Biology

For the biology of the human body, see human anatomy and human physiology.

Biology (from Greek: βίος, bio, "life"; and λόγος, logos, "speech" lit. "to talk about life"), also referred to as the biological sciences, is the scientific study of life. Biology examines the structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, and distribution of living things. It classifies and describes organisms, their functions, how species come into existence, and the interactions they have with each other and with the natural environment. Four unifying principles form the foundation of modern biology: cell theory, evolution, genetics and homeostasis.

Biology as a separate science was developed in the nineteenth century, as scientists discovered that organisms shared fundamental characteristics. Biology is now a standard subject of instruction at schools and universities around the world, and over a million papers are published annually in a wide array of biology and medicine journals.^[1]

Most biological sciences are specialized disciplines. Traditionally, they are grouped by the type of organism being studied: botany, the study of plants; zoology, the study of animals; and microbiology, the study of microorganisms. The fields within biology are further divided based on the scale at which organisms are studied and the methods used to study them: biochemistry examines the fundamental chemistry of life; molecular biology studies the complex interactions of systems of biological molecules; cellular biology examines the basic building block of all life, the cell; physiology examines the physical and chemical functions of the tissues and organ systems of an organism; and ecology examines how various organisms and their environment interrelate.

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Foundations of modern biology

There are four unifying principles of biology^{[citation needed]}:

• Cell theory. All living organisms are made of at least one cell, the basic unit of function in all organisms. In addition, the core mechanisms and chemistry of all cells in all organisms are similar, and cells emerge only from preexisting cells that multiply through cell division.

• Evolution. Through natural selection and genetic drift, a population's inherited traits change from generation to generation.

• Gene theory. A living organism's traits are encoded in DNA, the fundamental component of genes. In addition, traits are passed on from one generation to the next by way of these genes. All information flows from the genotype to the phenotype, the observable physical or biochemical characteristics of the organism. Although the phenotype expressed by the gene may adapt to the environment of the organism, that information is not transferred back to the genes. Only through the process of evolution do genes change in response to the environment.

• Homeostasis. The physiological processes that allow an organism to maintain its internal environment notwithstanding its external environment.

Cell theory

Main article: Cell theory

The cell is the fundamental unit of life. Cell theory states that all living things are composed of one or more cells, or the secreted products of those cells, for example, shell and bone. Cells arise from other cells through cell division, and in multicellular organisms, every cell in the organism's body is produced from a single cell in a fertilized egg. Furthermore, the cell is considered to be the basic part of the pathological processes of an organism.^[2]

Evolution

Main article: Evolution

A central organizing concept in biology is that life changes and develops through evolution and that all lifeforms known have a common origin (see Common descent). This has led to the striking similarity of units and processes discussed in the previous section. Introduced into the scientific lexicon by Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck in 1809,Charles Darwin established evolution fifty years later as a viable theory by articulating its driving force, natural selection (Alfred Russel Wallace is recognized as the co-discoverer of this concept as he helped research and experiment with the concept of evolution). Darwin theorized that species and breeds developed through the processes of natural selection as well as by artificial selection or selective breeding^[3]. Genetic drift was embraced as an additional mechanism of evolutionary development in the modern synthesis of the theory.

The evolutionary history of the species— which describes the characteristics of the various species from which it descended— together with its genealogical relationship to every other species is called its phylogeny. Widely varied approaches to biology generate information about phylogeny. These include the comparisons of DNA sequences conducted within molecular biology or genomics, and comparisons of fossils or other records of ancient organisms in paleontology. Biologists organize and analyze evolutionary relationships through various methods, including phylogenetics, phenetics, and cladistics. For a summary of major events in the evolution of life as currently understood by biologists, see evolutionary timeline.

Up into the 19th century, it was commonly believed that life forms could appear spontaneously under certain conditions (see spontaneous generation). This misconception was challenged by William Harvey's diction that "all life [is] from [an] egg" (from the Latin "Omne vivum ex ovo"), a foundational concept of modern biology. It simply means that there is an unbroken continuity of life from its initial origin to the present time.

A group of organisms shares a common descent if they share a common ancestor. All organisms on the Earth both living and extinct have been or are descended from a common ancestor or an ancestral gene pool. This last universal common ancestor of all organisms is believed to have appeared about 3.5 billion years ago. Biologists generally regard the universality of the genetic code as definitive evidence in favor of the theory of universal common descent (UCD) for all bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes (see: origin of life).

Evolution does not always give rise to progressively more complex organisms. For example, the process of dysgenics has been observed among the human population.^[4]

Gene theory

Main article: Gene

Biological form and function are created from and passed on to the next generation by genes, which are the primary units of inheritance. Physiological adaption to an organism's environment cannot be coded into its genes and cannot be inherited by its offspring (see Lamarckism). Remarkably, widely different organisms, including bacteria, plants, animals, and fungi, all share the same basic machinery that copies and transcribes DNA into proteins. For example, bacteria with inserted human DNA will correctly yield the corresponding human protein.

The total complement of genes in an organism or cell is known as its genome which is stored on one or more chromosomes. A chromosome is a single, long DNA strand on which thousands of genes, depending on the organism, are encoded. When a gene is active, the DNA code is transcribed into an RNA copy of the gene's information. A ribosome then translates the RNA into a structural protein or catalytic protein.

Homeostasis

Main article: Homeostasis

Homeostasis is the ability of an open system to regulate its internal environment to maintain a stable condition by means of multiple dynamic equilibrium adjustments controlled by interrelated regulation mechanisms. All living organisms, whether unicellular or multicellular, exhibit homeostasis. Homeostasis exists at the cellular level, for example cells maintain a stable internal acidity (pH); and at the level of the organism, for example warm-blooded animals maintain a constant internal body temperature. Homeostasis is a term that is also used in association with ecosystems, for example, the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide on Earth has been regulated by the concentration of plant life on Earth because plants remove more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere during the daylight hours than they emit to the atmosphere at night. Tissues and organs can also maintain homeostasis.

See also: Health.

Research

Main article: List of biology disciplines

Structural

Main articles: Molecular biology, Cell biology, Genetics, and Developmental biology

Molecular biology is the study of biology at a molecular level. This field overlaps with other areas of biology, particularly with genetics and biochemistry. Molecular biology chiefly concerns itself with understanding the interactions between the various systems of a cell, including the interrelationship of DNA, RNA, and protein synthesis and learning how these interactions are regulated.

Cell biology studies the physiological properties of cells, as well as their behaviors, interactions, and environment. This is done both on a microscopic and molecular level. Cell biology researches both single-celled organisms like bacteria and specialized cells in multicellular organisms like humans.

Understanding cell composition and how they function is fundamental to all of the biological sciences. Appreciating the similarities and differences between cell types is particularly important in the fields of cell and molecular biology. These fundamental similarities and differences provide a unifying theme, allowing the principles learned from studying one cell type to be extrapolated and generalized to other cell types.

Genetics is the science of genes, heredity, and the variation of organisms. Genes encode the information necessary for synthesizing proteins, which in turn play a large role in influencing (though, in many instances, not completely determining) the final phenotype of the organism. In modern research, genetics provides important tools in the investigation of the function of a particular gene, or the analysis of genetic interactions. Within organisms, genetic information generally is carried in chromosomes, where it is represented in the chemical structure of particular DNA molecules.

Developmental biology studies the process by which organisms grow and develop. Originating in embryology, modern developmental biology studies the genetic control of cell growth, differentiation, and "morphogenesis," which is the process that gives rise to tissues, organs, and anatomy. Model organisms for developmental biology include the round worm Caenorhabditis elegans, the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, the zebrafish Brachydanio rerio, the mouse Mus musculus, and the weed Arabidopsis thaliana.

Physiological

Main articles: Physiology and Anatomy

Physiology studies the mechanical, physical, and biochemical processes of living organisms by attempting to understand how all of the structures function as a whole. The theme of "structure to function" is central to biology. Physiological studies have traditionally been divided into plant physiology and animal physiology, but the principles of physiology are universal, no matter what particular organism is being studied. For example, what is learned about the physiology of yeast cells can also apply to human cells. The field of animal physiology extends the tools and methods of human physiology to non-human species. Plant physiology also borrows techniques from both fields.

Anatomy is an important branch of physiology and considers how organ systems in animals, such as the nervous, immune, endocrine, respiratory, and circulatory systems, function and interact. The study of these systems is shared with medically oriented disciplines such as neurology and immunology.

Evolution

Main articles: Evolutionary biology, Evolution, Evolutionary synthesis, and Natural selection

Evolution is concerned with the origin and descent of species, as well as their change over time, and includes scientists from many taxonomically-oriented disciplines. For example, it generally involves scientists who have special training in particular organisms such as mammalogy, ornithology, botany, or herpetology, but use those organisms as systems to answer general questions about evolution. Evolutionary biology is mainly based on paleontology, which uses the fossil record to answer questions about the mode and tempo of evolution, as well as the developments in areas such as population genetics and evolutionary theory. In the 1980s, developmental biology re-entered evolutionary biology from its initial exclusion from the modern synthesis through the study of evolutionary developmental biology. Related fields which are often considered part of evolutionary biology are phylogenetics, systematics, and taxonomy.

Up into the 19th century, it was believed that life forms were being continuously created under certain conditions (see spontaneous generation). This misconception was challenged by William Harvey's diction that "all life [is] from [an] egg" (from the Latin "Omne vivum ex ovo"), a foundational concept of modern biology. It simply means that there is an unbroken continuity of life from its initial origin to the present time.

A group of organisms shares a common descent if they share a common ancestor. All organisms on the Earth have been and are descended from a common ancestor or an ancestral gene pool. This last universal common ancestor of all organisms is believed to have appeared about 3.5 billion years ago. Biologists generally regard the universality of the genetic code as definitive evidence in favor of the theory of universal common descent (UCD) for all bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes (see: origin of life).

The two major traditional taxonomically-oriented disciplines are botany and zoology. Botany is the scientific study of plants. Botany covers a wide range of scientific disciplines that study the growth, reproduction, metabolism, development, diseases, and evolution of plant life. Zoology involves the study of animals, including the study of their physiology within the fields of anatomy and embryology. The common genetic and developmental mechanisms of animals and plants is studied in molecular biology, molecular genetics, and developmental biology. The ecology of animals is covered under behavioral ecology and other fields.^[5]

Taxonomy

Main article: Taxonomy

Classification is the province of the disciplines of systematics and taxonomy. Taxonomy places organisms in groups called taxa, while systematics seeks to define their relationships with each other. This classification technique has evolved to reflect advances in cladistics and genetics, shifting the focus from physical similarities and shared characteristics to phylogenetics.

Traditionally, living things have been divided into five kingdoms:^[6]

Monera -- Protista -- Fungi -- Plantae -- Animalia

However, many scientists now consider this five-kingdom system to be outdated. Modern alternative classification systems generally begin with the three-domain system:^[7]

Archaea (originally Archaebacteria) -- Bacteria (originally Eubacteria) -- Eukarya

These domains reflect whether the cells have nuclei or not, as well as differences in the cell exteriors.

Further, each kingdom is broken down continuously until each species is separately classified. The order is:

The scientific name of an organism is obtained from its genus and species. For example, humans would be listed as Homo sapiens. Homo would be the genus and sapiens is the species. Whenever writing the scientific name of an organism, it is proper to capitalize the first letter in the genus and put all of the species in lowercase; in addition the entire term would be put in italics or underlined. The term used for classification is called taxonomy.

There is also a series of intracellular parasites that are progressively "less alive" in terms of metabolic activity:

Viruses -- Viroids -- Prions

The dominant classification system is called Linnaean taxonomy, which includes ranks and binomial nomenclature. How organisms are named is governed by international agreements such as the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (ICBN), the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN), and the International Code of Nomenclature of Bacteria (ICNB). A fourth Draft BioCode was published in 1997 in an attempt to standardize naming in these three areas, but it has yet to be formally adopted. The Virus International Code of Virus Classification and Nomenclature (ICVCN) remains outside the BioCode.

Environmental

Main articles: Ecology, Ethology, Behavior, and Biogeography

Ecology studies the distribution and abundance of living organisms, and the interactions between organisms and their environment. The environment of an organism includes both its habitat, which can be described as the sum of local abiotic factors such as climate and ecology, as well as the other the organisms that share its habitat. Ecological systems are studied at several different levels, from individuals and populations to ecosystems and the biosphere. As can be surmised, ecology is a science that draws on several disciplines.

Ethology studies animal behavior (particularly of social animals such as primates and canids), and is sometimes considered a branch of zoology. Ethologists have been particularly concerned with the evolution of behavior and the understanding of behavior in terms of the theory of natural selection. In one sense, the first modern ethologist was Charles Darwin, whose book "The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals" influenced many ethologists.

Biogeography studies the spatial distribution of organisms on the Earth, focusing on topics like plate tectonics, climate change, dispersal and migration, and cladistics.

Every living thing interacts with other organisms and its environment. One reason that biological systems can be difficult to study is that so many different interactions with other organisms and the environment are possible, even on the smallest of scales. A microscopic bacterium responding to a local sugar gradient is responding to its environment as much as a lion is responding to its environment when it searches for food in the African savannah. For any given species, behaviors can be co-operative, aggressive, parasitic or symbiotic. Matters become more complex when two or more different species interact in an ecosystem. Studies of this type are the province of ecology.

History

Main articles: History of biology and History of medicine

Although the concept of biology as a single coherent field arose in the 19th century, the biological sciences emerged from traditions of medicine and natural history reaching back to Galen and Aristotle in ancient Greece. During the Renaissance and early modern period, biological thought was revolutionized by a renewed interest in empiricism and the discovery of many novel organisms. Prominent in this movement were Vesalius and Harvey, who used experimentation and careful observation in physiology, and naturalists such as Linnaeus and Buffon who began to classify the diversity of life and the fossil record, as well as the development and behavior of organisms. Microscopy revealed the previously unknown world of microorganisms, laying the groundwork for cell theory. The growing importance of natural theology, partly a response to the rise of mechanical philosophy, encouraged the growth of natural history.^[8][9]

Over the 18th and 19th centuries, biological sciences such as botany and zoology became increasingly professional scientific disciplines. Lavoisier and other physical scientists began to connect the animate and inanimate worlds through physics and chemistry. Explorer-naturalists such as Alexander von Humboldt investigated the interaction between organisms and their environment, and the ways this relationship depends on geography—laying the foundations for biogeography, ecology and ethology. Naturalists began to reject essentialism and consider the importance of extinction and the mutability of species. Cell theory provided a new perspective on the fundamental basis of life. These developments, as well as the results from embryology and paleontology, were synthesized in Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. The end of the 19th century saw the fall of spontaneous generation and the rise of the germ theory of disease, though the mechanism of inheritance remained a mystery.^[5][10][8]

In the early 20th century, the rediscovery of Mendel's work led to the rapid development of genetics by Thomas Hunt Morgan and his students, and by the 1930s the combination of population genetics and natural selection in the "neo-Darwinian synthesis". New disciplines developed rapidly, especially after Watson and Crick proposed the structure of DNA. Following the establishment of the Central Dogma and the cracking of the genetic code, biology was largely split between organismal biology—the fields that deal with whole organisms and groups of organisms—and the fields related to cellular and molecular biology. By the late 20th century, new fields like genomics and proteomics were reversing this trend, with organismal biologists using molecular techniques, and molecular and cell biologists investigating the interplay between genes and the environment, as well as the genetics of natural populations of organisms.^{[11][12][13][14]}

See also

• List of biology topics
• List of basic biology topics
• List of biologists

References

Further reading

• Alberts, Bruce; Johnson, A, Lewis, J, Raff, M, Roberts, K & Walter, P (2002). Molecular Biology of the Cell, 4th edition, Garland. ISBN 978-0815332183. 
• Begon, Michael; Townsend, CR & Harper, JL (2005). Ecology: From Individuals to Ecosystems, 4th edition, Blackwell Publishing Limited. ISBN 978-1405111171. 
• Campbell, Neil (2004). Biology, 7th edition, Benjamin-Cummings Publishing Company. ISBN 0-8053-7146-X. 
• Colinvaux, Paul (1979). Why Big Fierce Animals are Rare: An Ecologist's Perspective, reissue edition, Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691023646. 
• Hoagland, Mahlon (2001). The Way Life Works, reprint edition, Jones and Bartlett Publishers inc. ISBN 076371688X. 
• Janovy, John Jr. (2004). On Becoming a Biologist, 2nd edition, Bison Books. ISBN 0803276206. 
• Johnson, George B. (2005). Biology, Visualizing Life. Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. ISBN 0-03-016723-X. 

• The Dolan DNA Learning Center: The source for timely information about your life
• OSU's Phylocode
• The Tree of Life: A multi-authored, distributed Internet project containing information about phylogeny and biodiversity.
• MIT video lecture series on biology
• A wiki site for protocol sharing run from MIT.
• Biology and Bioethics.
• Biology online wiki dictionary.
• Biology Video Sharing Community.

Journal links

• PLos Biology A peer-reviewed, open-access journal published by the Public Library of Science
• International Journal of Biological Sciences A biological journal publishes peer-reviewed scientific papers of significance
• Perspectives in Biology and Medicine