Tema 5 Living

Things
1.Living Things
There is a wide(gran) variety of living things inhabiting our planet.
They come in different sizes, some are unicellular organism that are
microscopic and others are enormous.

Biosphere- Is the global sum(suma)of all living things that live on

Earth.
Biodiversity- Is the variety and abundance of living things that live
in a certain (cierto) place.

2. Composition of living things

All living things are composed of the same chemical elements. We call
them Bioelements. The most abundants bioelements on Earth are:
carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nytrogen.
Bioelements combine to form Biomolecules, they can be of two types:

# Organic biomolecules
Are exclusive to living things. They form the Organic Matter, it can
descompose, they are composed by:
Carbohydrates ( sugars)
Lipids
Proteins
Nucleic acids (DNA and RNA)

# Inorganic Biomolecules
Can be found both in living matter and in inert matter. It cant
descompose. It s composed by water and mineral salts.
3. Characterstics of living things
The vital functions are nutrition, interaction and reproduction.

A- Nutrition
Nutrition is the set of processes that living things carry out in order
to obtain the energy they need to live. There are two tipes:

consists of nutrition obtained by taking

# Autotrophic nutrition-
inorganic matter from environment and transforming it into organic
matter. Sunlight is needed to carry out this process. Autotrophs make
their own organic matter trhough photosynthesis. They use energy
from light and take CO2 from the atmosphere and water and mineral
salts from the ground. During this process plants release oxygen.

# Heterotrophic nutrition-consists of nutrition obtained by organic

matter that already exists. Heterotrophs feed on other living things.
They can be:
Herbivores, if they eat plants.
Carnivores, if they eat other animals.
Omnivores, if they eat plants and animals.

B- Interaction
Allows living things to get information from the environment that
surrounds them. They can detect changes in the environment (stimuli)
with their sense organs and are able to interact and react to these
changes. Their reaction is coordinated by their nervous system.
Plants can detect changes for example the slow movements or
tropisms that plants make in order to face the light.
C- Reproduction
Living things can create descendants and transmit their
characteristics to their offsprings. There are two types:

# Asexual reproduction
Offsprings are formed from a single parent and they have exactly the
same genes as their parent (starfish). They are identical.
# Sexual reproduction
This involves the union of two reproductive cells called Gametes. Each
parent provides one of the gametes. The offspring are similar to the
parents, they have some of the caracteristics as their parents but
there are differences between them.

4. Cells structure and types

A cell is the smallest structure able to perform the three vital
functions of nutrition, interaction and reproduction on its own.
They can be:
Unicellular organisms include bacteria, paramoecium and some algae.
Multicellular organisms are those wich are composed of more than one
cell.

Prokaryotic cells
In Prokaryotic cells the DNA is found in the cytoplasm. They don't
have a nucleus, they are smaller than eukaryotic cells. They are
found exclusively in bacteria.