Life and its characteristics

1. Biology is the primary science concerned with the study of life. It arises such questions as: How do we know if something is living? Is a virus alive or dead? What are the characteristics of life? These are all very important questions with equally important answers.

2. Living things include both the visible world of animals and plants as well as the invisible world of bacteria and viruses. On a basic level, we can say that life is ordered. Organisms have an enormously complex organization. We're all familiar with the intricate (сложный) systems of the basic unit of life, the cell.

3. Life can also "work." No, not the daily employment variety, but living creatures can take in energy from the environment. This energy, in the form of food, is transformed to maintain metabolic processes and for survival. Life grows and develops. This means more than just getting larger in size. Living organisms also have the ability to rebuild and repair themselves when injured (поврежденный). Life can reproduce. Have you ever seen dirt (грязь) reproduce? I don't think so. Life can only come from other living creatures.

4. Life can respond. Think about the last time you accidentally stubbed (ударили, ушибли) your toe. Almost instantly, you flinched (отдернулись) back in pain. Life is characterized by this response to stimuli. Finally, life can adapt and respond to the demands placed on it by the environment. There are three basic types of adaptations that can occur in higher organisms. So we can say the key characteristics or functions of living beings are organization, energy, growth/development, reproduction, responding to stimuli and adaptation. These characteristics form the basis of the study of biology. 

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