Chapter 5

It’s All About You

THE STUDY OF LIFE

Lesson 5.1
 Biology unravels a story that started at
least 3.8 billion years back in an aquatic
environment devoid of life. The first living
cells came about as a result of ancient
events wherein lifeless matter (atoms and
molecules) became organized into an
entity capable of capturing and using
energy and raw materials, capable of
BIOLOGY sensing and responding to the
environment, and reproducing its own
kind. Provided with genetic materials that
can change, the first living things evolved
from one generation to the next, resulting
in the present diversity of living
microorganisms, plants, and animals.
Biology
• literally means “study of life”.
• It comes from two Greek words, “bios” (life) and “logos” (reason or
study).
• Is the science that deals with structures, functions, and relationships
of living things and their environment.
• It is a broad field and may be studied at various levels – molecular,
cellular, organismal, population, community, or ecosystems.
Three major divisions of the biological
sciences:

Microbiology – study of microorganisms

Botany – study of plants

Zoology – study of animals

Branches of biology include:
Taxonomy – naming and classifying organisms

Cytology - structures and functions of cells

Embryology – formation and development of organisms

Anatomy – structures and parts of organisms

Physiology – functions of living organisms and their parts

Biochemistry – biochemical compositions of living things

Genetics – heredity and variation

Evolution – origin and differentiation of various organisms

Ecology – relationships of organisms with their environment.

Modern branches of biology include:

Molecular biology – molecules that make up the cells of living organisms

Genomics – genetic material (genome) of an organism

Proteomics – different proteins (proteome) found in a living organism

Immunology – immune system

Bioinformatics – biological data using computer programs

Lesson 5.2 LIFE AND ITS BEGINNINGS
 Centuries ago, people were puzzled about
how life originated on Earth. One belief
that governed their thinking is the theory
of spontaneous generation or abiogenesis.
Early Beliefs Spontaneous generation is the idea that
About the life could appear from nonliving material.
This idea was proposed by Aristotle in the
Origin of Life fourth century and held its position as the
belief on the origin of life until the 17th
century.
People in the past believed that flies could
grow from cattle manure, mice from
wheat stored in the dark, maggots from
decaying meat, fish from mud of
previously dried lakes, or lice from sweat.
As time went by, scientists questioned this
belief and began to explore an opposing
idea, biogenesis.
Biogenesis is the believed that life
originates rom preexisting life.
Redi’s Experiment
• In 1968, Italian physician Francesco Redi conducted an experiment that
challenged the idea of spontaneous generation.
• His experiment setup involved disproving spontaneous generation using
maggots that arose in decaying meat.
• He designed the experiment using two sets of jars that were identical but
the other with a gauze covering.
• Redi observed that flies were attracted to both jars but settled only on the
meat of the open jar since the gauze blocked the flies from hovering on to
the meat in the other jar.
• After several days, Redi observed that maggots arose from eggs laid by flies
on the rotten meat but not on the meat in the covered jar.
• He concluded that life arose from living matter such as maggots from eggs,
not from spontaneous generation in the meat.
Needham’s Experiment
• In 1748, English priest John Needham challenged Redi’s experiment.
• It was a common knowledge at the time that boiling could kill
microorganisms.
• Needham’s experiment tested whether or not microorganisms can appear
spontaneously after boiling. He placed a solution of boiled mutton broth in
a container and heated it. Then he sealed it with corks proving that it could
prevent anything from the environment from entering the flask and
generate life. After several days, Needham observed that the broth turned
cloudy and full of microorganisms.
• He then concluded that life in the broth was caused by spontaneous
generation. In actuality, he did not heat it long enough to kill all the
microbes in the broth.
Spallanzani’s Experiment
• In 1767, Italian scientist Lazzaro Spallanzani, challenged Needham’s
experiment.
• Spallanzani boiled a broth containing meat and vegetables placed in the
clean glass containers. Both containers were boiled but one setup was not
sealed, allowing air to enter the flask. Several days later, the open
container was filled with a population of microorganisms but the sealed
container remained sterile.
• He concluded that life occurred from something that entered the unsealed
flask and that it was the one responsible for life to grow.
• The results were not taken completely by the believers of abiogenesis who
even stated that Spallanzani excluded air from his sealed flasks, which they
believed was needed for spontaneous generation to occur.
Pasteur’s Experiment
• It was only in 1861 through Louis Pasteur’s experiment that most
scientist were convinced that spontaneous generation could not occur.
• Pasteur designed an experiment to the idea that a vital element from air
was necessary for life to occur. He boiled sugar solution with yeast in
flasks with long neck. The flasks were left open to allow the vital element
in air to enter but no organism developed in the mixture. It was because
the microorganisms 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.
 Current
Beliefs About
the Origin of
Life
Divine Creation
The oldest hypothesis that life came
from a divine being is the most widely
accepted belief.
it is believed that life forms and
everything in the universe were created
through a supernatural power rather
than naturalistic means.
The belief that life arose from nothing
but the power of a divine being is called
creationism.
Creationists believe that everything was
made by a god in a six day period.
Spontaneous Origin
Some scientist believe that the first life came from a spontaneous origin or
life evolved from inanimate matter.
Before life could evolve, simple molecules combined to form complex ones.
The energy that drove these chemical processes may come from lighting or
some form of geothermal energy, culminating in the evolution of cells from
simple to multicellular forms.
Electric sparks can produce amino acids and sugars from an atmosphere
loaded with preexisting materials like water, methane, ammonia, and
hydrogen.
Scientists also tried to explain various scenarios where life molecules could
have first assembled such as in underwater volcanic vents, surface of clay
sediments, deep in Earth’s crust or under frozen oceans.
Another hypothesis deals with the primordial soup that complex biological
compounds were randomly assembled by chance in an organic broth on
Earth’s early surface.
The famous Miller-Urey experiment that lighting may have helped trigger
the creation of key building blocks of life on Earth during the earliest time
periods.
Panspermia
• The Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius popularized
the idea that life arose outside Earth and life that
forms were transported from another planet to seed
life on Earth.
• Panspermia proposes that a meteor or cosmic dust
may have carried to Earth significant amount of
organic molecules, which started the evolution of life.
• In 1966, a meteorite that was found in Antarctica,
suggested that it had been ejected from Mars
possibly by collision with an asteroid. The meteorite
contained presence of complex organic molecules
and small globules, which resemble those found on
Earth.
Despite the influx information,
the question about how life
began on Earth remained
unanswered because there is not
account about what happened
4.5 billion years ago.
Lesson 5.3 UNIFYING THEMES ABOUT LIFE
We are surrounded by living and non living things but sometimes, it is
not easy to decide which ones are living and which ones are not.
Living things on Earth share common characteristics or properties
typically not found in inanimate things. Though the properties of life
discussed below are typical of all living organisms, some of them may
not be present in an organism at every point in its life cycle.
One particular example pertains to reproduction and growth wherein
some organisms may have reached a point in their life that they stop
reproducing.
Gathering and Using Energy
One unique characteristics of living things is the ability to use energy and
matter to ensure survival.
Energy is the ability of organisms to do work that allows them to move. In
order to perform vital activities such as growth, movement, and reproduction,
all living things require energy. Energy is produced when complex organic
matter such as carbohydrates and proteins are broken down into simple
substances such as glucose and amino acids.
The process by which energy is released by the breakdown of food substances
is called cellular respiration.
All chemical processes, reactions, and energy changes happening inside the
body of an organism are referred to as metabolism. These chemical reactions
that power organism’s life processes and provide them raw materials are
performed in sequence and are regulated. These metabolic processes include
three activities – nutrient uptake, nutrient processing, and waste elimination.
Nutrient Uptake and Processing
All living organisms need to feed in order to survive, grow, and
reproduce.
The process by which organisms acquire food is called nutrition. In
plants, nutrition is performed by absorbing water and minerals from
the soil and carbon dioxide from the air. Animals, nongreen plants, and
some microorganisms feed on organic food obtained from plants and
other animals. These acquired foods are the sources of energy.
In living organisms, once raw materials are inside the body, it will be
processed through various chemical reactions for repair, reproduction,
manufacture of new body parts or continuous supply of energy for
essential activities.
Waste Elimination
Inside the body of the organism, all metabolic processes must be
coordinated and regulated.
In the metabolic level, the chemical reactions are processed to ensure
efficient coordination via enzymes. Enzymes help regulate the rate at which
these reactions occur including the amount of nutrients to be processed into
other forms.
In the organismal level, regulatory chemicals in the form of hormones
control the functions of activities, growth, and development.
The different organ systems help control the internal environment and
maintain normal processes such as heart rate, body temperature, and fluid
environment of cells.
The maintenance of the body’s internal environment is called homeostasis.
Although different organ systems perform individualized functions, they wall
work together to achieve a coordinated goal and that is to keep the organism
alive.
Adapting and
Evolving

Certain responsive processes

allow organisms to react to
changes in their surroundings
in a predictable and meaningful
way.
Categories of response include
movement, irritability,
individual adaptation, and
evolution.
Motility
• Most animals can move from one place to another by walking, flying,
swimming, gliding, or jumping. Such movement is called locomotion or motility.
• Corals may not appear to be moving all the time but rather they are attached to
a substrate after reaching adulthood compared to during their juvenile stage.
• Some animals such as sponges cannot locomote but can move parts of their
bodies.
• Plants also show slow movements of body parts like in flowers blooming,
tendrils clinging for support, shoots bending toward light, and vines creeping as
they grow.
• Microorganisms also move from place to place using their locomotory organs
such as cilia, flagella, or pseudopods.
• Animals exhibit movement for a variety of reasons – in search for food, process
of reproduction, and response to changes in the environment.
• Nonliving things also move but their movement is dependent on external
forces, such as wind or water current. Living things move in a directed and
controlled fashion.
Irritability
• External factors or stimuli such as light, sound, temperature, pressure,
food sources, or presence of chemical substances, affect living things.
The reaction of an organism to stimuli is called tropism or response.
• The ability of an organism to respond appropriately against a stimulus
is called sensitivity or irritability.
• Houseflies are easily attracted to smelly foods. Sunflowers bend their
stalks and follow the sun’s direction. A baby cries when hungry. In all
these examples, a stimulus caused the organism to respond in a
predictable way.
Adaptation
For living things to survive and perform normal functions, the ability to adjust
to changes in the environment is a must. Living things need to adapt because
the environment where they live varies and constantly changes.
Food supply can be limited, temperatures and relative humidity fluctuate, and
natural calamities occur. Individual adaptation usually happens more slowly
than responding to a stimulus because it requires some changes to occur in the
organism.
For example, your body will produce more red blood cells in response to lower
oxygen levels. This is the reason why athletes practice endurance in elevated
areas with low level oxygen. This practice will enable the body to produce more
oxygen, which will be delivered to its muscle cells and thus give the athletes
more advantage once they are in the lowlands.
Some plants may adjust their individual adaptation depending on the length of
the day. Lengthening the day may stimulate their flowers to bloom earlier.
Evolution
Several competing theories surround the dawn of the dinosaurs from
super volcanoes, asteroid impact, and prehistoric climate change.
One theory claimed that a meteor strike produced high quantities of
sulfate particles, which shielded Earth’s surface from receiving more
sunlight.
The inability of solar energy to enter Earth’s atmosphere caused a long
cold spell, which persisted for years called the Ice Age. Dinosaurs
became extinct because they failed to adapt themselves to these long
term changes in their environment.
Evolution refers to the changes in characteristics of a group of
organisms (populations) over time.
Evolutionary adaptation is a gradual or rapid change in body structure
or behavior to be better suited and to survive a new environment.
Reproducing and Continuing Life
Growth
• A farmer soaks “palay” seeds in water to germinate them into
seedlings, which later grow up to be a mature palay plants that
produce rice grains. A duck egg hatches into a duckling and grows up
to be an egg-laying mature duck. Bacteria split by cell division and
accumulate enough nutrients to become mature bacterial cells. This
process of growth is common to all living things.
• Growth is an increase in size and volume by converting food to
become a part of body cells. Living things exhibit growth from within
the cells in a process called intussusception.
• Among multicellular organisms, growth involves more complex
processes of cell differentiation and formation of new organs or
organogenesis.
Development and Reproduction
All living things undergo defined stages in their life cycle called
development, which starts with birth and ends in death. No organisms is
immortal but all living things have ways of making sure that their species
survive. This is achieved by the ability to reproduce their own kind.
Reproduction is a process by which genetic information is passed on from
one generation to another as organisms produce offspring that resemble
their parents.
DNA is used as a physical carrier of the transferred genetic information
through sexual reproduction.
Organisms produce in two ways. In sexual reproduction, organisms
produce with the use of two individuals contributing their sex cells to
produce a unique individual of their kind. On the other hand, asexual
reproduction occurs when an organism makes copies of itself, as
commonly found in lower life forms.
Heredity: Unity Amidst
Diversity
Animals, plants, and microorganisms carry the
common genetic material DNA, which is the
molecule of life that carries the instructions for
assembling protein that is responsible for
forming a variety of structures.
The presence of DNA in every living organism
explains the unity of life. DNA differentiates a
living organism from a nonliving thing. The
molecular structure of DNA accounts for its
ability to be used as a genetic material.
Heredity: Unity Amidst
Diversity
Living organisms occur in a vast diversity of forms.
Around 1.8 million species of animals, plants, and
microorganisms are know. This diversity of living
organisms stems from the differences in DNA
sequences they exhibit.
For example, a human contains three billion bases
of DNA almost the same number with mice; a fruit
fly has 130 million DNA bases, while an E. coli
bacterium contain only 4.5 million DNA bases.
In essence, DNA is the molecule similar to all living
organisms and the same molecule responsible for
differences thus bringing unity amidst diversity.
 The scope of life on Earth is so immense
but it can be simplified by viewing it in
two dimensions.
The vertical dimensions spreads the
scope in terms of size scale from the
microscopic DNA inside cells to the
Organization macroscopic view of the living sphere of
of Life the world, the biosphere.
This dimension follows a path known as
the hierarchical levels of biological
organization.
Living things exhibit a high degree of
organization from molecular to cellular level.
The cells of animals, plants, or microorganisms
are made up of living protoplasm with
organelles and membranes, each performing an
organized activity. Each organelle is made up of
a complex organization of organic (nucleic
acids, proteins, carbohydrates, and fats) and
inorganic compounds (water). These organic
and inorganic compounds are basically made up
of basic elements likes carbon, hydrogen, and
oxygen.
For multicellular organisms such as plants and
animals, the level of organization is more
complex. Groups of cells form tissues and
different tissues form organs. Different organs
comprise an organ system with a specialized
function. An organism is made up of different
organ systems with individualized but
coordinated functions.
The organism interacts with other
organisms of the same kind known as
population, while an array of
populations sharing their habitat
compose a community. These
communities exist in an environment
affected by both living and non living
components known as ecosystem. All
ecosystems on Earth whether they
support life on land, water, or lower
atmosphere make up what we call the
biosphere. All the interactions
happening in the distant biosphere to
the intricacies of the inner cell inspire
biologist’s attempts to investigate life at
its many levels, shedding light to the
many questions about our very own
nature.
The immensity of the biological realm can also
be viewed in a horizontal dimension to show
the diversity and richness of organisms
inhabiting our planet. To date, biologists have
so far named and classified about 1.8 million
different organisms. Estimates of about 10
million to 200 million organisms are yet to be
identified.
To make sense of these enormous numbers of
organisms, biologists classified them into
three groups known as the three domains of
the living world based on their similar
characteristics. Advances in the comparison of
DNA sequences led to the reclassification of
organisms into six kingdoms of life, which are
organized under the three overarching
domains.
 TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
Lesson 5.4
BIOLOGY: A BIRD’S VIEW
Biotechnology is defined as the application of biological concepts and
systems to make products beneficial to man. It uses the basic
molecules of life to make new products. It is currently being used in
many areas such as business, agriculture, bioremediation, food
processing, energy production, medicine and pharmaceuticals.
Biotechnology is not a new field as it has been used for decades in the
manufacture of beverages, cheese, bread, milk, and many other
products.
In the Philippines, traditional biotechnology is used in the production
of nata de coco, bagoong, patis, kesong puti, local wines and vinegars,
and other fermented products.
Today, biotechnology encompasses manufacturing processes that
include the advances in genetic engineering, such as recombinant DNA
technology, monoclonal antibodies, and bioprocess technology. It
applies to any technique that manipulates or mimics a natural process
to improve one’s physical and economic well-being.
Bioreactors are used
in biotechnology for
the large-scale
production of
various products,
including genetically
engineered drugs,
antibodies,
chemical, etc.