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rlawson-characterist
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| biology | the study of life |
| organism | living thing |
| tissue | cooperating unit of many similar cells that perform a specific function |
| organ | unit consisting of several tissues that together perform a specific task |
| prokaryote | cell lacking a nucleus and most other organelles |
| eukaryote | cell with a nucleus (surrounded by its own membrane) and other internal organelles |
| sexual reproduction | process in which genetic material from two parents combines and produces offspring that differ genetically from either parent |
| asexual reproduction | process in which a single cell or set of cells produces offspring that inherit all their genetic material from one parent |
| growth | an increase in the number of cells or the size of cells |
| development | all the changes an organism goes through in its lifetime |
| metabolism | all of a cell's chemical processes |
| autotroph | organism that makes its own food |
| heterotroph | organism that obtains food by eating other organisms |
| irritability | the ability to react to a stimulus |
| stimulus | environmental change that triggers a response |
| response | the reaction/change to a stimulus |
| homeostasis | internal stability or "steady state" maintained by the body |
| energy | something required by all living things to fuel their life processes |
| adaptation | inherited characteristic that improves an organism's ability to survive and reproduce in a particular environment |
| evolution | generation-to-generation change in the proportion of different inherited genes in a population that account for all of the changes that have transformed life over an immense time |