General Biology

Bio 110

Chapter 1
CONTENTS:

Part 1 Life on Earth: An Overview Chapter 1

PART II Chemistry of Life
a. Basic Chemistry Chapter 2

b. Chemistry of Organic Molecules Chapter 3

PART III The Cell
a. Cell Structure and Function Chapter 4
b. Membrane Structure and Function Chapter 5
CONTENTS:

PART IV Microbiology Chapter 6

PART VI Plant Chapter 7
PART VII Animal Chapter 8
PART IX Genetics Basic of Life
a. Genetic Control and Cell Cycle Chapter 9
b. Classical Genetics and Modern Chapter 10
Biotechnology.
 Part 1.1

1.1 LIFE ON EARTH

An Overview
PART I: LIFE ON EARTH: An Overview

1.1 HOW TO DEFINE LIFE

• a. Life is Plentiful and Diverse
• b. Levels of Biological Organization
• c. Acquirement of Materials and Energy and Homeostasis
• d. Behavior of Living Things
• e. Reproduction of Living Things
1.2 Adaptation and biodiversity of Living Things
• a. Organizing Diversity
1. Domains
2. Scientific Name
• b. Natural Selection
• c. Biodiversity
Part 1: Introduction to Biology

• The term “Biology” has been derived

from bios = life and logos = science
• It is the scientific study of all living
things, called organisms.
• Organisms include bacteria, protists,
fungi, plants, & animals
 1.1 How to Define Life
 Life on Earth exists in different forms and varieties.
 Humans share the planet with as many as 8.7 million different forms of life,
according to what is being billed as the most accurate estimate yet of life on
Earth.
 Organisms or living things behave in ways different from those of humans:

 The Antarctic blue whale is the biggest animal on the

planet, weighing up to 400,000 pounds
(approximately 33 elephants) and reaching up to 98
feet in length.

 The smallest known adult insect is a parasitic wasp,

Dicopomorpha echmepterygis. These tiny wasps are
often called fairyflies. Males are wingless, blind and
measure only 0.005 inches (0.127 mm) long.

 Some bacteria’s life is 15 minuets, while some pine

trees outlive as long as ten generations of human.
1.1 How to Define Life

 Living things (organisms) as well as non-living things are

composed of chemical elements and obey the same universe
laws of chemistry and physics of life (Figure 1.1).
 Organisms can be distinguished by how they get their food:
 Fungus digests its food externally by absorption.
 Sunflower, a photosynthetic plant, makes its own food.
 Snow goose, an animal, ingests its food.

Figure 1.1 Diversity of life on Planet Earth.

b. Levels of Biological Organization, Moving up the Hierarchy:

 Atoms: the basic units of matter.

 Molecules: cluster of atoms.
 Organelles: membrane bounded structures with
different jobs inside the cell.
 The cell, life starts here, the simplest entity that
has all prosperities of life.
 Tissue: Made of groups of similar cells that carries
out a particular function on an organism.
 Organs: a structure consisting of two or more
tissues that perform specialized functions on an
organism.
 Organ system: have specific functions ; are
composed of organs that carries out a particular
function in an organism.
 Organism: An individual living thing that can react
to stimuli, reproduce, grow, and maintain
homeostasis.
b. Levels of Biological Organization, Moving up the Hierarchy:

 Population: All the individuals of a

species that interbreed with each other
within a specific area.

 Community: the array of organisms

( different populations) living in
particular ecosystem.

 Ecosystem: All the organisms

( communities) living in particular area.

 Biosphere: All the environments

( ecosystems) on earth the support life.
b. Levels of Biological Organization
c. Acquirement of Materials and Energy and Homeostasis:

-Food provides nutrients, which are used as building blocks or for

energy (Figure 1.3).
 Energy is the capacity to do work. When cells take nutrient
molecules, they carry out a sequence of chemical reactions
through metabolism.
 The ultimate source of
energy for all life on
Earth is the sun.
 Plants and certain
other organisms can
capture solar energy
and carry-on
photosynthesis, eg.,
transform solar energy
into the chemical
energy. Figure 1.3
c. Acquirement of Materials and Energy and Homeostasis:

 Organism’s ability to maintain a state of biological balance is

called homeostasis.

 For life to continue,

temperature, moisture level,
acidity and other physiological
factors must remain within the
tolerance range of the
organism.
 Control mechanism; eg., when
you forget to eat, your liver
releases stored sugar to keep
blood sugar levels within
normal limits.

Figure 1.3
d. Behavior of Living Things:

 Multicellular, rather than unicellular organisms, can

manage more complex responses.
 The ability to respond often results in movement; eg.,
 Leaves of a plant turn toward the sun.
 These activities are termed behavior of the organism
to maintain homeostasis and search and compete for:
 Energy
 Nutrients
 Shelter
 Mates
e. Reproduction of Living Things:
 Life comes only from life.
 Every type of living thing can reproduce; make another organism
like itself (Figure 1.4).
 Bacteria and protists split in two. Most multicellular organisms
reproduce by pairing of a sperm from one partner and an egg from
the other partner to form an embryo.

 Then, many cell divisions take place

and organism grows to become an
adult.
 When living things reproduce, their
genes are passed on to the next
generation. DNA, over time, also
undergoes mutations (changes) that
may be passed on to the next
generation. These events help to
Figure 1.4 Penguins with their
create diversity of life. offspring.
 Part 1.2

1.2 Adaptation and Biodiversity of

Living Things
1.2 Adaptation and Biodiversity of Living Things

Adaptation is the modifications that make organisms better able to

function in a particular environment, ex.:
 Penguins are adapted to an aquatic existence by an extra
layer of short, thick feathers that form a waterproof coat. They
also slide on their bellies across the snow in order to
conserve energy when moving quickly.
 Camels have many adaptive traits for their life in the desert.
They have wide feet for walking on sand. They have long
eyelashes and thin slit nostrils that they can close to protect
them from blowing sand. They are adapted to survive a long
time without water and food.
- The unity of living things suggests that they are descended
from a common ancestor—the first cell (Figure 1.5).

Figure 1.5 Evolutionary tree of life.

a. Organizing Diversity:

 Taxonomy is the discipline of identifying and grouping organisms

according to certain rules.
 Several of the basic classification categories, or taxa going from
least to most inclusive are species, genus, family, order, class,
phylum, kingdom and domain (Table 1.1).

 Species is defined as a
group of interbreeding
individuals.
 Species placed within one
genus share many specific
characteristics and are the
most closely related, while
species placed in the same
Family share only general
characteristics.
 SYSTEMATICS

a. Linnaean Taxonomy
 At the seventeenth century, it was believed that each organism should
have a set name.
 During this time, Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778) developed binomial
nomenclature, by which each species receives a two-part name. For
example, Lilium canadense and Lilium bulbiferum are two different
species of lily (Figure 6.1).
 The first word, Lilium, is the genus (pl. genera), a classification category
that can contain many species.
 The second word, the specific epithet, refers to one species within that
genus.
 The scientific name is in italics;
the genus is capitalized, while
the specific epithet is not.
 Both names are separately
underlined when handwritten. Figure 6.1 Lily species.
SYSTEMATICS
a. Linnaean Taxonomy
 The specific epithet alone gives no meaning—just as the house
number alone without the street name gives no meaning.
 The genus name can be used alone to refer to a group of related
species.
 Also, the genus can be abbreviated to a single letter if used with the
specific epithet (e.g., L. bulbiferum) and if the full name has been
given previously.
 Scientific names are derived in several ways:
 Some scientific names are descriptive in nature, ex., Acer rubrum
for the red maple, ( Acer= maple, and rubrum= Red)
 Other scientific names may include geographic descriptions such
as Alligator mississippiensis for the American alligator.
 Scientific names can also include eponyms (named after
someone), such as the owl mite Strigophilus garylarsonii (named
after the cartoonist, Gary Larson).
SYSTEMATICS
a. Linnaean Taxonomy
 Why do organisms need scientific names? And why do scientists
use Latin, rather than common names, to describe organisms?
 common name varies from country to country because different
countries use different languages.
 even people who speak the same language sometimes use
different common names to describe the same organism, ex.,
bowfin, grindle, choupique and cypress trout describe the same
fish, Amia calva.
 Furthermore, between countries, the same common name is
sometimes given to different organisms. A “robin” in England is
very different from a “robin” in the United States, for example.
 Latin, on the other hand, is a universal language that not too
long ago was well known.
 When scientists throughout the world use the same scientific
binomial name, they know they are speaking of the same
organism.
 SYSTEMATICS
a. Linnaean Taxonomy (cont.)
 It is estimated that there are 30 million species now living on Earth.
 The task of identifying and naming the species of the world is continuing.
 The latest fast and efficient way of identifying species is based on their
DNA.
 This molecular method was found satisfactory for the identification of
mosquito species in India.
SYSTEMATICS:
b. Linnaean Classification Categories:
 In the context of classification, a species is a taxonomic category
below the rank of genus.
 The taxonomist Aristotle divided living things into 14 groups—
mammals, birds, fish and so on.
 Then, he subdivided the groups according to the size of the
organisms.
 Ray used a more natural system, grouping animals and plants
according to how they were related.
 Linnaeus simply used flower part differences to assign plants to
the categories species, genus, order and class.
 Nowadays, taxonomists use the following major categories of
classification:
species , genus, family, order, class, phylum, kingdom
 Recently, a higher taxonomic category, the domain, has been
added to this list; Bacteria, Archea, and Eucaria respectively.
SYSTEMATICS:
b. Linnaean Classification Categories:
 There can be several species within a genus, several genera within a
family and so forth—the higher the category, the more inclusive it is
(Figure 6.2). Therefore, there is a hierarchy of categories.
SYSTEMATICS:

b. Linnaean Classification Categories

 You can also say that the categories are nested.
 For example, a domain contains many kingdoms and one
kingdom contain many classes, and so forth.
 Organisms in the same domain have general traits in common;
those in the same species have quite specific traits in common.
 In most cases, categories of classification can be subdivided
into three additional categories, as in superorder, order,
suborder and infraorder.
 1.2 Adaptation and Biodiversity of Living Things:

a. Organizing Diversity
I. Domain
Biochemical evidence suggests that there are only three domains:
1- Bacteria (Figure 1,6) 2- Archaea (Figure 1.7). 3- Eukarya
 Both domains Bacteria and Archaea evolved from the first
common ancestor soon after life began.
 They are prokaryotes, which lack the membrane-bounded
nucleus found in the eukaryotes of domain Eukarya.
 Archaea’s cell walls & membranes are chemically more
similar to eukaryotes than bacteria.

Figure 1.7 Domain Archaea.

Figure 1.6 Domain Bacteria.
1.2 Adaptation and Biodiversity of Living Things:

• Organizing Diversity :
The three-domain system:
1- Domain Bacteria:
 Bacteria are so diversified and plentiful as they are found in large
numbers nearly everywhere on Earth.
 Bacteria differ from the archaea not structurally but biochemically
(Table 6.1).
 All forms of nutrition are found among the bacteria, but most are
heterotrophic.
 Heterotrophic bacteria are beneficial in ecosystems because they
break down organic remains.
 The Three-Domain System:
b. Domain Archaea:
 Like bacteria, archaea are prokaryotic unicellular organisms that
reproduce asexually.
 Archaea don’t look different from bacteria under the microscope, but
they are distinguishable from bacteria by a difference in their rRNA base
sequences and also by their unique plasma membrane and cell wall
. chemistry (Table 6.2).
 Archaea can live in aquatic environments that lack oxygen or are too
salty, too hot, or too acidic for most other organisms, perhaps
Archaea are the least evolved forms of life. (Figure1.8)

Table 6.1

Figure 1. 8 Domain
Archaea ( extreme
environment)
 The Three-Domain System
2. Domain Archaea (continued):
 The branched nature of diverse lipids in the archaeal plasma
membrane, for example, could possibly help them live in extreme
conditions.
 Ex., the halophiles are salt lovers living in bodies of water such as the
Great Salt Lake in Utah; and the thermoacidophiles are both high
temperature and acid loving.
Table 6.2
The Three-Domain System

3- Domain Eukarya:
Domain Eukarya contains four
major groups of organisms:
A- Protists, range from
unicellular (Figure1.9a) to a
multicellular forms. Some are Figure 1.9 a Domain Eukarya.
photosynthesizing, ex. algae.
B- Fungi, the familiar molds
and mushrooms that help
decompose dead organisms
(Figure 1.9b).
C- Plants, multicellular
photosynthetic organisms.
Figure 1.9 b Domain Eukarya.
D- Animals, multicellular
organisms that must ingest and
process their food.
 b. Natural Selection:
Natural selection is the process that made modification, or
adaptation, possible, where some aspect of the environment selects
which traits to be passed on to the next generation

 Figure 1.9 shows how the dietary habits of

deer affect the characteristics of the leaves
of a particular land plant; though mutations.
How?
 A plant species generally produces smooth
leaves, but an advantageous mutation
occurs to cause one plant to have hairy
leaves, while the deer (the selective agent)
prefer to eat smooth leaves.
 Then, the plant with hairy leaves survives
best and produces more seeds than most of
its neighbors.
Figure 1.9 Natural selection.
c. Biodiversity:
 Biodiversity is the total number and relative abundance of
species, the variability of their genes and the different
ecosystems in which they live.
 The present biodiversity of our planet has been estimated to be
as high as 15 million species and so far, less than 2 million have
been identified and named.
 Extinction is the death of a species or larger classification
category. It is estimated that presently we are losing as many as
400 species per day due to human activities.
 For example, several species of fishes disappeared from the
coral reefs of Indonesia and along the African coast because of
overfishing. The last mass extinction, about 65 million years ago,
caused many plant and animal species, including the dinosaurs,
to become extinct.
 It would seem that the primary bioethical issue of our time is the
preservation of ecosystems.
Thank you