BIOL 1010 Study Guide - Chon, Wu Xing, Homeostasis
Document Summary
Life is defined as any system capable of performing functions such as eating, metabolizing, excreting, breathing, moving, growing, reproducing, and responding to external stimuli. Living things are highly organized, meaning they contain specialized, coordinated parts: metabolism. Life depends on an enormous number of interlocking chemical reactions: homeostasis, growth, reproduction, response, evolution. The new catalog includes all of the so-called chnops elements : carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorous, sulfur . These elements known to be the building blocks of all life on. This is the first time that measurements of all of the chnops elements have been made for such a large number of stars. Important facts: chemical elements are important to living organisms because they make up the organic molecules that are found in all living things. The chemical compounds found in living things are known as biochemical compounds. Biochemical compounds make up the cells and other structures of organisms and carry out life processes.