BIO 1 Lecture 1

Biology is the study of life

Lecture 1

The Concept and

Manifestations of Life

The Concept of Life The Concept of Life

“How can the events in

“Life is a self-
space and time which
sustaining chemical Gerald Joyce
take place within the
system capable of
spatial boundary of a
Darwinian
living organism be
evolution.”
accounted for by
physics and - NASA definition of life
chemistry?”
Carl Sagan
- Erwin Schrödinger, What is
Life (1944)

The Concept of Life The Concept of Life

“What is life?” Only three ▪ life is a particular set of processes that

simple words, and yet out of result from the organization of matter
them spins a universe of
questions that are no less ▪ life resists a
challenging. What precisely is simple, one-
it that separates the animate sentence
from the inanimate? What are definition
the basic ingredients of life?
Where did life first stir? How
did the first organisms evolve? ▪ yet we can
Is there life everywhere? recognize life
- J. Craig Venter, Life at the Speed of Light
by what living
(2013) things do

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BIO 1 Lecture 1

Manifestations and Characteristics of Life 1. Organization and Order

▪ living things have a complex organization

2. Metabolism and Homeostasis

2. Metabolism and Homeostasis

▪ energy utilization

▪ organisms
take in
energy and
transform it to
do work 70-100 mg/dl

3. Reproduction 4. Growth and Development

▪ organisms produce their own kind ▪ heritable programs (DNA) direct pattern of
growth and development

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BIO 1 Lecture 1

5. Irritability and movement 6. Variation, change, and evolution

▪ capable of response to environmental stimulus

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

From: Features, Evaluation, and Treatment of

Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Copyright © 2020, StatPearls Publishing LLC.
Contributed by Rohan Bir Singh, MD; Made with Biorender.com

Physical entities with some of the characters of Physical entities with some of the characters of
living organisms: viroids living organisms: prions
▪ plant pathogens composed of molecules of ▪ infectious forms of protein that may
naked circular RNA increase in number by converting related
proteins to more prions

Microscopic image of a
tissue sample from
Cadang-cadang symptoms on human brain showing a
Electron microscopic picture of potato
coconut palm clump of infectious
spindle tuber viroid (PSTVd) © Dr. G. Klotz
Vadamalai G, et al. (2017). Coconut Cadang-Cadang Viroid and Coconut Tinangaja
Viroid. Viroids and Satellites, Edited by A. Hadidi, JW Randles. Academic Press, pp.
prions
263-273.