The main characteristics of the domain bacteria are:
- They are cells that are very small.
- They reproduce through binary fission.
- They have a cell wall and a plasma membrane that surrounds the cell.
- They do not have a nucleus or organelles (such as mitochondria or chloroplasts).
- They reproduce by binary fission, which means they divide into two daughter cells that are identical to each other and to their mother cell except for the fact that each daughter contains half the number of chromosomes that its mother cell did (eukaryotes only split into two after meiosis).