Study guide: The Study of Life

📋 Course Outline

1. Biology and Scientific Inquiry
2. Scientific Reasoning and Method
3. Basic and Applied Science
4. Peer Review and Scientific Publishing
5. Properties of Living Things
6. Biological Levels of Organization
7. Life’s Diversity and Three Domains

📖 1. Biology and Scientific Inquiry

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Biology: The study of living organisms and their interactions with one another and their environments.
• Science: Knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws, especially when acquired and tested by the scientific method.

📝 Essential Points

• So far, life is known to be restricted to planet Earth.

📖 2. Scientific Reasoning and Method

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Inductive reasoning: Uses related observations to arrive at a general conclusion.
• Deductive reasoning: Uses a general principle or law to forecast specific results.
• Natural sciences: Fields of science related to the physical world and its phenomena and processes.

📝 Essential Points

📌 Science and biology restrict explanations of phenomena to natural explanations rather than supernatural explanations.

• The scientific method is a research method with defined steps that include experiments and careful observation; when experimental data do not support a hypothesis, a new hypothesis can be proposed.

💡 Memory Hook

Induction climbs from observations to a general rule; deduction descends from a rule to specific predictions.

📖 3. Basic and Applied Science

📝 Essential Points

📌 Basic science seeks to expand knowledge regardless of its short-term application, whereas applied science uses science to solve immediate problems as defined by the researcher.

💡 Memory Hook

Basic science expands knowledge; applied science puts it to work on immediate problems.

📖 4. Peer Review and Scientific Publishing

★ Must-know

• Scientific progress is typically made through publication of peer-reviewed literature.

• In peer review, scientists submit details of their experiments, results, and interpretations through a blind process, and reviewers assess the work’s veracity and merit for publication.

Further detail

• Scientific papers typically contain these sections:
  • Abstract
  • Introduction
  • Methods
  • Results
  • Discussion
  • Literature Cited

📖 5. Properties of Living Things

★ Must-know

• The listed properties of life are:
  • Order
  • Sensitivity or response to stimuli
  • Reproduction
  • Growth and development
  • Regulation
  • Homeostasis
  • Energy processing

Further detail

• A toad’s organized structure consists of cells, tissues, organs, and organ systems.

• When touched, the leaves of Mimosa pudica droop and fold, then return to normal after a few minutes.

📖 6. Biological Levels of Organization

📝 Essential Points

• The biological levels of organization from smallest to largest are:
  • Atoms
  • Molecules
  • Macromolecules
  • Organelles
  • Cells
  • Tissues
  • Organs and organ systems
  • Organisms, populations, and communities
  • Ecosystems
  • Biosphere

💡 Memory Hook

Follow the ladder from atoms up to the biosphere.

📖 7. Life’s Diversity and Three Domains

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Prokaryotes: Bacteria and Archaea are prokaryotes, meaning single-celled organisms that lack intracellular organelles.

📝 Essential Points

• Carl Woese constructed a phylogenetic tree using data from sequencing ribosomal RNA genes, and the tree separates living organisms into the domains Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukarya.