Lecture 1:

Introduction:
Biology Today
 Biology
• What is Biology?
− The scientific study of Life!

• A basic biological perspective is essential

for any educated person
It is a fact that biology affects your
everyday life in many ways
 Scientific Study
• Systematic study of
nature
• Criteria:
– Limited to only what is
observable
– Must be testable in a repeatable way
– Unbiased
 The Scientific Method
Mosquito-borne diseases are more prevalent at a
1. Observation certain time of year

2. Question Why are these diseases more prevalent in the summer?

Warm weather leads to more disease

3. Hypothesis
An increase in mosquito breeding in the warm
summer climate leads to an increase in infected
4. Prediction mosquitos

Count and test mosquitos during all other seasons

5. Experiment vs summer
The Scientific Method
 The Scientific Method
• Observe:
– Use your observation to ask
questions to develop your research
• Develop Hypothesis:
– Tentative explanation for observations
– A good hypothesis immediately leads to
predictions that can be tested by experiments
 Hypothesis vs. Theory
• Hypothesis: A tentative explanation of some
regularity of nature
 Theory: a hypothesis that has been tested
numerous times and remains consistent
– Broader in scope
– Predictive power
• Example: Gravitational theory; Evolution
– Still true after thousands of years
 Scientific Theory
• Theories only become widely accepted by
scientists if they are supported by an
accumulation of extensive and varied evidence
and if they have not been contradicted by any
scientific data
• Natural Selection qualifies as a scientific theory
because of its broad application and because it
has been validated by a large number of
observations and experiments
 Hypothesis vs. Theory
You arrange to meet a friend for dinner at 6
P.M., but when the appointed hour comes,
she is not there. You wonder why. Another
friend says, “My theory is that she forgot.” If
your friend were speaking like a scientist,
what would she have said?
 The Properties of Life
• Seven of the properties and processes
associated with life:

1.Order
– All living things exhibit
complex but ordered
organization
 2. Regulation
When we're cold, the muscles around
the hair follicles contract

• The environment outside an organism may

change drastically, but the organism can adjust
its internal environment, keeping it within
appropriate limits
• When it senses its body temperature dropping,
a lizard can bask on a rock to absorb heat
 3. Growth and development
• Information carried by DNA controls the
pattern of growth and development in all
organisms, including the crocodile
 4. Energy processing
• Organisms take in energy
and use it to perform all
of life’s activities; they
emit energy as heat
A cheetah obtains energy by eating its kill,
uses this energy to power running and other
work, and continuously emits body heat into
the environment
5. Response to the environment
• All organisms respond to
environmental stimuli
 A carnivorous Venus
flytrap closes its leaves
rapidly in response to the
environmental stimulus of
an insect touching the
plant’s sensory hairs
 6. Reproduction
• Organisms reproduce their
own kind
Thus, monkeys reproduce
ONLY
monkeys – never lizards or
cheetahs
 7. Evolution
• Reproduction underlies the
capacity of populations to
change (evolve) over time
 For example, the giant leaf
insect (Phyllium giganteum) has evolved in a way
that provides camouflage in its environment
• Evolutionary change is a central, unifying
phenomenon of all life
Grouping Species
• A species is generally defined as a group of
organisms that live in the same place and time
and have the potential to interbreed with one
another in nature to produce healthy offspring
 Taxonomy
• The branch of biology that
names and classifies species
• Details the arrangement of
species into a hierarchy of
broader and broader groups
 The Three Domains of Life
1. Bacteria
2. Archaea
3. Eukarya

– Every organism on Earth belongs to one of

these three domains
 Bacteria and Archaea
• Two very different groups of organisms that have
prokaryotic cells - that is, relatively small and
simple cells that lack a nucleus or other
compartments bounded by internal
membranes
• Unicellular
Bacteria: some helpful,
some harmful
Archaea: Extremophiles
 Eukarya
• Includes all the eukaryotes (organisms with
eukaryotic cells — that is, relatively large and
complex cells that contain a nucleus and other
membrane-enclosed compartments)
• More advanced
• Unicellular and multicellular
• Includes three smaller divisions
called kingdoms
– Plantae, Fungi, and Animalia
 Plantae, Fungi, and Animalia
• Most members of the three kingdoms are multicellular
• The kingdoms are distinguished partly by how the
organisms obtain food
– Plants produce their own sugars and other foods by
photosynthesis
– Fungi are mostly decomposers, obtaining food by
digesting dead organisms and organic wastes
– Animals – the kingdom to which we belong – obtain food
by ingesting (eating) and digesting other organisms
 Protista
• Those eukaryotes that do not fit into any of the three
kingdoms fall into a catch-all group called the protists
• Most protists are single-celled
• Include microscopic organisms such as amoebas
• Also include certain multicellular
forms, such as seaweeds
• Scientists are in the process of
organizing protists into multiple kingdoms, although
they do not yet agree on exactly how to do this
 Evolution
• The scientific explanation for the common
characteristics found throughout such
diverse species is evolution
• It is the process that has transformed life on
Earth from its earliest beginnings to the extensive
variety we see today
• Fundamental principle of life and the core theme
that unifies all of biology
 Evolution
• The theory of evolution by natural
selection, first described by Charles
Darwin more than 150 years ago, is the
one principle that makes sense of
everything we know about living organisms
 species living today descended from a
succession of ancestral species
 Natural Selection
 In the struggle for existence, those individuals with
heritable traits best suited to the local environment are
more likely to survive and leave the greatest number of
healthy offspring
• Therefore, the traits that enhance survival and
reproductive success will be represented in greater
numbers in the next generation
• It is this unequal reproductive success that Darwin called
natural selection because the environment “selects”
only certain heritable traits from those already existing
 Artificial Selection
• The purposeful breeding of domesticated plants and
animals by humans
• People have been modifying other species for millennia
by selecting breeding stock with certain traits
• The tremendous variety of modern dogs reflects
thousands of years of artificial selection
• The power of selective breeding is very apparent in our
plants and pets, which have been bred for looks and for
useful characteristics
Artificial Selection
 The Relationship of Structure
to Function
• The structure of an object, such as a molecule
or a body part, provides insight into its function,
and vice versa
– Cells can also display a correlation of
structure and function. As oxygen enters
the blood in the lungs, for example, it
diffuses into red blood cells
The concave indentations of red blood
cells provide a large surface area through
which oxygen can diffuse
 Information Flow
• For life’s functions to proceed in an orderly manner,
information must be received, transmitted, and used
• Such information flow is apparent at all levels of
biological organization
• Genes:
– contains the information for each cell
– hereditary units of information consisting of specific sequences of
DNA passed on from the previous generation
• Genome:
– the entire set of genetic information that an organism inherits
– the nucleus of each human cell contains a genome
 Energy moves through
an ecosystem (entering Energy Transformations
and exiting), whereas
matter is recycled within
an ecosystem

Movement, growth,
reproduction, and the
various cellular
activities of life are
work, and work requires
energy
 Interconnections within
Biological Systems
• Biosphere: consists of all the environments on Earth that
support life including soil, oceans, lakes, and other bodies of
water, and the lower atmosphere
• It takes many molecules to build a cell, many cells to make
a tissue, multiple tissues to make an organ, multiple
organs to make an organ system, and organisms are
made up of multiple organ systems
 A cell is the smallest level of biological organization that can
display all the characteristics of life
Interconnectedness Within
Biological Systems
 A Look Back…
• Match each of the following terms to the phrase that best
describes it.
• a. Natural selection b. Evolution c. Hypothesis d. Biosphere

• 1. A testable idea
• 2. Descent with modification
• 3. Unequal reproductive success
• 4. All life-supporting environments on Earth
 A Look Back…
• For each of the following organisms, match its description to its most
likely domain and/or kingdom:
• a. A foot-tall organism capable of producing its own food from sunlight
• b. A microscopic, simple, nucleus-free organism found living in a
riverbed
• c. An inch-tall organism growing on the forest floor that consumes
material from dead leaves
• d. A thimble-sized organism that feeds on algae growing in a pond

• 1. Bacteria 2. Eukarya/Animalia 3. Eukarya/Fungi 4. Eukarya/Plantae

 Discussion Question
• The fruits of wild species of tomato are tiny compared with the giant
beefsteak tomatoes available today. This difference in fruit size is almost
entirely due to the larger number of cells in the domesticated fruits. Plant
biologists have recently discovered genes that are responsible for
controlling cell division in tomatoes. Why would such a discovery be
important to producers of other kinds of fruits and vegetables? To the
study of human development and disease? To our basic understanding
of biology?