We are very excited about the upcoming VANDA Contest in April. Thanks to everyone who has already signed up for the contest. We hope you are taking advantage of core training and brilliant courses. We will start a few live sessions as well soon. Don't miss an opportunity to learn, compete and win. 

Our fifth lesson focuses on living organisms. These organisms are placed into various categories based on similarities or common characteristics. Millions of living things inhabit our planet, but did you know that they are divided into five separate kingdoms? Like animals and plants, some are visible to the naked eye; but others, like bacteria, can only be seen under a microscope. 

Nobody knows for sure when, how or why life began on Earth, but Aristotle observed 2,400 years ago that all the planet's biodiversity was of animal or plant origin. This initial observation by the Greek philosopher was expanded in the 19^th and 20^th centuries by discovering new kingdoms, finally arriving at today's widely-recognized five, which cover the 8.7 million species that live on Earth, according to estimates from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

All the species in a particular kingdom have similar characteristics in terms of their growth and how they function. Please review the key attributes of this nature's kingdom below. 

In the first session of this lesson, let's delve into the world of the five kingdoms of nature and find out a bit more about them. Click on the image below to initiate the session for a quick introduction.

In the VANDA Contest course, you can deep dive into many more sessions to understand various aspects of these kingdoms. These kingdoms are interdependent. For the next session, we would like to focus on plant and animal structure. In this engaging session, you will learn how the acacia trees and the giraffes help each other survive in the African Savannah. Click on the image below to initiate the session. 

In our final session, we will talk about converting our enemies into a friend. Cancer has been a deadly disease for centuries. The scientist accidentally found out they can program bacteria to treat this deadly disease. Programming computers is easy. Synthetic biologists are working on using bacteria to not only send medicines to the tumours but are also programming in a way that medicines are released on a schedule. Isn't it really cool? Find out all about it by clicking on the image below.

We hope you enjoyed this article. We have posted just 3 out of 20 sessions in this blog. You can learn more by completing all 20 sessions after enrolling yourself in the VANDA Contest contest. Beautiful medals could be yours as well. Don't wait and enroll in the VANDA Science Contest right away!