WHAT IS LIFE?

There is no good strict definition to what defines a living object. However, it must follow

these

characteristics:

▪ Homeostasis – Regulate internal processes (includes temp, pH etc).

▪ Organisation – Show organised, and often symmetrical, cellular structures.

▪ Metabolism – Transform energy.

▪ Evolve (Not an absolute necessity)

▪ Reproduction – Able to duplicate themselves or pass-on heritable properties (traits).

HOW DID LIFE BEGIN?

The Earth is over 4.5 Ga years old. The hypothesised early world’s conditions were:

▪ High temperatures

▪ CO2, N2, H2O vapour, and H2 gas

▪ Hydrogen compounds (e.g. Hydrogen sulphide H2S, ammonia NH3, and methane CH4)

▪ No (or very low) oxygen – reducing conditions

Possible energy sources include planetary heat, UV radiation, volcanoes, lightning,

meteorites.

The first evidence suggesting life was possible in early Earth came from Stanley Miller who

was a PhD

student in Harold Urey’s lab. Harold Urey won a Nobel prize in 1934 for discovering

deuterium; however,

Urey was heavily interested in early lifeforms. He gave a seminar which Miller saw, inspiring

him to join

Urey’s lab. Stanley Miller was eager to prove how simple biological molecules came from

these conditions.

Miller set up a sealed system in a glass flask with water, ammonia gas, methane, and carbon

dioxide. He

boiled the flask to produce water vapour and would strike the flask with electricity to

simulate lightning

strikes. After a week of stewing the experiment, a brown sludge was left in the flask. He

isolated what was

in the sludge and found a few amino acids were formed. In a revolutionary 1953 science

paper, he revealed

to the public it is possible to make simple biological molecules from inorganic material.

Since this time, the

experiment had repeated by many more scientists. More amino acids have been found in

repetitions.

In order to study evolution, shared derived characteristics are studied to understand how

organisms are

related to each other. This is the study of Phylogeny where phylogenetic trees and other

methods are used.

Carl Linnaeus came up with the classification system that help in the categorisation of life.

All life is based

on the three domains: Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukarya. Animals are then categorised by

Kingdom, Phylum,

Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species. In this semester of biology, the latter two is

focused on
particularly. When writing a name, the Genus goes first, followed by the Species (e.g.

Panthera pardus)

and must be written in italics (if hand-written, underline it).