Chapter 1: Exploring Life And The Process Of Science Flashcards
What is Biology?
Scientific study of life
What are the properties of life?
-Order
-Reproduction
-Growth and Development
-Response to the environment
-Energy processing
-Regulation
-Evolutionary adaptation
What is order?
Life is characterized by highly ordered structures
What is reproduction?
Organisms reproduced their own kind
What is growth and development?
Inherited information encoded in DNA controls the pattern of growth and development of all organisms.
What are responses to the environment?
All organisms respond to environmental stimuli.
What is energy processing?
Organisms take in energy and use it to power all their activities
What is Regulation?
Organisms have regulatory mechanisms that maintain a beneficial internal environment. “Sunbathing” raises the lizards body temperature on cold mornings.
What is evolutionary adaptation?
Adaptations, such as this red panda’s warmth-providing tail, evolve over countless generations as individuals with heritable traits that are best suited to their environments have greater reproductive success.
What is a cell?
The structural and functional units of life
What are Domains? And List them.
A taxonomic category above the kingdom level.
-Archaea
-Bacteria
-Eukarya
What is Eukaryotes?
They are organisms with more complex cells, and grouped in domain Eukarya.
What are the levels of biological organization?
-Biosphere
-Ecosystem
-Community
-Population
-Organism
-Organs and Organ systems
-Tissue
-Cell
-Organelle
-Molecule
What is science?
It is a way of knowing an approach to understanding the natural world.
What is data?
Recorded observations. Evidence on which scientific inquiry is based. Can be Qualitative or Quantitative.
-Qualitative: Form of recorded descriptions
-Quantitative: frequency and duration.
What is a hypothesis?
It is a proposed explanation for a set of observations, and it leads to predictions that can be tested by making additional observations or by performing experiments. Predictions often take an “if…then” form. We can NEVER prove a hypothesis is true, but we can support the experiment.
What is an experiment?
A scientific test, often carried out under controlled conditions.
What is a scientific theory?
A widely accepted explanatory idea that is broader in scope than a hypothesis, generates new hypotheses, and is supported by a large body of evidence.
Independent Variable
A factor whose value is manipulated or changed during an experiment to reveal possible effects on another factor (dependent variable)
Dependent variable
A factor whose value is measured in an experiment to see wether it is influenced by changes in another factor (independent Variable)
Controlled experiment
An experiment in which an experimental group is compared with a control group that varies only in the factor being tested.
Evolution
Descent with modification; the idea that living species are descendants of ancestral species that were different from present-day ones; also, the genetic changes in a population from generation to generation.
Natural Selection
A process in which individuals with certain inherited traits are more likely to survive and reproduce than are individuals that do not have those traits.
Artificial selection
Selective breeding of domesticated plants and animals to promote the occurrence of desirable traits.
DNA
Provides the master instructions for all of a cell’s functions. Each one is made up of two long chains, called strands, coiled together into a double helix. The strands are made up of four kinds of chemical building blocks called nucleotides.
Genes
A discrete unit of hereditary information consisting of a specific nucleotide sequence in DNA (or RNA, in some viruses.) Most of the genes of a eukaryote are located in its chromosomal DNA; a few are carried by the DNA of mitochondria and chloroplasts.
What is a gene expression?
The process whereby genetic information flows from genes to proteins; the flow of genetic information from the genotype to the phenotype.
