Culturing Capabilities of Microorganisms in Synthetic Media

Bacteria (1) and Fungi (2) are living cells that contain their own metabolic machinery, allowing them to replicate on non-living nutrient agar or synthetic media in a lab. Viruses (3) are obligate intracellular parasites that lack an independent metabolism and can only replicate inside a living host cell, meaning they cannot be grown in synthetic, cell-free media. > Bacteria and fungi grow on synthetic nutrient media, whereas viruses require living cells to replicate. Answer: (a).