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Chapter 1 Lesson 1
What is life?
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| organism | a living thing |
| cell | the basic unit of structure and function in living things |
| unicellular | made of a single cell |
| multicellular | consisting of many cells |
| metabolism | the combination of chemical reactions through which an organism builds up or breaks down materials |
| stimulus | any change or signal in the environment that can make an organism react in some way |
| response | an action or change in behavior that occurs as a result of a stimulus |
| development | the process of change that occurs during an organism's life to produce a more complex organism |
| asexual reproduction | a reproduction process that only involves one parent and produces offspring that are generically identical to the parent |
| sexual reproduction | a reproductive process that involves two parents combining their genetic material to produce a new organism which differs from both parents |
| spontaneous generation | the mistaken idea that living things arise from nonliving sources |
| controlled experiment | an experiment in which only one variable is manipulated at a time |
| autotroph | an organism that is able to capture energy from sunlight or chemicals to produce its own food |
| heterotroph | an organism that cannot make its own food and gets food by consuming other living things |
| homeostasis | the condition in which an organism's internal environment is kept stable in spite of changes in the external environment |