Portal:Biology
Introduction
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Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary information encoded in genes, which can be transmitted to future generations. Another major theme is evolution, which explains the unity and diversity of life. Energy processing is also important to life as it allows organisms to move, grow, and reproduce. Finally, all organisms are able to regulate their own internal environments.
Biologists are able to study life at multiple levels of organization, from the molecular biology of a cell to the anatomy and physiology of plants and animals, and evolution of populations. Hence, there are multiple subdisciplines within biology, each defined by the nature of their research questions and the tools that they use. Like other scientists, biologists use the scientific method to make observations, pose questions, generate hypotheses, perform experiments, and form conclusions about the world around them.
Life on Earth, which emerged more than 3.7 billion years ago, is immensely diverse. Biologists have sought to study and classify the various forms of life, from prokaryotic organisms such as archaea and bacteria to eukaryotic organisms such as protists, fungi, plants, and animals. These various organisms contribute to the biodiversity of an ecosystem, where they play specialized roles in the cycling of nutrients and energy through their biophysical environment. (Full article...)
Selected article -
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A prokaryote (/proʊˈkærioʊt, -ət/, less commonly spelled procaryote) is a single-cell organism whose cell lacks a nucleus and other membrane-bound organelles. The word prokaryote comes from the Ancient Greek πρό (pró) 'before' and κάρυον (káruon) 'nut, kernel'. In the two-empire system arising from the work of Édouard Chatton, prokaryotes were classified within the empire Prokaryota. However in the three-domain system, based upon molecular analysis, prokaryotes are divided into two domains: Bacteria (formerly Eubacteria) and Archaea (formerly Archaebacteria). Organisms with nuclei are placed in a third domain, Eukaryota.
Prokaryotes evolved before eukaryotes, and lack nuclei, mitochondria or most of the other distinct organelles that characterize the eukaryotic cell. It was once thought that prokaryotic cellular components were unenclosed within the cytoplasm except for an outer cell membrane, but bacterial microcompartments, which are thought to be quasi-organelles enclosed in protein shells (such as the encapsulin protein cages), have been discovered, along with other prokaryotic organelles. While being unicellular, some prokaryotes, such as cyanobacteria, may form colonies held together by biofilms, and large colonies can create multilayered microbial mats. Others, such as myxobacteria, have multicellular stages in their life cycles. Prokaryotes are asexual, reproducing via binary fission without any fusion of gametes, although horizontal gene transfer may take place. (Full article...)Selected picture -
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Selected biography -
Ann Bishop (19 December 1899 – 7 May 1990) was a British biologist from Girton College at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of the Royal Society, one of the few female Fellows of the Royal Society. She was born in Manchester but stayed at Cambridge for the vast majority of her professional life. Her specialties were protozoology and parasitology; early work with ciliate parasites, including the one responsible for blackhead disease in the domesticated turkey, lay the groundwork for her later research. While working towards her doctorate, Bishop studied parasitic amoebae and examined potential chemotherapies for the treatment of amoebic diseases including amoebic dysentery.
Her best known work was a comprehensive study of Plasmodium, the malaria parasite, and investigation of various chemotherapies for the disease. Later she studied drug resistance in this parasite, research that proved valuable to the British military in World War II. She discovered the potential for cross-resistance in these parasites during that same period. Bishop also discovered the protozoan Pseudotrichomonas keilini and worked with Aedes aegypti, a malaria vector, as part of her research on the disease. Elected to the Royal Society in 1959, Bishop was the founder of the British Society for Parasitology and served on the World Health Organization's Malaria Committee. (Full article...)General images -
Did you know -
- ... that endemics along the wildlife of Morocco include more than six hundred species of vascular plants and a single species of bird?
- ... that an extract of Alchemilla diademata, a plant endemic to Lebanon, shows antimicrobial activity against Staphylococcus aureus?
- ... that more than 5,000 hen fleas were recorded from the nest of a coal tit?
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