Lecture 5: Life and its Origins

Question 1

All living organisms share several key characteristics or functions:

Answer 1

1. Order
2. Sensitivity or response to the environment
3. Reproduction
4. Growth and development
5. Regulation
6. Homeostasis
7. Energy processing

Question 2

Virus

Answer 2

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))

Question 3

Oparin-Haldane theory

Answer 3

organic molecules could be formed from abiogenic materials in the presence of an external energy

Question 4

Reducing Atmosphere

Answer 4

Oparin and Haldane thought that the early Earth had a reducing atmosphere (oxygen-poor atmosphere)

Question 5

Deep sea vents

Answer 5

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

Question 6

Extraterrestrial theory

Answer 6

organic molecules originated in space that life originated from these molecules, extraterrestrially and was transported to earth

Question 7

symbiosis

Answer 7

A relationship in which organisms from 2 separate species live together

Question 8

endosymbiont

Answer 8

(type of symbiosis)
one organism that lives inside of one another

Question 9

the endosymbiotic theory

Answer 9

some of the organelles in eukaryotic cells were once prokaryotic microbes joined together into one