of classification?

In the United States, many text books use the six kingdom classifications that go like this: Animalia, Plantae, Fungi, Protista, Archaea, Bacteria while English and Australian textbooks use Robert Whittaker’s five kingdoms as Animalia, Plantae, Fungi, Protista, and Prokaryota or Monera.

The Whittaker, 5-kingdom taxonomic tree method was conceived in 1969 and is simpler to understand because it is based on observable physical differences. However, in 1977, Darwinian Carl R. Woese, an American microbiologist and physicist and currently a professor of microbiology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, conceived the idea of redefining the standard 5 kingdoms to a three-domain system based on genetic rather than physical differences.

In an effort to understand the “evolution” and differences of microbes, Woese defined his three-domain system, as Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukarya and is currently being heavily studied by biogeochemists, ecologists and conservationists

In fact, on February 1, 2009, eleven days before the 200^th birthday of Charles Darwin, David Attenborough, a strong proponent for evolution, created an interactive website called “The Tree of Life” using Woese’s new classification system in an attempt to prove that links between living things and evolution exists. From what I could see, there was no direct link found.

Although, I believe this project may ultimately produce biomedical or bio-genetic uses, I’m not convinced that it can be applied to the evolution concept. From one perspective, evolution is disproven by the 2^nd law of thermodynamics that states that all usable energy in the universe becomes less and less. For instance, living tissue becomes simpler as it decays.  So, how then are we to believe the evolution of progressively more complex life (increasing in energy) is happening while the opposite (decreasing in energy) is true in with regards to the rest of the universe?  A thorough study on this topic shows that it’s not possible.

So, until concrete proof is found, educators should endeavor to research both sides of this argument before introducing Woese’s 3-domain system as concrete evidence of the theory of evolution.