Question

Choose a living organism, and explain how it illustrates each of the characteristics of life.

Research and describe an organism or cell in which all 8 characteristics are not obvious. For example, coral looks like it does not move, red blood cells do not reproduce and have no DNA, frogs freeze in the winter and it therefore seems as if they do not maintain homeostasis, and so on.

Describe the missing feature, and explain how this organism still meets the criteria of a living thing.

Compare a living thing with a nonliving thing of your choice that has some of the characteristics that define life. For example, a car exhibits metabolism (burning gas and producing heat), a characteristic of life, but is not alive because it cannot reproduce.

Compare and contrast the following pairs based on the 8 characteristics that define life:

A rock and a snail

A lamp and a tree

Discuss some of the characteristics that fire shares with living things (it can grow, it metabolizes, and so on).

Answer 1

1. Bacteria is the chosen organism.

They reproduce by mostly asexual means.

they metabolize

they grow

they die

they develop

they have DNA

they require nutrition

they evolve and transmit characteristic from generation to generation.

2. Neurons don,t divide.

Neurons also lack the characteristic of reproduction.

still, they both are considered as living.

Viruses have genetic material still they are considered neither as living or non-living.

3. The door is compared with the amoeba.

In monsoon, the door swell and thus grow in size so this is one of the characteristics of living organism i.e. growth.

4. A rock and snail-

Rock can't move but a snail can.

rock cant reproduces but a snail can.

rock can grow but very slow whereas snail can grow fast.

rock doesn't develop but a snail does.

rock doesn't contain DNA but a snail has DNA.

Rock cannot evolve and transmit characters to its progeny but a snail can.

Rock will degrade and die and snail will also die eventually.

Lamp and tree-

lamp metabolize and tree also metabolize.

lamp and tree both can't move.

a lamp is not made up of cells whereas a tree is.

a lamp cannot die but a tree can die.