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Biology is the overall natural science that studies life, with the other life sciences as its sub-disciplines. Some life sciences focus on a specific type of organism. For example, zoology is the study of animals, while botany is the study of plants. Other life sciences focus on aspects common to all or many life forms, such as anatomy and ...
Biology is the scientific study of life. [1] [2] [3] It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field.
Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from matter that does not. It is defined descriptively by the capacity for homeostasis, organisation, metabolism, growth, adaptation, response to stimuli, and reproduction.
It primarily uses tools from biology and chemistry, with more recent approaches attempting a synthesis of many sciences. Life functions through the specialized chemistry of carbon and water, and builds largely upon four key families of chemicals: lipids for cell membranes, carbohydrates such as sugars, amino acids for protein metabolism, and ...
Natural science can be divided into two main branches: life science and physical science. Life science is alternatively known as biology, and physical science is subdivided into branches: physics, chemistry, astronomy and Earth science. These branches of natural science may be further divided into more specialized branches (also known as fields).
Biogeography is a synthetic science, related to geography, biology, soil science, geology, climatology, ecology and evolution. Some fundamental concepts in biogeography include: allopatric speciation – the splitting of a species by evolution of geographically isolated populations; evolution – change in genetic composition of a population
Homochirality is an obvious characteristic of life on Earth, yet extraterrestrial samples contain largely racemic compounds. [7] It is not known whether homochirality existed before life, whether the building blocks of life must have this particular chirality, or whether life must be homochiral at all. [8] [9] What do all the unknown proteins do?
The history of life on Earth traces the processes by which living and extinct organisms evolved, from the earliest emergence of life to the present day. Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago (abbreviated as Ga, for gigaannum) and evidence suggests that life emerged prior to 3.7 Ga. [1] [2] [3] The similarities among all known present-day species indicate that they have diverged through the ...