01:119:115 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Emergence, Systems Biology, Unified Atomic Mass Unit
24 Sep 2018
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Document Summary
Biology is a subject of enormous scope. There are ve unifying themes: organization. Evolution accounts for the unity and diversity of life. Evolutions is one idea that makes logical sense of everything we know about living organisms. The scienti c explanation for both the unity and diversity of organisms is the concept that living organisms are modi ed descendants of common ancestors. Estimates total number of species that actually exist range from 10 million to over 100 million species. Emergence: the whole is more than just the sum of its parts. Emergent properties: result from the arrangement and interaction of parts within a system. A memory emerges from the physics, chemistry and cell biology of a synapse. Emergent properties can be seen in biological and non-biological systems. New properties of life emerge at successive levels of biological organization. This enormous range can be divided into different levels. To understand biology: cant address all of the levels at one time.
