Bio 101

Levels of organization
• Some living things contain one cell that performs all
needed functions. Multicellular organisms are made of
many parts that are needed for survival.
• These parts are divided into levels of organization viz:
• Cells
• Tissue
• Organs
• Organ system
• Organism
Levels of organization cont'd
• All living things are made up of cells which are the basic building blocks of all
organisms.
• Many cells working together form tissue, there are different types of tissues with
different functions in both plants and animals
• When there are layers of tissues working together they form an organ
• All animals contains organs, mammals have 5 vital organs they cannot live
without namely: kidneys, lungs, liver, heart and brain.
• A collection of organs working together form an organ system, which keeps the
body regulated and in stable state.
• These systems work together and rarely work in isolation.
• The human body has 11 organ systems.
• These 11 organ systems make up an organism(human).
• Technically they are any form that can carry out its own functions such as
metabolic functions e.g take materials in and push materials out.
Basic characteristics of living
organisms
• We remember from secondary school the 8 characteristics of
living organisms to survive in short form MR NIGER D
• M- movement
• R- respiration
• N- nutrition
• I- irritability
• G- growth
• E- excretion
• R- reproduction
• D- death
Basic characteristics of living
organisms cont'd
• Movement: this is the ability to move. All living things move in
some way, this may be obvious in animals that are able to walk, or
less obvious in plants that have have parts that move to track the
movement of the sun (their leaves).
• Respiration: this is the release of energy from food substances in
all living cells. It can also be described as gaseous exchange/
breathing that is inhaling oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide.
• Nutrition: living things take in materials from their surroundings
that they use for growth or to provide energy. This is the process
by which organisms obtain energy and raw materials from from
nutrients such as proteins, carbohydrates and fats.
Basic characteristics of living
organisms cont'd
• Irritability: all living things are able to sense and respond to
stimuli around them such as light ,temperature, water, gravity
and chemical substances. This is the ability to detect changes
in the surrounding environment.
• Growth: also development is seen in all living things, it involves
using food to produce new cells, this is the permanent increase
in cell number and size.
• Excretion: as a result of the many chemical reactions occurring
in cells they have to get rid of waste products which might
poison the cells. Excretion is defined as the removal of toxic
materials, the waste products of metabolism and substances in
excess from the body of an organism.
Basic characteristics of living
organisms cont'd
• Reproduction: this is the ability to reproduce and
pass genetic information onto offsprings.
• Death: at some point all living things die due to
phenomenas like aging, predation, malnutrition,
disease. Death is the cessation of all biological
functions that sustain a living organism.
Basic concept of microscope
• Microscope is an optical instrument used for observing objects that are too small to be seen by
the naked eye. The most common microscope and first to be invented is the optical microscope
which uses light to pass through a sample to produce an image.
• Types of microscope:
• Optical
• Electron
• Fluorescence
• Transmission electron
• Scanning electron
• Scanning probe
• Compound
• X-ray
• Super resolution
• Scanning acoustic
• Simple
• Light microscopes.
Lipids, proteins and nucleic acids.
Lipids
• A lipids is chemically defined as a substance that is insoluble
in water but soluble in alcohol, ether and chloroform. Lipids
are an important component of living celss. Together with
carbohydrates and proteins, lipids are the main constituents
of plant and animal cells. They are easily stored in the body,
serves as a source of fuel and are an important constituents
of the structure of cells. Lipids include fatty acid, neutral
fats, waxes and steroids. Compound lipids are lipids
complexed with another type of chemical compound which
comprise the lipoproteins, glycolipids and phospholipids.
Lipids, proteins and nucleic acids
cont'd
• Proteins
• Proteins are large sized molecules(macromolecules),
polymers of structural units called amino acids. Amino acids
are the building blocks of proteins. A total of 20 different
amino acids exists in proteins and hundreds to thousands of
these amino acids are attached to each other in long chains
to form a protein. Proteins are involved in every aspects of
cellular life. Proteins function to transport materials across
memebranes, catalyze chemical reactions, organize DNA,
support the movement of materials within a cell. They are
ultimate players in the processes that allow an organism to
function and reproduce.
Lipids, proteins and nucleic acids
cont'd
• Nucleic acids
• Naturally occurring chemical compound that is capable of being broken down to yield
phosphoric acid, sugars and a mixture of organic bases(purines and pyramidines).
Nucleic acids are the biopolymers, or small biomolecules, essential to all known forms of
life. The term nucleic acid is the overall name for DNA and RNA. They are composed of
nucleotides, which are the monomers made of three components: a 5-carbon sugar, a
phosphate group and a nitrogenous base. If the sugar is a compound ribose, the polymer is
RNA (ribonucleic acid); if the sugar is derived from ribose as deoxyribose, the polymer is
DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid).
Nucleic acids are the most important of all biomolecules. These are found in abundance in
all living things, where they function to create and encode and then store information of
every living cell of every life-form organism on Earth. In turn, they function to transmit and
express that information inside and outside the cell nucleus—to the interior operations of
the cell and ultimately to the next generation of each living organism. The encoded
information is contained and conveyed via the nucleic acid sequence, which provides the
'ladder-step' ordering of nucleotides within the molecules of RNA and DNA.
Lipids, proteins and nucleic acids
cont'd
Strings of nucleotides are bonded to form helical
backbones—typically, one for RNA, two for DNA—and
assembled into chains of base-pairs selected from the five
primary, or canonical, nucleobases, which are: adenine,
cytosine, guanine, thymine, and uracil. Thymine occurs only in
DNA and uracil only in RNA. Using amino acids and the
process known as protein synthesis,[1] the specific sequencing
in DNA of these nucleobase-pairs enables storing and
transmitting coded instructions as genes. In RNA, base-pair
sequencing provides for manufacturing new proteins that
determine the frames and parts and most chemical processes
of all life forms.
Thank you.