All living organisms, from small to large, share characteristics that separate them from nature that do not exhibit life, such as rocks or soil, living creatures have cells, DNA, the ability to convert food into energy, grow, reproduce , breathe and move. Find out more about the Characteristics of living beings!
People are living things and most of us realize that plants live too, an individual living thing such as an animal or a plant is called an organism, the term "living organism" is generally used to describe something that shows all the characteristics of living beings.
Characteristics of living beings
Living organisms share characteristics such as the ability to move and reproduce, there are different types of living organisms, such as plants, animals, fungi, bacteria and cells. Next, we show you the Characteristics of living beings:
Cell composition
The cell is the basic membrane-bound unit that contains the fundamental molecules of life and of which all living things are composed, a single cell is often a complete organism in itself, such as a bacterium or yeast, other cells They acquire specialized functions as they mature.
These cells cooperate with other specialized cells and become the building blocks of large multicellular organisms, such as humans and other animals, although cells are much larger than atoms, they are still very small, the smallest known cells are a group of small bacteria called mycoplasmas.
Cells become specialized to perform different functions through the differentiation process. To do this, each cell is in constant communication with its neighbors.
As it receives nutrients and expels wastes into its environment, it attaches to and cooperates with other cells, cooperative sets of similar cells form tissues, and a cooperation between tissues in turn forms organs, which carry out the functions necessary to maintain life. life of an organism.
Medals
The organisms in each class are broken down into orders, a taxonomy key is used to determine which order an organism belongs to, it is nothing more than a checklist of characteristics that determines how organisms are grouped.
As you might guess, the order is just another way to break down the class of plants and animals. Think of it as "refining your search," some orders include carnivores, primates, rodents, fagales, and pinales.
Complexity
Living beings have a level of complexity and organization that is not found in non-living objects, at its most fundamental level, a living being is made up of one or more cells, these units, usually too small to be seen with the naked eye, They are organized into tissues.
A tissue is a series of cells that perform a shared function, tissues, in turn, form organs, such as the stomach and kidneys, various organs working together make up an organ system, an organism is a complex series of various systems of organs.
homeostasis
Describes how the human body maintains constant levels of temperature and other vital conditions such as the water, salt, sugar, protein, fat, calcium, and oxygen content of the blood, similar processes dynamically maintaining steady-state conditions in the Earth's environment .
Living cells depend on the movement of chemicals around the body, chemicals such as oxygen, carbon dioxide, and dissolved food must be transported in and out of cells, this is done by the processes of diffusion and osmosis, and these These processes depend on the balance of water and salt in the body, which is maintained by homeostasis.
Cells depend on enzymes to speed up the many chemical reactions that keep the cell alive and get it to do its job, these enzymes work best at particular temperatures, so again homeostasis is vital for cells as it maintains a consistent temperature. constant body.
Irritability
Another characteristic shared by all living things is the ability to respond to internal or external stimuli, a stimulus is any physical or chemical change in the internal or external environment of an organism.
The scientific term for an organism's ability to respond to its environment is known as irritability, but we could also think of this characteristic as sensitivity, organisms must be able to respond and adapt to changes in their environment to stay alive.
In living things some response to stimuli is gradual and may not occur quickly, examples of this are a plant stem slowly bending towards the light or an arctic fox developing a thicker coat as the sun approaches. winter.
On the contrary, some response to stimuli is quick or immediate, examples of this are the dilation of the pupil when you move from a bright place to a darker one, or the change in the movement of a school of fish when a predator.
Metabolism
For something to live, it must consume food and convert that food into energy for the body. All living entities employ internal chemical reactions to convert the consumed food into energy through a form of digestion and then transmit the extracted energy to the cells of the body, lPlants and trees convert the sun's energy into food and absorb nutrients from the soil through their roots.
Growth
To grow, a living organism must have cells that divide in an orderly way to create new cells, as cells grow, expand, and divide, the creature gets larger over time, scientists use growth and development as a measure of life.
Reproduction
Living organisms grow and reproduce to create more living organisms like themselves, this can occur through asexual reproduction or by producing other living organisms through sexual reproduction, the DNA of the new organism is like that of the cell from which comes from.
Sexual reproduction
In sexual reproduction, species can be anisogamous or isogamous, in anisogamous reproduction, there are two parents, usually male and female, to reproduce, both contribute a gamete or Animal cell containing a single or haploid set of chromosomes, which will form offspring.
Each gamete provides half of the offspring's genetic material, many animals, including humans, reproduce this way, males produce sperm, which fertilizes a female's eggs or ova inside her body during the process of sexual intercourse .
Asexual reproduction
In asexual reproduction, a living being can reproduce without receiving cells from another living being, all the chromosomes come from one of the parents, which makes the offspring have a similar or identical genetic structure, the organisms that produce asexually include, among others, bacteria, molds, yeasts and some plants.
Asexual reproduction methods include budding, in which a new organism is formed directly from a part of an organism, as with plants, fragmentation means that a living thing splits into fragments, which become clones of the living thing original.
Molds and starfish are examples of organisms that reproduce by fragmentation, binary fission occurs when a cell splits into two parts, these organisms may not be genetically identical.
Sensitivity
All living things can respond to stimuli in the external environment, for example, living things respond to changes in light, heat, sound, and chemical and mechanical contact, to detect stimuli, organisms have means to receive information, such as eyes, ears and taste buds.
To respond effectively to changes in the environment, an organism must coordinate its responses, a system of nerves and a series of chemical regulators called hormones coordinate activities within an organism, the organism responds to stimuli through various effectors, such as muscles and glands, energy is usually used up in the process.
Adapting
Living plants, animals, people and even microorganisms can adapt to the world around them, adaptability involves the traits that help a living organism survive in its environment, one of these traits includes the way the fur of the different animals change through the seasons to make it difficult to observe prey or predators.
Evolution
Understanding the origin and evolution of forms observed in nature remains an exciting challenge. Even from a cursory inspection, it is clear that the shapes of animals and plants, as determined by the distribution of mass over volume, are different.
Animals can move and are roughly homogeneous in their distribution of mass, plants are rooted organisms endowed with a self-similar heterogeneous geometry where mass is concentrated in the stem and branches rather than in the leaves.
Addressing the fundamental physics underlying the relationship between form and physiology and the origins of Kleiber's law, we discuss how the two divergent life forms of plants and animals may have independently evolved to achieve equivalent energy efficiencies.
In spite of The diversity of living beings and their interactions, of sizes and shapes of living organisms, the organization of life across scales exhibits notable common features, especially through the approximate validity of Kleiber's law, the power law scaling of metabolic rates with the mass of an organism.
Financial
An amazing feature of all living things is that they are able to make sense of and take purposeful actions to continue their existence, this is true for single-celled creatures like the paramecium that can detect chemical gradients and follow them to food sources.
It is equally true for the human body which uses its central nervous system to create "neural maps" of its holistic condition to track things like blood pressure, levels of different hormones, tension in the muscles, and information gathered through pathways. sensory such as vision, touch and hearing.
ability to interact
A living organism will interact with another living organism, whether it is the same type of organism, a threat, or a neutral organism, there is some form of interaction between the two.
For example, flowers interact with bees by releasing pollen to be picked up and dispersed among female plants during reproduction; plants like the Venus flytrap interact with nature by encircling flies, lizards, and other edible insects that land within their reach. .
The breathing process
Respiration is more than just breathing, it represents the ability of a living organism to convert energy to fuel cells, using oxygen to break down sugars and produce carbon dioxide as a by-product expelled during exhalation, all living organisms have some form of breathing, although the process may differ between them.
Genetics
All living creatures consist of cells, organized into groups such as organelles, molecules, and other multicellular classifications, cells can also reproduce, show movement, and show a response to certain stimuli for a scientist to consider the organism to be alive.
Every cell carries deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, the material made up of chromosomes that transmits genetic information including traits inherited from its lineages.
Movement of living creatures
In order to classify an organism as living it must exhibit some form of movement although humans and animals obviously move other items like plants also move although hard to see without a time lapse camera plants move their shoots or leaves toward sunlight or away from shaded areas to promote growth.
Ecology
The environment influences the living beings that surround it, ecology is the study of the relationships between organisms and their relationships with their environment, both biotic factors, that is, living beings, and abiotic factors (non-living beings) can alter the environment.
Rain and sunlight are non-living components, for example, which influence the environment a lot, living things can migrate or hibernate if the environment becomes difficult to live.
Death
The possibility of distinguishing between living and dead organisms is essential for the detection of harmful organisms in plant materials, after all, a dead organism cannot create any risk, molecular techniques are the only method for reliable and rapid detection of organisms. alive and dead.
Living organisms are well adapted to periodic factors, non-periodic factors can cause disease and even death of a living organism, a person uses this by using pesticides, antibiotics, and other non-periodic factors, however, their prolonged exposure can also cause adaptation to them.
The inevitability of the death of all living organisms requires the decomposition of organic substances contained in the dead bodies by other living organisms, the competitive interaction of organisms leads to the development of specialization and the division of all organisms into different species with different forms of food.
