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Biology Books
Rene Fester Kratz
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Published:
March 20, 2017

Biology For Dummies

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Overview

The ultimate guide to understanding biology

Have you ever wondered how the food you eat becomes the energy your body needs to keep going? The theory of evolution says that humans and chimps descended from a common ancestor, but does it tell us how and why? We humans are insatiably curious creatures who can't help wondering how things work—starting with our own bodies. Wouldn't it be great to have a single source of quick answers to all our questions about how living things work? Now there is.

From molecules to animals, cells to ecosystems, Biology For Dummies answers all your questions about how living things work. Written in plain English and packed with dozens of enlightening illustrations, this reference guide covers the most recent developments and discoveries in evolutionary, reproductive, and ecological biology. It's also complemented with lots of practical, up-to-date examples to bring the information to life.

  • Discover how living things work
  • Think like a biologist and use scientific methods
  • Understand lifecycle processes

Whether you're enrolled in a biology class or just want to know more about this fascinating and ever-evolving field of study, Biology For Dummies will help you unlock the mysteries of how life works.

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About The Author

René Fester Kratz, PhD, teaches biology at Everett Community College. Dr. Kratz holds a PhD in Botany from the University of Washington. She works with other scientists and K–12 teachers to develop science curricula that align with national learning standards and the latest research on human learning.

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biology for dummies

CHEAT SHEET

Biology is the study of the living world. All living things share certain common properties: They are made of cells that contain DNA. They maintain order inside their cells and bodies. They regulate their systems. They respond to signals in the environment. They transfer energy between themselves and their environment.
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Get ready to dive in to ten of the most important biology discoveries to date. These are listed in no particular order because they’ve all made a significant impact on the advancement of biology as a science and increased what people know and understand about the living world. Seeing the unseen Before 1675, people believed the only living things that existed were the ones they could see.
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Sometimes science seems like something that happens in a lab somewhere far removed from everyday life. That may be, but the effects of scientific research have a huge impact on your day-to-day existence, from the food you eat to the energy that powers your home. Following is a rundown of ten important ways that biology affects your life.
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Biology is all about life. In order for life to continue, reproduction has to occur at the cellular level so that genetic information (DNA) is replicated. The following concepts (mitosis and meiosis) are key to understanding how cells reproduce: Cells do mitosis when they are going to make an exact copy of themselves for asexual reproduction, growth, or tissue repair.
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Biology is the study of the living world. All living things share certain common properties: They are made of cells that contain DNA. They maintain order inside their cells and bodies. They regulate their systems. They respond to signals in the environment. They transfer energy between themselves and their environment.
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The inheritance of almost all our genes is exactly the same for males and females. When it comes to the genes on the sex chromosomes, though, sometimes one sex has an advantage over the other. That’s because females get two X chromosomes, while males get an X and a Y. The X chromosome is a long chromosome with lots of genes on it, while the Y chromosome is very short and has far fewer genes.
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Autotrophs and heterotrophs do cellular respiration to break down food to transfer the energy from food to ATP. The cells of animals, plants, and many bacteria use oxygen to help with the energy transfer during cellular respiration; in these cells, the type of cellular respiration that occurs is aerobic respiration (aerobic means “with air”).
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Virtually all scientists today agree that biological evolution happens and that it explains many important observations about living things, but many nonscientists don’t believe in biological evolution and are often violently opposed to it. They prefer to take the Bible’s creation story literally.These wildly differing viewpoints have led to one of the great debates of all time: Which is correct, evolution or creationism?
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Plant cells communicate with each other via messengers called hormones, chemical signals produced by cells that act on target cells to control their growth or development. Plant hormones control many of the plant behaviors you’re used to seeing, such as the ripening of fruit, the growth of shoots upward and roots downward, the growth of plants toward the light, the dropping of leaves in the fall, and the growth and flowering of plants at particular times of the year.
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Humans are no strangers to the effects of hormones during development. In fact, human males and females are identical organisms until the time sexual differentiation occurs.In the very early stages of development, human fetuses have two sets of ducts: one for the female reproductive system, and one for the male reproductive system.
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Geneticists use their own unique shorthand when analyzing the results from a genetic cross (a mating between two organisms with characteristics that scientists want to study). For example, they might use a letter of the alphabet to stand for each gene, capitalizing the letter for dominant alleles and using lowercase to represent recessive alleles.
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Because the DNA from all cells is essentially the same, scientists even combine DNA from very different sources for genetically modified organisms. Scientists have successfully put human and jellyfish genes into bacteria, and bacterial genes into crop plants. The manipulation of a cell’s genetic material in order to change its characteristics is called genetic engineering.
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One of the big challenges of genetic engineering is to insert a gene exactly where you want it in the genome of the cell. For example, if you wanted to give someone with a genetic disease a normal copy of her defective gene, the ideal way to do it would be to exactly replace her defective gene with the normal copy.
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Your cells do have some control over what happens with gene regulation. Even though your DNA is in control of the proteins your body makes, and those proteins are in charge of determining your traits, your cells do have some say in life. Because each one of your cells has a complete set of your chromosomes, your cells are able to practice gene regulation, meaning they can choose which genes to use (or not use) and when.
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The biggest difference between plants and animals is how they get the matter and energy they need for growth. Animals have to eat other living things to get their food, but plants can produce their own food. Plants absorb sunlight and use that energy to make glucose from carbon dioxide and water during the process of photosynthesis; glucose is the food plants can use as a source of energy or matter for growth.
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In order to make sure that inserted genes don’t get broken down, it helps if scientists can send the DNA into the genetically modified organism’s cells in an acceptable form that they won’t destroy. One way that scientists do this is with the use of vectors. A vector is a DNA molecule that can carry foreign genetic material into a cell so that the foreign genetic material can be copied or used by the cell.
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Sexual reproduction increases genetic variation in offspring, which in turn increases the genetic variability in species. You can see the effects of this genetic variability if you look at the children in a large family and note how each person is unique. Imagine this kind of variability expanded to include all the families you know (not to mention all the families of all the sexually reproducing organisms on Earth), and you begin to get a feel for the dramatic genetic impact of sexual reproduction.
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The study of biology includes the study of human beings. The biological functions of humans are similar to those of many other animals. Like other animals, humans need to acquire oxygen and energy in order to survive. Here is a brief summary of key human biological concepts: Organisms are made of organ systems, which are made of organs, which are made of tissues, which are made of cells, which are made of molecules, which are made of atoms.
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When studying Biology, you'll hear about biological evolution, which refers to the change of living things over time. Charles Darwin concluded that biological evolution occurs as a result of natural selection, which is the theory that in any given generation, some individuals are more likely to survive and reproduce than others.
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In life, things aren’t always black or white, and this is definitely true for some genetic traits. Mendel’s pea plants were tall or short with nothing in between, but scientists know this isn’t true for human height. And what about eye color? That’s not just blue or brown, it’s lots of shades of blue and brown plus green and hazel.
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Prokaryotes include cells you’ve probably heard of, such as the bacteria E. coli and Streptococcus (which causes strep throat), the blue-green algae that occasionally cause lake closures, and the live cultures of bacteria in yogurt, as well as some cells you may never have heard of, called archaeans.Whether you’ve heard of a specific prokaryote or not, you’re likely well aware that bacteria have a pretty bad rap.
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DNA can undergo rewriting in a process called transcription. DNA molecules are long chains made from four different building blocks called nucleotides that biologists represent with the letters A, T, C, and G. These chemical units are joined together in different combinations that form the instructions for cells’ functional molecules, which are mostly proteins.
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The knowledge gathered by scientists continues to grow and change slightly all the time. Scientists are continually poking and prodding at ideas, always trying to get closer to “the truth.” They try to keep their minds open to new ideas and remain willing to retest old ideas with new technology. Scientists also encourage argument and debate over ideas because the discussion pushes them to test their ideas and ultimately adds to the strength of scientific knowledge.
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Asexual reproduction allows organisms to reproduce rapidly and without a partner, which makes asexual organisms essentially just fresher, younger versions of their original selves. Also, asexual organisms don’t really die; instead, they just bud off into new versions of themselves and continue on. The basic cellular process that makes asexual reproduction possible is mitosis, the type of cell division that produces exact copies of parent cells.
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The excretory system is an important part of the human body. When the human body breaks down food, it uses as many of the nutrients as possible to fuel cellular processes. Of course, you can only squeeze so much out of any given nutrient. What’s left is waste that your body removes via your excretory system, which consists of your large intestine and kidneys.
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Genetic modification has its upsides. After all, gene therapy to cure genetic diseases is a type of genetic modification. In addition, genetic modification can make growing crops easier and boost the profitability of those crops. It may even help improve human health by increasing the nutritional content of some foods.
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Blood is the fluid that sustains life in animals with a closed circulatory system — including you. Some blood cells carry oxygen, which is necessary for metabolic reactions; some blood cells fight off invading substances that could destroy your cells; and other blood cells help form clots, which keep your body from losing too much of this precious fluid and assist with wound healing.
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Skeletons support animals, give their bodies shape, and protect their internal organs, but not all animals have the same type of skeleton. Following are the three different kinds of skeletons you may see in your study of biology: Hydrostatic skeletons: Found in creatures such as worms and jellies, hydrostatic skeletons are basically chambers filled with water.
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One issue that challenges the success of vaccines today is people’s fears about vaccine safety. Because of these fears or mistrust of vaccines, some people are choosing not to vaccinate their children, a decision that ultimately puts the children at greater risk for infectious disease.Following are a few points to consider about the safety of vaccination: The risks from a vaccine are less than the risks from the disease.
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