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Life Is A Characteristic That Distinguishes

1. Life is defined as organisms that maintain homeostasis, are composed of cells, undergo metabolism, can grow and adapt, respond to stimuli, and reproduce. 2. The earliest life on Earth appeared around 4.28 billion years ago in the form of microorganisms like bacteria. 3. All current life on Earth is believed to descend from an ancient RNA world, though RNA-based life may not have been the first.

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Florence Abalos
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31 views3 pages

Life Is A Characteristic That Distinguishes

1. Life is defined as organisms that maintain homeostasis, are composed of cells, undergo metabolism, can grow and adapt, respond to stimuli, and reproduce. 2. The earliest life on Earth appeared around 4.28 billion years ago in the form of microorganisms like bacteria. 3. All current life on Earth is believed to descend from an ancient RNA world, though RNA-based life may not have been the first.

Uploaded by

Florence Abalos
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Life is a characteristic that distinguishes physical entities that have biological

processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from those that do not,
either because such functions have ceased (they have died), or because they
never had such functions and are classified as inanimate. Various forms of life
exist, such as plants, animals, fungi, protists, archaea, and bacteria. The criteria can
at times be ambiguous and may or may not define viruses, viroids, or
potential synthetic life as "living". Biology is the science concerned with the study
of life.

Life

Temporal range: 4280–0Ma


Had'n

Archean

Proterozoic

Pha.

Plants in the Rwenzori Mountains,


Uganda

Scientific classification

Domains and Supergroups

Life on Earth:

 Non-cellular life[note 1] [note 2]


o Viruses[note 3]
o Viroids
 Cellular life
o Domain Bacteria
o Domain Archaea
o Domain Eukarya
 Archaeplastida
 SAR
 Excavata
 Amoebozoa
 Opisthokonta

There is currently no consensus regarding the definition of life. One popular


definition is that organisms are open systems that maintain homeostasis, are
composed of cells, have a life cycle, undergo metabolism, can grow, adapt to their
environment, respond to stimuli, reproduceand evolve. However, several other
definitions have been proposed, and there are some borderline cases of life,
such as viruses or viroids.
Abiogenesis is the natural process of life arising from non-living matter, such as
simple organic compounds. The prevailing scientific hypothesis is that the
transition from non-living to living entities was not a single event, but a gradual
process of increasing complexity. Life on Earth first appeared as early as 4.28
billion years ago, soon after ocean formation 4.41 billion years ago, and not long
after the formation of the Earth 4.54 billion years ago.[1][2][3][4] The earliest known
life forms are microfossils of bacteria.[5][6] Researchers generally think that
current life on Earth descends from an RNA world,[7] although RNA-based life
may not have been the first life to have existed.[8][9] The classic 1952 Miller–Urey
experiment and similar research demonstrated that most amino acids, the
chemical constituents of the proteins used in all living organisms, can be
synthesized from inorganic compounds under conditions intended to replicate
those of the early Earth. Complex organic molecules occur in the Solar Systemand
in interstellar space, and these molecules may have provided starting material for
the development of life on Earth.[10][11][12][13]
Since its primordial beginnings, life on Earth has changed its environment on
a geologic time scale, but it has also adapted to survive in most ecosystems and
conditions. Some microorganisms, called extremophiles, thrive in physically or
geochemically extreme environments that are detrimental to most other life on
Earth. The cell is considered the structural and functional unit of life.[14] There
are two kinds of cells, prokaryotic and eukaryotic, both of which consist
of cytoplasm enclosed within a membrane and contain many biomolecules such
as proteins and nucleic acids. Cells reproduce through a process of cell division, in
which the parent cell divides into two or more daughter cells.
In the past, there have been many attempts to define what is meant by "life"
through obsolete concepts such as odic force, hylomorphism, spontaneous
generation and vitalism, that have now been disproved by biological
discoveries. Aristotle was the first person to classifyorganisms. Later, Carl
Linnaeus introduced his system of binomial nomenclature for the classification
of species. Eventually new groups and categories of life were discovered, such as
cells and microorganisms, forcing dramatic revisions of the structure of
relationships between living organisms. Though currently only known on Earth,
life need not be restricted to it, and many scientists speculate in the existence
of extraterrestrial life. Artificial life is a computer simulation or human-made
reconstruction of any aspect of life, which is often used to examine systems
related to natural life.
Death is the permanent termination of all biological functions which sustain an
organism, and as such, is the end of its life. Extinction is the term describing the
dying out of a group or taxon, usually a species. Fossils are the preserved remains
or traces of organisms.

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