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What makes something alive?
- Cellular Organization.
- All organisms consist of one or more cells with highly ordered structures.
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5 Basic Characteristics of Living Organisms
- Cells.
- Energy utilization - sun or chemical energy.
- Information - genetic information encoded in genes.
- Growth and reproduction - all organisms grow and reproduce.
- Evolutionary adaptation - gradual, heritable change.
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Cell Theory
"All living things are made of a cell or cells".
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Theory
A system of ideas for explaining a general phenomenon.
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How has life reached its present state?
- Darwin, Wallace, and Evolution
- Until the mid 1800s, most people thought that species do not change over time.
- The work of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace provided new insight into changes in species over time (evolution) and lineages of life forms.
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Darwin's Notes
- Characteristics of similar species vary from place to place (variation: change with time? Evolution?).
- Geographical patterns suggested lineages gradually change as species migrate.
- Animals and plants on relatively young islands closely resembled those on nearby South American coast.
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Theory of Natural Selection
- Thomas Malthus's Essay on the Principle of
- Population (1798) was one component in
- Darwin's thinking
- Populations can grow faster than resources can keep up
- Even though every organism has the potential to produce more offspring than can survive, population sizes remain relatively constant over time, because RESOURCES ARE LIMITING
- Competition plays a role in determining who survives "lean times"
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Theory of Natural Selection
- Individuals that possess certain characteristics are more likely to survive than those that do not possess those characteristics (through competition for limited resources)
- The ability of an individual to produce offspring is called fitness
- Over time, a trait that increases fitness (adaptation) will increase in a population
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Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection
- Plant and animal breeders selected certain varieties to produce certain characteristics (artificial selection):
- Character differences (dogs, chickens, Brassica, etc.) appear greater than those in wild populations--great capacity for variability
- Natural variation (change::evolution) occurring in natural populations as well:
- Selective pressure (natural selection) leads to stable change
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Darwin and the Theory of Natural Selection
- Timeline:
- _Original draft of The Origin of Species was written in 1842 but unpublished
- _Alfred Wallace: sent manuscript with similar ideas to Darwin in 1858
- _The Origin of Species published in November 1859
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Requirements for Evolution (change) by Natural Selection to Occur
- 1. Heritable trait variation within a population
- 2. Survival and reproduction of individuals with specific traits (leading to increase in frequency of that trait)
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Evidence Supporting Evolution by Natural Selection
- Fossil record
- _Various fossils dating back 3.5 billion years illustrate ancestral and transitional forms of life
- Mechanisms of heredity
- _Genetics accounts for new variations through molecular mechanism
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Homology
vertebrate Limbs
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Evidence Supporting Evolution by Natural Selection
- Comparative anatomy
- _Homologous structures - same evolutionary origin, but now differ in structure and function
- _Analogous structures - have similar structure and function, but different evolutionary origins (insect wings, bird wings)
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Evidence Supporting Evolution by Natural Selection
- Molecular mechanisms are conserved
- _Biochemistry, DNA analysis
- Development patterns
- _Similarities exist in the development stages of many different organisms
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Overview of Evolution and Natural Selection
- Evolution:
- _species change over time
- _based on observations of species differences correlated with different geographical locations
- Natural selection:
- _how the species change over time
- _competition for limited resources
- _individuals with traits that favor survival and reproduction contribute those traits to the next generations
- _based on observations of animal breeding
- (artificial selection leads to variation, why not natural selection doing the
- same?)
- _the environment (weather, sun, meteors, other organisms, etc.) plays a major role in defining the traits that permit survival and reproduction
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Data Supporting Evolution by Natural Selection
- Fossils illustrate species change.
- Genetics (and molecular biology) illustrate:
- _the determinants of traits (genes).
- _the nature of the gene (DNA).
- _the nature of changes in traits (mutations in DNA).
- _the inheritance of traits (DNA replication and DNA segregation).
- Comparative anatomy:
- _bone arrangement in forelimbs is conserved in higher vertebrates
- Molecular biology and genomics:
- _many genes are highly conserved in evolutionarily distant organisms
- Developmental pathways are similar in different organisms
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Classifying Life (Taxonomy)
- Carolus Linnaeus (Karl von Linné): inventor of binomial nomenclature
- Genus: capitalized
- species: lower case
- Both italicized
- Saccharomyces cerevisiae = "sugar + fungus" "beer"; aka, brewer's yeast
- Each scientific name is unique
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How to classify life forms?
- What patterns are meaningful representations of
- ancestral lineage? Similarities, differences?
- 1) Does it move or not? (Linnaeus: 2 kingdoms: animals, plants)
- 2) Nucleus or not? (eukaryotes, prokaryotes). Modified Linnaeus scheme, 5 kingdoms: Animals, Fungi, Plants, Protists, Monera
- 3) Similarity of molecular sequence? Carl Woese's phylogenetic tree. Three domains: Bacteria, Archaea, Eukarya
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How do we study life?
Science: Knowledge of facts, phenomena, and laws, gained and verified by ordered thinking, exact observation, and organized experiment.
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How Science Gets Done:
- Observation
- Hypothesis - suggested explanation that accounts for observations
- Prediction - something that ought to be true if hypothesis is correct
- Experiment - test of prediction
- Control - checks for factors (other than the one being tested) that might influence experimental outcome
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Unifying Themes of Biology
- Cell theory
- All living organisms are made of cells, and all living cells come from other living cells
- Evolutionary change
- Life-forms have evolved varying characteristics to adapt to varied environments
- Evolutionary conservation
- Some characteristics of earlier organisms are preserved and passed on to future generations
- Molecular basis of inheritance
- DNA encodes genes which define and help to control living organisms
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Taxa (divisions) & Domain (Eukarya)
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Taxonomy: Major Distinction Based on Cell Morphology
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Sequence Alignments: Similarity and Differenceat the Molecular Level
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