Origin of life: characteristics of living things

As a new scientist, someone brings you something they found in the woods where they were hiking. Its like nothing anyone has seen before! Its greenish with small purple spots, looks something like slime and it seems to be moving. They want to know if they found a new life form

•How would you as a new scientist determine if what they found was alive?

   How would a scientist go about classifying living from non- living?

Characteristics of living things:

• Made up of cells (theory called?)
• Reproduce (two types)
• Based on universal genetic code
• Grow and develop
• Obtain and use energy
• Respond to their environment
• As a group, change over time

1. Cell: the smallest unit of organization that can be considering living. Organisms might be unicellular and multicellular

2. Reproduction: Asexual and sexual

3. Genetic code: The set of rules by which the genetic information is encoded in the organism

4. Growth and development: during life cycle all organisms grow but multi- cellular organisms also develop

5. Materials and energy: there is hierarchy to life. The smallest organisms use materials and through chemical reactions get energy by eating smaller organisms

6. Respond to their environment: if you introduce a stimulus or stress into their surroundings an organism will respond to that

7. Maintain internal balance: this means that no matter what happens outside the organisms, inside remains relatively balanced (homeostasis)

8. Evolution: •As an individual, organisms do not evolve

•As a group, organisms evolve

•Evolution usually evolves physical traits

•Evolution takes thousand of years