Week 2 discussion responses part 1 - Essay Example

Discussion Reply to Dan- Agreed. Organisms cannot be generated spontaneously as there has to be some basis of life for the generation of organisms.Therefore, no flies could be found when the appropriate condition of life was absent such as sealed meat, this thought formed the basis of spontaneous generation as suggested by Pasteur, life originates from living organisms only. Reply to Teil- Agreed. All organisms are made up of cells, whether single celled or multicellular. They are microscopic but are capable of performing metabolic processes, this is the basis of cell theory, which suggests that all organisms are made up of cells and these cells replicate with the help of DNA to give rise to new cells.

Reply to Randee- Agreed. Cellular discovery could be made possible only after the discovery of the microscope, an important land mark in the field of biology. Cells are the basic unit of life as stated by the Cell theory and the heredity material, the DNA enables one to pass the characters to the next generation. All these findings could be made possible because of the discovery of microscope to observe cellular details.Reply to Jessica- Agreed. All living organisms are made up of cells and division of old cells forms the new cells.

Cells are the most imperative part of living system not only for the formation of other cells but also for the formation of various cellular products such as hormones, enzymes and other metabolites which play vital role in the life of organisms.Reply to Jon- Yes. Discovery of microscope was the most important finding in the history of biological science as every living being is made up of cells, this could be revealed only after observing under the microscope. Similar cells aggregate to form tissues, they perform common task and secrete certain molecules, hormones and enzymes which possess important role in the metabolic and physiology of the organism.

Cell is the fundamental unit of all living beings on the planet. They are microscopic in size, but are capable of performing all the basic functions of life. Single cellular organisms could perform all the functions for their survival, but with evolution of multicellular organisms, cellular functions got distributed and there is a division of work, enhancing the complexity of the living systems. In multicellular organisms, cellular co-ordination persists. This enabled the survival of the multicellular organisms to adapt themselves to the environmental alterations and modifications.

An elaborated study of the cell and its detailed physiological and metabolic functions enabled one to understand the minor details of the cellular mechanism encompassing, division of cell to generate new cells, synthesis of macromolecules and micromolecules, enzymes, protein synthesis, process of heredity and variation (similarities and dissimilarities between the parents and their progenies), numerous anomalies associated with the structural or functional abnormalities of the cell(s). Discovery of the microscope and eventually various molecular technologies paved the way to understand all the other intricacies of the cell.

The spectacular unfolding of all the modern genetic concepts has taken less than a century to be revealed after the discovery of the cell. The move from the obscure units that Mendel called "factors" segregating and assorting independent of each other in the nuclei, to the identification of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) as the chemical basis of inheritance, and today genomic details of human and various model organisms are available to understand the encoded information present in the genes. All these could gain rapidity only after the discovery of the basic unit of life, the cell and revolutionized the discipline of biology.

ReferencesAlberts, B., Dennis, B., Hopkin, K., Johnson, A., Lewis, J., Raff, M., Roberts K., Walter, P. (2003). Essential Cell Biology. 2nd Ed. Garland Science/ Taylor & Francis Group.