Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Essay on cell theory
Santiago Rashad
Dr. Singh
Intro To Biology
2/20/13
Course Paper
Introduction
Biology, is quite the expansive field in the world of science. The term itself has its roots in Greek with “bios” meaning life and “logos” meaning study. The term itself refers to the study of all walks of life that occur in nature. It covers all of the grandeur of life from the various structures of cells and the materials that comprise living creatures to the make up of primeval cells of the past. It encompasses the vast strata of the life from the infinitesimally small cells to the the gargantuan blue whales and other leviathans of the world. Underneath the umbrella of biology are a bevy of unique disciplines such as: physiology, genetics, ecology, and morphology.
At a fundamental level, all life begins on a microscopic scale. Cells, of which there are three possible typings, Prokaryotic, Eukaryotic, and Archea, are oft referred to as the quintessential building blocks of life. The Cell theory, as posited by Theodor Schwann, Matthias Schleiden, and Rudolph Virchow, is one of the key principles of biology. It states that all living organisms are composed of cells. A secondary concept of the theory is that “Cells arise from pre-existing cells.” This is an important trait to note because it serves as a brief allusion to the various forms of cellular reproduction such as binary fission and mitosis. The last posited claim of the theory and probably the most important assertion of the Cell Theory is that the cell functions as the basic unit of life. This assertion has so far only been corroborated by the research of scientists and thus serves as a rule of biology that is met with an universal consensus. Over the years a few more the modern version of ...
... middle of paper ...
...of ancient prokaryotes into eukaryotic cells which gives rise to the present-day model of life is wondrous enough, but the fact that the organelles work in such efficient harmony, seemingly directed like well crafted machinery is another ponderous development. The layout of life begins with the cell. Without it there is no life even on a microscopic level. To imagine that giant beasts of the Jurassic and Triassic periods such Triceratops and Liopleurodon being sharing the same base parts as some as infinitesimally small as an amoeba or a plankton is astonishing. What's more amazing though is the fact it is readily provable and verifiable. In the study of life, the make up of all creature is known at a basic level. Even without the the scientists to explain the facts, the facts themselves are immutable in terms of defining the make up and rules of existence of life.
Lane’s argument is greatly over-simplified and his opinion implies that mitochondria are the sole answer to the mystery of complex life. To reiterate, Lane does provide a compelling argument in favour of the role of mitochondria and how they assisted the formation of complex life, but to say that that is the only reason would simply be false. There is a vast amount of other reasons why eukaryotic cells came to be and why they ended up thriving in their environment. This particular section of the book was much more fascinating to read than the previous
As the decades pass, technological advances have enabled researchers, entrepenures and pondering minds the ability to discover more and more about every aspect of our very existence. Over the past three decades the evolutionary tree of life has been expanded at least seven times over. Major advances have been made in the area of evolution to open the eyes of many to the extensive history of the earth. For the very first time, we have tangible knowledge that life evolved and grew to become a flourishing success during the young ages of the Earth. By 3.5 million years ago life was already well advanced. Before this breakthrough no one could have thought that life occurred so amazingly early, that Earth was inhabited by a huge array of tiny life forms through t the first four-fifths of it’s existence, and no one deduced that evolution itself evolved over geologic time.
For many year, scientists have been researching and experimenting to understand how life on earth began and what was the turning point. Many studies and research were done in order to answer this question. After many years of research, scientists finally discovered the essence of life to be the cell. In order to consider something alive, the cells in the organism should be able to grow, reproduce, have the ability to process information, and carry out chemical reactions (Freeman 1). Even though cells are small, they are very complex and they are the functional unit in the human body. After discovering the cell, scientists wanted to know what is the structure of the cell. Under a microscope, an english scientist by the name of Robert Hooke was able to first observe the cell under a microscope using a part of a tree (Karp 2). Scientists divided cells into two different categories; eukaryotic cells and prokaryotic cells; each category has specific characteristics that defines each kind of cell. For instance, eukaryotic cells have a membrane bound organelle called the nucleus as well as ...
Life, it might be argued, is the distinguishing feature of all organisms and may most usefully be thought of as involving various kinds of complex systems of organization providing individual organisms with the ability to make use of those energy sources available to them for both self maintenance and reproduction. Underlying this deceptively persuasive definition, however, lie those persistent traditional problems inherent in the search for an essential, distinctive substance characteristic of all forms of life. Additionally, as evolution theory makes clear, there is the problem of borderline instances, organisms of which it is not easy to say whether or not they may be defined as being alive. One such case is that of the virus.
This paper will not try to determine why the dinosaurs became extinct or what caused two prokaryotes to form the first multi-cellular organism. Instead, it will ask you that which is, perhaps, a more difficult question: Why did you write what you wrote in your notebook?
When the forensic anthropologists gave the DNA Analyser their findings, there was a problem. The police gave the DNA Analyser all of the missing people in the St. Charles area within the past year and they matched the persons up with results from the forensic anthropologists. It appeared that there were two missing persons who had fit the description of an African-American woman that's in between the ages of 25 and 30 with a height range of 5 feet 0.9 inches to 5 feet and 4.7 inches. Since two people who have been reported missing in the past year fit the description for “Skeleton A” found in the park, a DNA test was going to be the best way to narrow them down to the people who were found at the park. Running the
Introduction: Prevost and Dumas (1824)first proposed cell division, when they described cellular division in fertilized frog eggs. In 1858 Rudolf Virchow popularised the one-omnis cellulae cellula epigram ("Every cell originates from another existing cell like it"). Strasburger in 1873 found this epigram to be true, as he and Flemming found out that new nuclei was developed from pre existing ones. The term of mistosis was used to describe this process by Flemming in 1882(Tan 2006). Cell division is necessary for an organism to grow, mature and sustain tissue. The division of a individual cell produces a pair of daughter cells, each a fractional size of the primary cell. Prior to dividing each of the daughter cells will mature to the size of the original cell. When development is complete cell division continues as it is essential to survival. In order for cell division to be productive the genetic material and the nucleus must be twinned accurately and one copy must be distributed to each daughter cell. The copying of the cells genetic information is called DNA replication, nuclear division is called mitosis. Throughout the mitotic(M) phase the cell must undergo mitosis, a process that separates the duplicated chromosomes of a cell into two identical nuclei. It then divides to form two new respective cells during cytokinesis. Mitosis occurs solely in eukaryotic cells and the process differs in various groups (Raikov, 1994). Mitosis is split into distinct stages. Cells spend a minor part of their time involved in cell division. Somatic cells spend the bulk of their functional lives in a state known as Interphase. ...
First and foremost, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the organization seeking to employ a Biologist. The CDC is a national level organization leading the way in development of medical advancements and disease prevention in the United States. Finding individuals to bring their expertise and work ethic to the research environment is paramount in preventing and controlling the spread of catastrophic events such as the small pox or other deadly illnesses. The organization realizes the importance of being prepared for outbreaks anywhere in the world by working with partners to have vaccines and preventative health measures in place. While the CDC is based in the USA the advances made in the laboratory and field will translate to global improvement in health and well-being.
When the average person thinks about zoology, they usually think about a zoo and or animals. As said in General Zoology, many questions come with this topic. “What is life? In what ways are the various kinds of animals alike or unlike in structure, internal processes, and modes of life? How do animals carry on their activities? How are the many kinds related to one another? In what ways does man resemble and differ from other living things? The answers to many of these questions are provided by the science of zoology.” (General Zoology, page 3). While zoology does involve animals, the general study of zoology is far more complicated then one would imagine. Zoology is a branch of biology that studies the classification, origins, habitats and behaviors of organisms. Someone who studies zoology is a zoologist, and has the tasks of learning about new species and their habitats. It is a job that if mastered, can be one of the most fulfilling and knowledgeable careers someone can obtain.
The cell is the basic unit of life. All organisms are made up of cells (or in some cases, a single cell). Most cells are very small; most are invisible without using a microscope. Cells are covered by a cell membrane and come in many different shapes. The contents of a cell are called the protoplasm.
Zoology is the branch of biology that studies the animal kingdom, including structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals and how they are in their ecosystem. They deal with living and extinct animals as well.
Second, cells are the smallest units of life and third, cells arise only from preexisting cells. These three facts are referred to as the cell theory. All cells can be categorized into two basic cell types. They are prokaryotic and eukaryotic. To distinguish where cells are placed in the two categories, what is inside the cell must first be looked at.
The origin of the biological term cell came from Robert Hooke in 1662. He observed tiny compartments in the cork of a mature tree and gave them the Latin name “cellulae”, which translates into “small rooms”. In the late 1680s, Anton Van Leeuwenhoek was the first scientist to actually lay eyes on a cell. Before, there had been theories of “cells” but no one had the technology to see something so microscopic yet. Van Leeuwenhoek ran a draper 's shop and wanted to see the quality of the thread, better than the magnifying lenses available at that time. Therefore, he began to develop an interest in lens-making, with an interest already in microscopes and a familiarity with glass
Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA, has said that “the origin of life appears to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have to be satisfied to get it going” (Horgan 27).2 Noted evolutionary astronomer Frederick Hoyle has described the chances of life having evolved from nonlife to be about as likely as the chances that “a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein” (Johnson 106). Why do respected scientists doubt what textbooks teach as fact? It would appear that these scientists know something that current theories describing the origin of life fail to explain. While current theories describe scenarios in which genetic material such as RNA becomes entrapped in a protective cell membrane as a likely recipe for the formation of life, they generally do not focus on the difficulties of forming and concentrating all of these components in the first place.3 To clarify, current theories suffer from what I call the “cookbook mentality.
This can be simplified even more by the removal of the membrane layer in certain lab created biomes. This can show a glaring issue on our idea of what constitutes life in biology now, and the need for possibly looking at reevaluation of this criteria as it is known. There are some options to consider when looking at redefining the criteria of life in regards to abiogenesis because the main goal of the study is to determine the beginnings of life. Having a definition that is more accurately defined than this will help in determining how simple or complex an organism needs to be to have