Pretest

Direction: Read each item carefully. Write the letter of the correct answer.

1. Which of the following supports the idea that frogs originated from mud?
A. Biogenesis B. Panspermia
C. Special creation D. Spontaneous generation
2. Which of the following contain the remains of tiny plants and animals?
A. Artifacts B. Fossils
C. Organelles D. Sediments
3. What is the idea that life arises from preexisting life?
A. Biogenesis B. Panspermia
C. Special creation D. Spontaneous generation
4. The theory of special creation is the oldest hypothesis about the origin of life.
According to this theory, life came from which of the following?
A. Nonliving matter B. Meteor
C. Preexisting life D. Supernatural power
5. Which theory supports the Oparin-Haldane hypothesis that states that
complex biological compounds were randomly assembled by chance in an
organic broth on Earth’s early surface?
A. Biogenesis theory B. Pasteur’s experiment C.
Primordial soup theory D. Theory of special creation
6. What is the best definition of panspermia?
A. It is an idea that life arises outside Earth.
B. It is an idea that life arises from a divine being.
C. It is an idea that life arises from preexisting life.
D. It is an idea that life arises from nonliving material.
7. Which is true about prokaryotes and eukaryotes?
A. Prokaryotic cells are larger than eukaryotic cells.
B. Eukaryotic cells are generally larger than prokaryotic cells.
C. Prokaryotes have a nucleus while eukaryotes have no nucleus.
D. The earliest life forms were eukaryotes, which were followed by
prokaryotes.
8. The goal of following experiments the is to disprove spontaneous generation.
Which of the following DOES NOT belong to the group?
A. Needham’s experiment B. Pasteur’s experiment C.
Redi’s experiment D. Spallanzani’s experiment
9. What statement is relevant to spontaneous generation?
A. God created the universe B. Life emerged from a meteor
C. Maggots came from decaying meat D. New star fish from a broken limb
10. What would happen to Earth’s early atmosphere when photosynthetic
organisms emerged?
A. No changes B. Ozone layer was not formed
C. Increase in atmospheric oxygen D. Decrease in atmospheric oxygen
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 Lesson The Concept of Life

Jumpstart

Activity 1: Picture Analysis

Direction: Study the picture. It shows a timeline of the history of life on Earth. Give
three (3) observations about the picture.

Figure 1. Timeline of the history of life

Observations:
1. ___________________________________________________________________________
2. ___________________________________________________________________________
3. ___________________________________________________________________________

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 Discover

Beliefs about the Origin of Life

Biology means the study of life. It is derived from two Greek words, bios
meaning “life” and logos meaning “reason or study”. Many centuries ago, people were
puzzled and inquisitive about how life originated on Earth. Planet Earth began to
exist about 4.6 billion years ago. The geologic evidence about the composition of
Earth’s early atmosphere suggests that planet Earth started out with little or no
oxygen. In addition, Earth’s surface was molten rock at first, so all water was in the
form of vapor. Around 4.3 billion years ago, evidence from ancient rocks indicates
that Earth had cooled enough for water to pool on its surface. As believed by many
scientists, the existence of life started from the moment the Earth’s environment
became stable to support life. For billions of years now, life is believed to have existed
on Earth. Scientists do not precisely know when did life begin on planet Earth.
However, they were able to trace how life had emerged and evolved using some pieces
of evidence.

Theory of Special Creation

The oldest hypothesis that life originated from a divine being is the most widely-
accepted belief on how life began. It is also known as divine creation. All life forms
and everything in the universe are believed to have been created by a supernatural
power rather than by naturalistic means. The belief that life arose from nothing but
the power of divine being is called creationism. According to creationists, everything
was made by a god in a six-day period.

Theory of Spontaneous Generation

The theory of spontaneous generation, or abiogenesis, was the primary belief about
the origin of life proposed by Aristotle in the fourth century until the seventeenth
century. Spontaneous generation is the idea that life could appear from a nonliving
material, such as flies could grow from cattle manure, maggots from rotten meat,
and fish from mud.

Biogenesis Theory
Scientists challenged the spontaneous generation and began to explore an
opposing idea known as biogenesis. Biogenesis is the belief that life originates from
preexisting life, such as maggots from eggs of flies, ducklings hatched from eggs of
ducks, and new plants grown from seeds. This theory states that living things can
only be produced by another living thing, and not by a nonliving thing. Several
experiments have been conducted since then to prove these contradicting ideas to
know how life came about.

Redi’s Experiment
Francesco Redi, an Italian physician, conducted an experiment that
questioned the idea of spontaneous generation in 1668. His experiment involved

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using maggots that arose in decaying meat to disprove spontaneous generation. He
performed the experiment using two sets of identical jars, one with a gauze covering
and the other without. Redi observed that flies were attracted to both jars, but only
settled on the meat in the open jar because the gauze prevented them from hovering
over the meat onto the other jar. After several days, maggots arose from eggs laid by
flies on the decaying meat, but not in the flesh in the covered jar. He claimed that
life emerged from living matter, such as maggots from eggs, not from spontaneous
generation in the meat.

Figure 2. Redi’s experiment to disprove the theory of spontaneous generation

Source: https://microbenotes.com/experiments-in-support-and-
againstspontaneous-generation/

Needham’s Experiment
John Needham, an English priest, challenged Redi’s experiment in 1748. It was
widespread known at that time that boiling could kill microorganisms. His
experiment tested whether or not microorganisms can appear spontaneously after
boiling. He placed and heated a solution of boiled mutton broth in a container. The
flask was then sealed with corks to keep anything from the environment from
entering and causing life to grow. Several days later, he noticed that the broth turned
cloudy and full of microbes. Needham concluded that life in the broth was caused by
spontaneous generation. In actuality, he did not heat it long enough to kill the
microorganisms in the broth.

Figure 3. Needham’s experiment to prove the theory of spontaneous generation

Source: https://slideplayer.com/slide/7108713/
Spallanzani’s Experiment

Lazzaro Spallanzani, an Italian scientist, challenged Needham’s experiment in 1767.

Spallanzani boiled a broth containing meat and vegetables placed in clean glass
containers. Although both containers were boiled, one setup was not sealed, enabling

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air to enter the flask. After several days, the open flask was filled with a colony of
microorganisms, but the sealed container remained sterile. He concluded that life
arose from something that entered the open flask and was responsible for life to grow.
The results were not totally accepted by the supporters and believers of abiogenesis
who even stated that Spallanzani excluded air from his sealed flasks, which they
believed was needed for spontaneous generation to occur.

Figure 4. Spallanzani’s experiment disproving the theory of spontaneous generation

Source: https://scialbedo.wordpress.com/2017/06/18/origin-of-life-
sometheories/

Pasteur’s Experiment

In 1861, Louis Pasteur conducted an experiment that convinced most scientists that
spontaneous generation could not occur. Pasteur designed an experiment to test the
idea that a vital element from air was essential for life to exist. In flasks with long
neck, he boiled sugar solution with yeasts. The flasks were left open to allow the vital
element in air to enter, but no organisms developed in the mixture. It was because
the microorganism settled on the bottom of the curved neck of the flask and could
not reach the mixture. He also cut the neck of the flask and within two days, the
solution was teeming with microorganisms because airborne microorganisms could
easily enter the flask. This experiment supported the theory of biogenesis and
disproved spontaneous generation. This evidence suggests that new bacteria appear
only when they are produced by existing bacteria.

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 Source: https://courses.lumenlearning.com
Figure 5. The Pasteurization Process

(a) French Louis Pasteur, who definitively refuted long-disputed theory

of spontaneous generation.
(b) The unique swan-neck feature of the flasks used in Pasteur’s experiment
allowed air to enter the flask but prevented the entry of bacterial and fungal
spores.
(c) Pasteur’s experiment consisted of two parts. In the first part, the broth in
the flask was boiled to sterilize it. When this broth was cooled, it remained
free of contamination. In the second part of the experiment, the flask was
boiled and then the neck was broken off. The broth in this flask became
contaminated.

Primordial Soup Theory

This was proposed by Alexander Oparin and John Haldane. According to this theory,
life started in a primordial soup of organic molecules. This hypothesis deals with the
primordial soup that complex biological compounds were randomly assembled by
chance in an organic broth on Earth’s early surface. Some form of energy from
lightning and chemicals from the atmosphere combined to make amino acids, the
building blocks of protein.

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Miller-Urey Experiment
In this experiment, Stanley Miller and Harold Urey verified the primordial soup
theory by simulating the formation of organic molecules on the early Earth. In 1953,
they tested the hypothesis that lightning supplied the energy needed to turn
atmospheric gases into organic molecules such as amino acids. To simulate this
process, they filled a reaction chamber with methane, ammonia, and hydrogen gas,
zapped it with sparks from electrodes. Within a week, a variety of organic molecules
formed, including amino acids that are common to living things. It was a chemical
experiment designed to test if conditions present on Earth during its early days were
proper to produce biochemicals like amino acids. The apparatus in this experiment
was used to mimic Earth’s early conditions.

Source: https://zackfactsarchive.weebly.com
Figure 6. The Miller-Urey experiment

Panspermia
Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish scientist, popularized the idea that life arose outside
Earth and life that forms were transported from another planet to seed life on Earth.
Panspermia supports the idea that a meteor or cosmic dust may have carried to Earth
significant amounts of organic molecules, which started the evolution of life. A
meteorite found in Antarctica in 1966 suggested that it had been ejected from Mars
possibly as a result of a collision with an asteroid. The meteorite contained presence
of complex organic molecules and small globules that resemble those found on Earth.
Despite the influx of data and information, the question about how life began
on Earth remained unresolved and unanswered because there is no account about
what happened 4.5 billion years ago.

Early Forms of Life

About 3.5 billion years ago, the first form of life is believed to have appeared. The
first evidence of life is found and seen in microfossils (microscopic fossils). These are
fossils that contain the remains of tiny plants and animals. These are very small and
can be measured in millimeters. Some could only be identified under a microscope.

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 The oldest fossils yet known were estimated 3.7 billion years old. These remains of
ancient microbes were found in Greenland after they were exposed by melting ice –
something that may become more common as the planet warms. The fossils are
known as stromatolites and are the evidence of ancient water-based bacterial
colonies, which cemented sediments together into distinctive layers with carbonate.
Before this new discover, the oldest known fossils were 3.48-billion-yearold
stromatolites found in Western Australia (Howard, 2016).

Some of the remains of organisms do not have a nucleus so they were called as
prokaryotes, such as bacteria and archaea. Prokaryotes are small, consist entirely of
single cells, have little internal structure, and are known to be the earliest forms of
life. They have endured and survived the extreme conditions of the early
environment. They started to produce and make their own food by utilizing the
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the energy from the sun. Many types of
bacteria carry out photosynthesis, but only one group, the cyanobacteria, do so by
an oxygen-producing pathway. These are the photosynthetic organisms. The first
photosynthetic organisms to form are the cyanobacteria (also known as blue-green
algae). Cyanobacteria are not actually algae, they are prokaryotic life forms which
are normally present in bodies of water. Their microfossils are among the easiest to
identify.

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Table 1 . Comparison of Five Kingdoms
 Eukaryotes include all complex life on Earth, including every animal, plant, fungus
and alga. Their cells are large, structured, and filled with many internal
compartments. These include the nucleus, where DNA is stored, and the
mitochondria, which act as tiny powerhouses, and other organelles. The first
eukaryotes were protists, and the oldest eukaryotic fossils are a type of red algae.
Figure 8. Fossils of Red Algae (Bangiomorpha pubescens) that lived 1.2 billion years
ago. Protists such as these algae were the earliest eukaryotes.

Explore

___________________________________________________________________________
Enrichment Activity 2: Classify Me!
Direction: Study and analyze Table 1 (Comparison of the Five Kingdoms). Determine
the kingdom and cell type of organisms on each item. Supply the needed
information.

Source: http://www.biologyreference.com

Organisms Kingdom Type of Cell

(Monera, Protista, (Prokaryotic or
Plantae, Fungi, or Eukaryotic cell)
Animalia)
1. Amphibians

2. Bread mold

3. Cyanobacteria

4. Dinoflagellates

5. E. coli (Escherichia coli)

6. Mammals

7. Red algae

8.Ringworm causing tinea

pedis or athlete’s foot
9. Succulent (cactus)

10. Venus fly trap

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Enrichment Activity 4: ABIOGENESIS OR BIOGENESIS

Direction: Determine the theory for each number. If the idea supports the
theory of spontaneous generation, write ABIOGENESIS. Write
BIOGENESIS if the idea supports the biogenesis theory.
______________ 1. Head lice could grow from sweat
______________ 2. Propagation of orchids through cutting
______________ 3. Maggots originated from eggs laid by flies
______________ 4. Mouse came from wheat or cheese stored in a dark place
______________ 5. A broken or damaged limb of a starfish generated a new star fish

Gauge
Directions: Read and analyze each item. Write the letter of the correct answer
in your answer sheet.
1. The first form of life is believed to have appeared some billion years ago.
When did the early forms of life exist?
A. 2.5 billion years old B. 3.48 billion years old
C. 3.7 billion years old D. 3.9 billion years old
2. Photosynthesis has brought changes on the early Earth’s environment.
Which of the following is the first photosynthetic organism to form?
A. Algae B. Cyanobacteria C. Fungi D. Virus
3. There is evidence that life has evolved billion years ago. Where is the first
form of life seen?
A. Layers of rocks B. Microfossils
C. Oceanic crusts D. Sediments
4. Who among the following proponents verified the primordial soup theory by
simulating the formation of organic molecules on the early Earth?
I. Haldane II. Miller
III. Oparin IV. Urey
A. I and II B. I and III
C. II and III D. II and IV
5. What is the idea that life arose outside the Earth?
A. Panspermia B. Primordial Soup Theory
C. Special creation D. Spontaneous generation
6. Which of the following is NOT true about prokaryotes?
A. They do not have nucleus.
B. They survive in extreme conditions.
C. They are not capable of making their own food.
D. They are simple in structure, small, and unicellular.
7. What is the best statement that supports the theory of special creation?
A. It is an idea that life arises outside Earth.
B. It is an idea that life arises from preexisting life.
C. It is an idea that life arises from nonliving material.
D. It is an idea that life arises through the power of a divine being.

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8. Who among the following scientists is credited for definitively refuting the
theory of spontaneous generation using broth in swan-neck flask?
A. Aristotle B. Lazzaro Spallanzani C. Louis Pasteur D. Svante Arrhenius
9. Which of the following is true about cyanobacteria?
A. They produce oxygen.
B. They have eukaryotic cells.
C. They fall under kingdom Protista.
D. They have nucleus-like structure.
10. In Pasteur’s experiment, a flask with a curved but open neck prevented
microorganisms from entering. What would be the result when the neck of
the flask was broken?
A. No microbial growth.
B. The broth will remain sterile.
C. The microorganisms will reach the sterile broth and microbial growth
occurs.
D. The microorganisms will not reach the sterile broth, but microbial growth
will still happen.
11. How did Miller and Urey verify the primordial soup theory?
A. In their experiment, they used meat, flies and maggots.
B. In their experiment, they used flasks and boiled a broth.
C.They validated the theory by using chemicals from atmosphere and
energy from lightning to form amino acids.
D. They confined methane, ammonia, and hydrogen gas in a closed
system and applied continuous electrical sparks.
12. The following statements are true about the evolving concept of life. Which
statement is INCORRECT?
A. The earliest forms of life were the prokaryotes.
B. Multicellular organisms evolved from unicellular eukaryotes.
C. Organisms change over time as a result of adaptation for survival.
D. The photosynthetic organisms decreased the amount of oxygen in
the atmosphere.
13. Which of the following processes brought changes in the early atmosphere?
A. Earthquake B. Photosynthesis
C. Volcanic eruption D. Weathering
14. Select all the organisms with eukaryotic cells.
I. Cyanobacteria II. Grasses
III. Mammals IV. Yeasts
A. I, II B. III, IV
C. II, III, IV D. I, II, III, IV
15. Why did it take millions of years for life to appear on Earth after the planet
had formed?
A. The planet had warmed enough to sustain life.
B. The power of the supernatural being was not enough to create organisms.
C. Earth had cooled enough for water to pool on its surface in order to sustain
life.

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D. Life on Earth could only begin when the seedlings from other worlds arrived.

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