Lecture 5: Life and its Origins Flashcards
All living organisms share several key characteristics or functions:
- Order
- Sensitivity or response to the environment
- Reproduction
- Growth and development
- Regulation
- Homeostasis
- Energy processing
Virus
A virus is a tiny infectious agent that reproduces inside the cells of living hosts
(made of an outer protein coat that encases genetic material (DNA or RNA))
Oparin-Haldane theory
organic molecules could be formed from abiogenic materials in the presence of an external energy
Reducing Atmosphere
Oparin and Haldane thought that the early Earth had a reducing atmosphere (oxygen-poor atmosphere)
Deep sea vents
porous hydrothermal vents created a gradient in positively charged protons that served as a battery to fuel the creation or organic molecules and proto-cells
Extraterrestrial theory
organic molecules originated in space that life originated from these molecules, extraterrestrially and was transported to earth
symbiosis
A relationship in which organisms from 2 separate species live together
endosymbiont
(type of symbiosis)
one organism that lives inside of one another
the endosymbiotic theory
some of the organelles in eukaryotic cells were once prokaryotic microbes joined together into one