Biology 1 Lecture 1

Lecture 1 Biology is the study of life

A. Concept and Manifestations of Life

B. Methods in the Study of Biology
C. Origin of Life

The Concept of Life The Concept of Life

“How can the events in space and time “Life is a self-sustaining chemical system
which take place within the spatial boundary capable of Darwinian evolution.”
of a living organism be accounted for by
- Gerald Joyce (Scripps Research Institute)
physics and chemistry?”
- Erwin Schrödinger, What is Life (1944)

The Concept of Life The Concept of Life

“What is life?” Only three simple words, and yet  life is a particular set of processes that
out of them spins a universe of questions that are result from the organization of matter
no less challenging. What precisely is it that
separates the animate from the inanimate? What  life resists a
are the basic ingredients of life? Where did life first simple, one-
stir? How did the first organisms evolve? Is there sentence
life everywhere? To what extent is life scattered definition
across the cosmos? If other kinds of creatures do
exist on exoplanets, are they as intelligent as we
are, or even more so?  yet we can
recognize life
- J. Craig Venter, Life at the Speed of Light (2013) by what living
things do

J 1
Biology 1 Lecture 1

Manifestations and Characteristics of Life 1. Organization and Order

 living things have a complex organization

2. Metabolism and Homeostasis

 characteristics  energy utilization

of life emerge
from an
 organisms
organism’s take in
organization
energy and
transform it to
do work

2. Metabolism and Homeostasis

3. Reproduction

 organisms produce their own kind

J 2
Biology 1 Lecture 1

4. Growth and Development 5. Irritability and movement

 heritable programs (DNA) direct pattern of  capable of response to environmental stimulus

growth and development

6. Variation, change, and evolution 6. Variation, change, and evolution

African wild Coyote Fox Wolf Jackal

dog

Thousands to
millions of years
of natural selection

Ancestral canine

Physical entities with some of the characters of
living organisms: viruses
 obligate intracellular parasites
 made up of nucleic acid enclosed in a protein coat
 sometimes wrapped in a membranous envelope
Physical entities with some of the characters of
living organisms: viroids
 plant pathogens composed of molecules of
naked circular RNA only several hundred
nucleotides long

Electron microscopic picture of potato

http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/graphics/photos/oct01/k3145-1.htm
spindle tuber viroid (PSTVd)

J 3
Biology 1 Lecture 1

Physical entities with some of the characters of

living organisms: prions

 infectious forms of protein that may

increase in number by converting related
proteins to more prions
Scientific Method

Microscopic image of a
tissue sample from
human brain showing a
clump of infectious
prions

The Nature of Science The Nature of Science

• Deductive Reasoning • Inductive Reasoning
– Examining individual cases by applying – Discovering general principles through
accepted general principles. examination of specific cases.

Copyright © McGraw-Hill Companies Permission

required for reproduction or display

Copyright © McGraw-Hill Companies Permission

required for reproduction or display

SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY
Scientific Process
• Observation - Careful observation of a
process or phenomenon
• Hypothesis - Guess concerning the
observation
– May generate multiple hypotheses.
• Prediction - Expected consequences of a
correct hypothesis

J 4
Biology 1
Scientific Process
• Experiment - Test of a hypothesis
– Controlled Experiment - All factors influencing
the experiment (controls) must be kept
constant.
• Conclusion - Draw a conclusion from the
results
– Reject or fail to reject hypothesis
Limitations of Science
 Scientific study is limited to area that can
be observed and measured
o cannot be used to address all questions
o bound by practical limits
- temporal and spatial considerations
Theories on the origin of life
1. Spontaneous Generation Theory
2. Biogenesis
3. Special Creation
4. Biogeochemical Theories
5. Interplanetary or Cosmozoic Theory
J 5
Lecture 1
Theory and Certainty
• Theory - set of hypotheses that have been
thoroughly tested over time, and generally
accepted by the scientific community
– acceptance is always provisional
• to the general public a theory is synonymous with
a guess due to lack of knowledge
Biological Methods
 techniques or procedures that are used to
study living things
 include experimental and computational
methods, approaches, protocols and tools
for biological research
1. Spontaneous Generation
 living organisms could develop
spontaneously from nonliving matter
 from the time of the Greeks until the 19th
century it was common “knowledge” that
life could arise from nonliving matter
 Aristotle (384 – 322 BC) thought that
some of the simpler invertebrates could
arise by spontaneous generation
Biology 1 Lecture 1

1. Spontaneous Generation 1. Spontaneous Generation

 In 1668, Francesco Redi made a simple

experiment to demonstrate that maggots  In 1745, John Needham, claimed that
do not arise spontaneously from decaying microbes develop spontaneously from
matter. nutrient fluids.

decaying meat

maggots
decaying meat

1. Spontaneous Generation 1. Spontaneous Generation

 In 1765, Lazzaro Spallanzani, showed  In 1862, Louis
that nutrient fluids heated after being Pasteur did
sealed in flasks did not develop microbial experiments
growth. which provided
the final
argument to
disprove the
theory

Needham’s set-up Spallanzani’s set-up

 Pasteur 2. Biogenesis
conducted broth
experiments that
rejected the idea  proposed by Rudolf Virchow in the 1850s
of spontaneous
generation  living organisms whether simple or
complex can arise only from preexisting
living organisms

 doesn’t answer the question how life

began on earth

Copyright © 2002 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Benjamin Cummings

J 6
Biology 1 Lecture 1

3. Special Creation 3. Special Creation

 states that life on earth was created by

 God said, “Let the water teem with living
some supernatural force or being
creatures, and let birds fly above the earth
 each species represented a separate act across the expanse of the sky.” 21So God
of creation created the great creatures of the sea and
every living and moving thing with which
 God said, “Let the land produce the water teems, according to their kinds,
vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees and every winged bird according to its
on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, kind. Gen 1:20-21
according to their various kinds.” And it
was so. Gen 1:11

3. Special Creation 4. Biogeochemical Theory

 based on faith  life may have evolved from inorganic matter

 traces possible events of the formation of

 cannot be subjected to scientific inquiry or biomolecules under primitive earth
be tested in any lab conditions to the evolution of the cell and
various cell processes
 most scientists favor the hypothesis that life
on Earth developed from nonliving materials
that became ordered into aggregates that
were capable of self-replication and
metabolism

 chemical and physical processes in Earth’s

 between 4.0 billion years ago, when the
primordial environment eventually produced
Earth’s crust began to solidify, and 3.5
simple cells
billion years ago when stromatolites
appear, the first organisms came into being
 this occurred in four stages:
(1) the abiotic synthesis of small organic molecules

(2) joining these small molecules into polymers

(3) origin of self-replicating molecules

(4) packaging of these molecules into “protobionts”

Copyright © 2002 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Benjamin Cummings  Copyright © 2002 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Benjamin Cummings

J 7
Biology 1 Lecture 1

 In the 1920’s, A.I. Oparin and J.B.S.

Haldane independently postulated that
conditions on the early Earth favored the
synthesis of organic compounds from
inorganic precursors.

 The reducing environment in the early

atmosphere would have promoted the
joining of simple molecules to form more
complex ones.

Copyright © 2002 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Benjamin Cummings

 Living cells may have been preceded by

 In 1953, Stanley Miller and Harold Urey protobionts, aggregates of abiotically
tested the Oparin-Haldane hypothesis produced molecules.
by creating, in the laboratory, the
conditions that
had been postulated
for early Earth.

Copyright © 2002 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Benjamin Cummings

 major debates also concern where life evolved
- shallow water or moist sediments
- deep sea vents
Copyright © 2002 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Benjamin Cummings
5. Interplanetary or Cosmozoic Theory
 life originated on a distant planet
 the most important reason for invoking an
extraterrestrial origin for life, probably in a
hydrothermal habitat, is that such an origin
provides a greater timespan for early
evolution than has been available on Earth
 Panspermia is applied to the possible
dispersion of life throughout the galaxy
 Directed panspermia describes the deliberate
seeding of life on Earth by intelligent beings

J 8
Biology 1 Lecture 1

5. Interplanetary or Cosmozoic Theory

 If Earth was the cradle for life, the time

interval between its origin and the existence
of the LCC appears incomprehensibly short

 In view of the apparent complexity of the

LCC, particularly in terms of biochemistry, it
would be reasonable to allow perhaps 4
gigayears for its evolution from the
primordial cell

J 9