People and Earth’s Ecosystem

Module 2 Lesson 2

Characteristics of life

Characteristics of life
All living organisms share several key characteristics or functions: order, sensitivity or
response to the environment, reproduction, growth and development, regulation,
homeostasis, and energy processing. Ecology or environmental biology is the field that
studies this complex set of relationships between the living organisms and their
surrounding environment.

Characteristics provide to define life

Level of Organization

The major levels of organization in the body, from the simplest to the most complex are cells,
tissues, organs, organ systems, and the human organism.
Sensitivity (response to the environment)
Examples:

Environmental sensitivity describes the ability of an individual to perceive and process

information about their environment.

Reproduction
It is the biological process by which new individual organisms- “offspring” – are produced
from their “parents”. There are two types of reproduction: Asexual and sexual
reproduction.
2 types of reproduction
a.Asexual – It requires 1 parent only.
b. Sexual- It require 2 parents to reproduce.

Growth and Development

Growth is measurable. It change in weight, height and size. Development is a kind of
series of progressive that shows positive result.The example of development are logical
skills, linguistic skills, interpersonal skills.
Regulation and Homeostasis
Homeostasis is a kind of process to maintain the internal environment.
For example: blood pressure, blood sugar, internal temperature, ph level

Energy processing (Metabolism)

It means you need to eat food in order to have energy. People need to eat as a result of
energy so that they can move their bodies and work. Just like plants too. In order to have
fruits, they need energy from the sun. The source of almost all energy on the planet is the
sun. This energy is harvested by plants and some microbes and stored in the simple
sugar glucose through a process called photosynthesis.
Heredity (offspring)
It refer to biological processes through which characteristics transmitted from parents. It
is inherit traits from parents through genes.
Example: Probability of passing down of black color eyes
Genes- It is the basic unit of inheritance.
DNA –The molecules have codes for protein important for operating of an organism.

Characteristics of Life
(Concept Map)