- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
Biology Essentials For Dummies
About This Book
Biology Essentials For Dummies (9781119589587) was previously published as Biology Essentials For Dummies (9781118072677). While this version features a new Dummies cover and design, the content is the same as the prior release and should not be considered a new or updated product.
Just the core concepts you need to score high in your biology course
Biology Essentials For Dummies focuses on just the core concepts you need to succeed in an introductory biology course. From identifying the structures and functions of plants and animals to grasping the crucial discoveries in evolutionary, reproductive, and ecological biology, this easy-to-follow guide lets you skip the suffering and score high at exam time.
- Get down to basics â master the fundamentals, from understanding what biologists study to how living things are classified
- The chemistry of life â find out what you need to know about atoms, elements, molecules, compounds, acids, bases, and more
- Conquer and divide â discover the ins and outs of asexual and sexual reproduction, including cell division and DNA replication
Jump into the gene pool â grasp how proteins make traits happen, and easily understand DNA transcription, RNA processing, translation, and gene regulation.
Frequently asked questions
Information
Exploring the Living World
Living Things: Why Biologists Study Them, What Defines Them
- The structure and function of all the diverse living things on planet Earth
- The relationships between living things
- How living things grow, develop, and reproduce, including how these processes are regulated by DNA, hormones, and nerve signals
- The connections between living things and their environment
- How living things change over time
- How DNA changes, how itâs passed from one living thing to another, and how it controls the structure and function of living things
- Living things are made of cells that contain DNA. A cell is the smallest part of a living thing that retains all the properties of life. In other words, itâs the smallest unit thatâs alive. DNA, short for deoxyribonucleic acid, is the genetic material, or instructions, for the structure and function of cells.
- Living things maintain order inside their cells and bodies. One law of the universe is that everything tends to become random over time. According to this law, if you build a sand castle, itâll crumble back into sand over time. Living things, as long as they remain alive, donât crumble into little bits. They constantly use energy to rebuild and repair themselves so that they stay intact.
- Living things regulate their systems. Living things maintain their internal conditions in a way that supports life. Even when the environment around them changes, organisms attempt to maintain their internal conditions; this process is called homeostasis. Think about what happens when you go outside on a cool day without wearing a coat. Your body temperature starts to drop, and your body responds by pulling blood away from your extremities to your core in order to slow the transfer of heat to the air. It may also trigger shivering, which gets you moving and generates more body heat. These responses keep your internal body temperature in the right range for your survival even though the outside temperature is low.
- Living things respond to signals in the environment. If you pop up suddenly and say âBoo!â to a rock, it doesnât do anything. Pop up and say âBoo!â to a friend or a frog, and youâll likely see him or it jump. Thatâs because living things have systems to sense and respond to signals (or stimuli). Many animals sense their environment through their five senses just like you do, but even less familiar organisms, such as plants and bacteria, can sense and respond. For example, during the process of phototaxis, plants direct their growth toward areas where they have access to light.
- Living things transfer energy among themselves and between themselves and their environment. Living things need a constant supply of energy to grow and maintain order. Organisms such as plants capture light energy from the sun and use it to build food molecules that contain chemical energy. Then the plants, and other organisms that eat the plants, transfer the chemical energy from the food into cellular processes. As cellular processes occur, they transfer most of the energy back to the environment as heat.
- Living things grow and develop. You started life as a single cell. That cell divided to form new cells, which divided again. Now your body is made of approximately 100 trillion cells. As your body grew, your cells received signals that told them to change and become special types of cells: skin cells, heart cells, liver cells, brain cells, and so on. Your body developed along a plan, with a head at one end and a âtailâ at the other. The DNA in your cells controlled all these changes as your body developed.
- Living things reproduce. People make babies, hens make chicks, and plasmodial slime molds make plasmodial slime molds. When organisms reproduce, they pass copies of their DNA onto their offspring, ensuring that the offspring have some of the traits of the parents.
- Living things have traits that evolved over time. Birds can fly, but most of their closest relatives â the dinosaurs â couldnât. The oldest feathers seen in the fossil record are found on a feathered dinosaur called Archaeopteryx. No birds or feathers have been found in any fossils that are older than those of Archaeopteryx. From observations like these, scientists can infer that having feathers is a trait that wasnât always present on Earth; rather, itâs a trait that developed at a certain point in time. So, todayâs birds have characteristics that developed through the evolution of their ancestors.
Meet Your Neighbors: Looking at Life on Earth
Unsung heroes: Bacteria
Bacteria impersonators: Archaeans
Table of contents
- Cover
- Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Chapter 1: Exploring the Living World
- Chapter 2: The Chemistry of Life
- Chapter 3: The Living Cell
- Chapter 4: Energy and Organisms
- Chapter 5: Reproducing Cells
- Chapter 6: DNA and Proteins: Life Partners
- Chapter 7: Ecosystems and Populations
- Chapter 8: Understanding Genetics
- Chapter 9: Biological Evolution
- Chapter 10: Ten Great Biology Discoveries
- Index
- About the Authors
- Advertisement Page
- Connect with Dummies
- End User License Agreement