Organism

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A brown bear, an cattle, a chicken, an bottlenose dolphin, a guineafowl, an wild pig.

Escherichia coli is a microscopic single-celled organism, and a prokaryote as well.

Amoebae are single-celled eukaryotes

Polypore fungi and angiosperm trees are large many-celled eukaryotes.

Phylogenetic tree of life (Carl Woese). Viruses do not appear here because there is no evidence of how they relate to
the other three kingdoms of life

An organism is an individual living thing. It is easy to recognize a living thing, but not so easy to
define it. Animals and plants are organisms, obviously. Organisms are a biotic, or living, part of the
environment. Rocks and sunshine are parts of the non-living environment.

Organisms usually have five basic needs to continue their metabolism. They need air, water, nutrient
(food), energy, and a place to live. However, not all living things need all these at the same time.
Many organisms do not need access to air at all.

A little thought is needed about viruses. There is no agreement as to whether they should be
regarded as living. They are made of protein and nucleic acid, and they evolve, which is a really
important fact. However, they exist in two quite different phases. One phase is dormant, not active.
 The other is inside a living cell of some other organism. Then the virus is very active reproducing
itself. Consider the parallel with a computer program. When in use it is active; when it is not, it is
completely inactive. It is still a program all the same.

Another example from biology is the spore, which is a distribution phase of a bacteria, fungus or
some plants. They are not active until they get to the right situation. They have all the working parts
to build a complete organism, but for the moment it is switched off.

Some organisms are made up of millions of cells. They are multicellular organisms. Many can be
seen without using a microscope.

Most organisms are so small that they cannot be seen with the naked eye. You need a microscope
to see them. They are called microorganisms. Organisms can be made up of just one cell. They are
called unicellular organisms or single celled organisms. Examples include bacteria, and protozoa
such as the Amoeba and Paramecium.

Contents

 1 Origin
 2 Related pages
 3 References
 4 Other websites

Origin[change | change source]

The Tree of Life project works on the relationships between living things. Identifying a LUCA (last
universal common ancestor) is one of its main aims. The LUCA is estimated to have lived some 3.8
billion years ago (sometime in the Palaeoarchaean era).[1][2]

A universal common ancestor is at least 102860 times more probable than having multiple
ancestors.[3]
A model with a single common ancestor but allowing for some gene swapping among
species was... 103489 times more probable than the best multi-ancestor model...[3]

The idea came from Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, "Therefore... probably all the
organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial
form..."

Related pages[change | change source]

 Earliest known life forms

 Origin of life
 Morphology (biology)