Characteristics of Living Things

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Section 2-2

• Characteristics of Living Things

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The main elements of life

• Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen and Oxygen
• Some of the other trace elements of life are
  Iron, Calcium, Phosphorus, and Sulfur

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Spontaneous Generation

• Initial Starting Science Theory on where life
  comes from

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Spontaneous Generationcontinued

• Theory that was popular until the 1600s
• -Life can come from non-life. For example Flies
  come from dead meat.
• -Disproved 1668 by Francisco Redi

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Redis experiment

• -2 open jars with meat flies on it after two
  weeks
• -2 sealed jars of meat- no flies on it after two
  weeks- no air to it
• -2 netted jars with meat- no flies on the meat
  after two weeks. Flies were on the netting
• The finding life has to come from life. Dead
  meat can not make live flies!
• The conflict Than how could life have come
  from the primordial soup of the early oceans?

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So what does life have in common?

• All living things have the following six
  characteristics
• 1. All living things are made of cells
• 2. All living things are able to move
• 3. All living things are able to perform
  complicated chemical activities (metabolism)
• 4. All living things Grow and Develop
• 5. All living things respond to the environment
• 6. All living things reproduce

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All living things are made of cells

• -cells are the basic unit of life. It is living
  material that is separate from the environment by
  a barrier.
• - Cells must come from other cells
• -Organisms can be unicellular or multicellular.
• Unicellular 1 celled life. All life functions
  are controlled with in the one cell. For
  Example bacteria
• Muticellular- many celled organism. Cells have
  specialized jobs with in the organism.

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All living things are able to move

• Part of the organism can move plant
• All of the organism can move animal

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All living things perform complicated chemical
activities (metabolism)

• Chemicals can combine for repair and storage
• Chemicals can break down to release energy.

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Types of Metabolism

• Ingestion eating food
• Digestion Breaking down food into small enough
  particles to be absorbed
• Respiration combining of the food with oxygen
  with in cells so they can release energy for the
  cell to function
• Excretion- Getting rid of the waste products so
  the organism will not get poisoned.

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All living things Grow and Develop

• Growth- an increase in size
• Development- become more complex
• The time of growth and development between birth
  and death is called life span.

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All living things respond to the environment

• Signals in the environment (stimulus) cause the
  organism to react ( response)
• Stimulus Response
• A balloon pops A person jumps

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All living things reproduce

• give life to the same type of living thing
• Sexual Reproduction 2 parents
• - Occurs with most multicellular organisms-
• -Off spring is a combination of traits from both
  of the parents
• Asexual Reproduction 1 parent
• the parent organism divides into two parts
• the off spring is identical to the parent
  organism
• - examples yeast cells, growing a plant from
  the root stem or leaves