2009

Genesi
s Of All
Life On
Earth
Biology
Assignme
nt

DELVE INTO MYTH.

BSPA II, MORNING
12 October, 2009
 University of Karachi
Department Of Public
Administration
October12, 2009

Dr.Basit Ansari
Chairman, Department Of Bio Tecnology
University Of Karachi

Respected, Dr. Ansari:

We here submitting the assignment
report, due October 12, 2009, on
given topic “origin of life and its
evolution”. The report entitled “
M” . In the report we put light on how
life finds its way and discuss the
leading work(experiments) of some
scientists , which give base to the
modern science. Report also include
the theories and evidences why
every recent theory demolish the
previous one .
Hope you will accept and appericiate
our effort.
4
Thank you
Sincerely,
Arifa Abdullah
Hira Khalid
Sumaira khan
Wardah Sabeen
Zahida Wasim

Acknowledge
WE WOULD LIKE TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE CONCEPT THAT
THE EARTH
AND WHATEVER IN IT
IS SOLELY AND ONLY
CREATED BY
ALLAH
WE WOULD LIKE TO EXPRESS OUR GRATITUTE TO THOES
WHO BELIVE
IN THIS WITH FULL OF
THEIR HEARTS

4
Preface
Introduction………………………………
………
Life, Biological Aspect
• Origin of life on
earth…………………………….
• Origin of life
…………………………………….
• The first
life……………………………………….
Theories about origin
• Abiogenesis………………………………
………
• Biogenesis…………………………………
…….
• Cell
theory……………………………………….
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Evolutionary Era
• Ideas before
Darwin…………………………...
• Darwin’s
theory…………………………………
• The eclipse of
Darwin……………………………
• The modern
synthesis……………………………..
Mendel's Law & Mendelian Genetics
• Genetics and
Evolution…………………………
• Mendel's First
Law…………………………..
• Incomplete
Dominance………………………..
• Multiple
Alleles…………………………………
• Example of a
Cross…………………………….
Chromosomes X and Y and Sex
Determination
• Genetics and
Evolution………………………...
• Sex
Determination…………………………….
• Chromosomes X and
Y……………………..
• Sex Linked

4
 Characteristics…………………..

Introduction
Look up in the starry sky, on a clear dark night, it can seem like you are looking in
bottom less well. There are so many star. Some are bright. Other are so faint you can
barely seem them. Where did they come from?
People have always wonder about the origin of the universe. Early civilization told
myth (stories) to explain the creation of the cosmos. For example cording to one
ancient Chinese myth the universe began when the great creator giant hatched from an
egg the world we was made from the giant’s body when he died. The ancient Greek
thought the God created world out of chaos( infinite, formless space). Many cultures
told stories of god bringing forth the world from the water or the sky. But as human
began to study the universe using the tool of science, they searched for explanation
that matched their observation more closely.
This is a story in a nutshell: the entire universe beginning single instant, in an
unimaginably powerful explosion. The explosion created all time and space, all matter
and energy. The cosmos has been expanding outward from that explosion for about
fourteen billion years. The universe we see is what remains from that one fiery
moment of creation. The idea is known as Big Bang theory. It is one of the most
important theory of modern science. The big bang theory is not perfect or complete. It
does not answer every question we have about the origin of the universe.
Nevertheless, it is the best explanation we have of where the universe came from.
Most of all, it attempts to explain the origin of the universe itself, scientists after that
try to explain humanistic anthropology (human origin).
Further in this report we enlighten the different perceptions and prominent work
explaining derivation of life and its progression.

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Life, Biological
Aspects
Biologically, life, as contrasted with death or with nonliving objects, is an evident fact
but difficult to characterize precisely. Living organisms are self-maintaining systems;
they grow and are irritable in response to stimuli. They resist dying. They reproduce.
The developing embryo is especially impressive. The fact that the line separating life
from non-life isn't always clear is one of the reasons why objections to the idea that
life might naturally develop out of non-life are misplaced. These objections, typically
religious in origin, tend to assume that there is something "special" about life which
creates an impenetrable barrier between it and non-life. Organisms post a defended,
semipermeable boundary between themselves and the outside world; they assimilate
environmental materials to their own needs. They can be healthy or diseased. Some
accounts claim that the minimal form of autonomy necessary and sufficient for
characterizing biological life is what is termed autopoiesis,

Origins of Life on
Earth
- The Origins of Life
Although Earth was created around 4.5 billion years ago, life began to exist not long
after. Due to the huge timescales involved, there is inconclusive evidence for exact
dates, but nonetheless, the eagerness of life to exist was apparent from the
beginning.Where did the molecules that made up the first living cells come from in
the absence of life? The atmosphere on the early earth, in the absence of
photosynthetic organisms, was composed of hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide,
and water. Oxygen, an important constituent of Earth's atmosphere today was not
present. Under these conditions, and in the presence of heat or electrical discharge
(lightening), amino acids, nucleotides and lipids form from gasses present in the
atmosphere. It is likely that metabolic pathways were present even before the first
cells. Remember that even though the actual events that led to the first living cells are
not known in detail, many of the steps in the process (formation of biological
molecules, lipid self-assembly, RNA catalysis) have been demonstrated
experimentally.

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The First Life
In general, organisms over time in the evolutionary chain have grown and become
more complex in their nature, i.e. the first origins of life were likely small, simple and
not diversified.

One understanding of the origins of life is that it would have been very unlikely that
parasites were the beginnings of life. As parasites require biological hosts to
reproduce and thus survive as a species, they would have been unable to successfully
continue their species during this time period. In light of this, viruses and other
parasites would have developed later on in the evolutionary chain.

It is believed that heterotrophs were the first beginnings of life on Earth, inhabiting
the sea and absorbing the organic material that was being created by the reactions of
Earth at the time (i.e. the creation of amino acids). The building blocks of life created
these organisms and also acted as a food source.

When these first autotrophs died, the organic material that they consist of would break
down and add to the 'organic soup' that was feeding these organisms at the time.
Alias, it is believed that heterotrophic bacteria was the first signs of life on Earth. It
wasn't until the late 1600s that scientists discovered bacteria.

4
Theories About Origin
Abiogenesis
Research into the origin of life is the modern incarnation of the ancient concept of
abiogenesis. Abiogenesis, in its most general sense, is the generation of life from non-
living matter. The term is primarily used in the context of biology and the origin of
life.

In the natural sciences, abiogenesis, or "chemical evolution", is the study of how life
on Earth could have arisen from inanimate matter. It should not be confused with
evolution, which is the study of how groups of living things change over time. Amino
acids, often called "the building blocks of life", can form via natural chemical
reactions unrelated to life, as demonstrated in the Miller-Urey experiment, which
involved simulating the conditions of the early Earth. In all living things, these amino
acids are organized into proteins, and the construction of these proteins is mediated by
nucleic acids. Thus the question of how life on Earth originated is a question of how
the first nucleic acids arose.
The first living things on Earth are thought to be single cell prokaryotes.

The oldest ancient fossil microbe-like objects are dated to be 3.5 Ga (billion years
old), just a few hundred million years younger than Earth itself. By 2.4 Ga, the ratio
of stable isotopes of carbon, iron and sulfur shows the action of living things on
inorganic minerals and sediments and molecular biomarkers indicate photosynthesis,
demonstrating that life on Earth was widespread by this time.

Abiogenesis was long considered to be a very common occurrence until the Law of
Biogenesis (omne vivum ex ovo or "all life from an egg") became firmly
established in modern biology as a result of the work of Louis Pasteur

The Law of Biogenesis

Louis Pasteur 1860 in France stated the law of biogenesis, that life originates from
life. This was meant not as a comment on the origin of all life, but instead as an
overturning of the belief in spontaneous generation,

A basic tenet of biogenesis is that a non-living organism cannot spawn a living

organism.

4
The Cell Theory
The cell theory, or cell doctrine, states that all organisms are composed of similar
units of organization, called cells. The concept was formally articulated in 1839 by
Schleiden & Schwann and has remained as the foundation of modern biology.
Ultrastructural research and modern molecular biology have added many tenets to the
cell theory, but it remains as the preeminent theory of biology. The Cell Theory is to
Biology as Atomic Theory is to Physics.
Formulation of the Cell Theory
1)All living things are composed of one or more cells
2) The chemical reactions of living cells take place within cells
3) All cells originate from pre-existing cells
4) Cells contain hereditary information, which is passed from one generation to
another.

Evolutionary Era
We shall begin with the brife sketch of the historic rise of evolutionary biology , in
four main stages:
Evolutionary and non evolutionary, ideas before Darwins.
Darwins theory (1859).
The eclips of Darwin (c. 1880-1920).
The modern synthesis( 1920s to 1950s)

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Ideas Before Darwin
The history of evolutionary biology really begins in 1859, with the publication of
charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. The most immediate controversial claim
in Darwin’s theory is that species are not permanently fixed in their form, but that one
specie evolve into another.(“ Fixed “ here means unchanging. ) Species fixity is an
orthodox belief in Darwin’s time, throuth that does not mean that no one then or
before had questioned it.

The question was brought to an issue by the French naturalist Jean- Baptiste
Lamarck(1744-1829). The crucial work was his philosophies zoologique (1809)in
which he argued that species change over time into new species. The way in which he
thought species changed was importantly different from Darwin’s and our modern
idea of evolution. Historians prefer the contemporary term “transformism “to describe
Lamarck’s idea. Lamarck supposed that lineages of species persisted indefinitely,
changing from one form to another, lineages in his system did not branch and did not
go extinct. Lamarck had two part explanation of why species change. The principal
mechanism was internal force some sort of unknown mechanism within the organism
causing it to produce offspring slightly different from itself such that when the
changes accumulated over many generation the lineage would be visibly transformed
perhaps enough to be a new specie.

Lamarck second( and possibly less important mechanism) is the one he is now
remembered for: the inheritance of acquired characters. A character is any
distinguishable property of organism. As organism develops, it acquires many
individual character in this biological sense, due to its particular history of accident,
disease and muscular exercise.
In his famous discussion of giraffes neck ancestral giraffe had stretched to reach
leaves higher up trees. The exertion cause their necks to grow slightly longer, there
longer necks were inherited by their offspring. Who thus started life with a propensity
to grow longer necks then their parents. After many generation of neck stretching the
result was what we can now see. Lamarck describe the process as being driven by the
striving of giraffes and he often describe animals as wishing or willing to change
themselves. His theory has therefore sometimes been caricatured as suggesting the
evolution happen by the will of the organism however theory does not acquire any
conscious striving on the part of the organism only feasibly in individual
development and inheritance of acquired characters.

4
Darwin’s Theory
In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the
expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting
themselves best to their environment.
(Charles Darwin)
The publication of Darwin's book The Origin of Species in 1859 changed biology
forever. The first printing of the book sold out in one day. Darwin clearly and
logically presented the idea that natural selection is the mechanism of evolution. In
Darwin's own lifetime many scientists became convinced that evolution occurs by
means of natural selection. Today this theory is the unifying one for all biology.

Darwin's theory of evolution is based on five key observations and inferences drawn
from them. These observations and inferences have been summarized by the great
biologist Ernst Mayr as follows:
1) Species have great fertility. They make more offspring than can grow to adulthood.
2) Populations remain roughly the same size, with modest fluctuations.
3) Food resources are limited, but are relatively constant most of the time.
From these three observations it may be inferred that in such an environment there
will be a struggle for survival among individuals.
4)In sexually reproducing species, generally no two individuals are identical.
Variation is rampant.
5) Much of this variation is heritable.

From this it may be inferred: In a world of stable populations where each individual
must struggle to survive, those with the "best" characteristics will be more likely to
survive, and those desirable traits will be passed to their offspring. These
advantageous characteristics are inherited by following generations, becoming
dominant among the population through time. This is natural selection. It may be
further inferred that natural selection, if carried far enough, makes changes in a
population, eventually leading to new species. These observations have been amply
demonstrated in biology, and even fossils demonstrate the veracity of these
observations.
To summarize Darwin's Theory of Evolution;
1. Variation: There is Variation in Every Population.
2. Competition: Organisms Compete for limited resources.
3. Offspring: Organisms produce more Offspring than can survive.
4. Genetics: Organisms pass Genetic traits on to their offspring.
5. Natural Selection: Those organisms with the Most Beneficial Traits
are more likely to Survive and Reproduce.
Darwin imagined it might be possible that all life is descended from an original
species from ancient times. DNA evidence supports this idea.
Probably all organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from
some one primordial life form. There is grandeur in this view of life that, whilst this
planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a
4
beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being
evolved.

The Eclipse Of Darwin

Like many revolutionary scientific theories, Darwin's ideas were not accepted
immediately. His theory suggested that the origins of life are both cruel and blind -
relying on death and competition - not everyone's cup of tea! There were also plenty
of rival theories around at the time.

Before Darwin, many scientists, mainly inspired by the fossil record, were starting to
consider that one species might give rise to another. This is evolution. The alternative
is continuous creation by a supernatural agency. Darwin succeeded in persuading
most of his contemporaries that evolution can and does happen. However his
mechanism of natural selection was not so well received. This was mainly due to the
sheer unpleasantness of the theory.Natural selection works only if better-adapted
individuals have more surviving offspring.

Darwin believed that variation was continuous. The problem with this, if it were true,
is that any new variation would always be diluted. Suppose we had a population of
white animals and it becomes advantageous to be black. A black mutant will be
successful and have more offspring. However, the offspring will have a white parent
also and so will be grey. Their children will be light grey and eventually the mutation
is diluted to nothing.

Weismann believed that the body was constructed according to information stored in
the ‘germ plasm’, which was then replicated to produce offspring. We now know that
this is the case; the ‘germ plasm’ is the DNA within the reproductive organs. When we
are conceived, the genetic material from our parents is combined to produce our
genome, which then directs the construction of our bodies. This DNA cannot be
changed in our lifetime. Weismann demonstrated the failure of Lamarckism in a
famous experiment. He cut off the tails of mice and allowed them to reproduce. He
repeated this for many generations. There was no change in the average length of tail.
This showed that tailless mice still had the information to produce tails, meaning that
the tails were not involved in making new mice. This implied that Weismann’s theory
was correct and that Lamarckism could not occur. Unfortunately, this did not convince
many neo-Lamarckians. Forced to choose, most instead rejected natural selection.

Another rival theory developed at around this time. This was orthogenesis, which
proposed that evolution was directed by internal forces. The term most commonly use
to describe consistently directed along single path the forces originating within the
organism themselves. These involuntary trends unfold without reference to the
demand of environment and may can lead to extinction One example was the Irish
Elk, which is thought to have gone extinct because its antlers grew too large, as they
imposed a heavy energetic cost and made the species more vulnerable to predators.
The theory doesn’t explain why traits which are costly would exist. Orthogenesis
lingered on for a while, complicating the evolution debate even further.
4
The Modern Synthesis
In 19 century, Darwinism was on the decline and would soon be eliminated
th

altogether as a major evolutionary theory, scientists admit that some of the objection
appeared to be valid about Darwinism, some of the alternative mechanism would have
to be taken seriously, at least as addition to Darwinism.
The work of Gregor Mendel published in 1865 and 1866 which was "re-discovered"
in 1900.
Also if gray rabbits were mated with black rabbits, their hybrids were all gray, the
black seemingly disappearing, but when the second generation were mated, the
progeny were again grays and black. The recessive character always reappear.

Mendel's Law &

Mendelian Genetics
-Genetics and
Evolution
Previous pages have described how genetic information is passed along from parents
to offspring. Mendel summarised this in his first law, the principle of segregation

Mendel's First Law

"The alleles of a gene exist in pairs but when gametes are formed, the members of
each pair pass into different gametes. Thus each gamete contains only one allele of
each gene."

Incomplete
Dominance
When a particular gene possesses both dominant and recessive alleles, it is possible
for incomplete dominance to occur, where the organism at hand expresses a
phenotype morphed by the expression of both the dominant and recessive alleles.

In essence, heterozygous (possessing opposing alleles Rr) organisms derived from

homozygous (possessing the same alleles RR or rr) are created, they possess a
phenotype different to that of both their parents.

4
Some of the following examples of monohybrid and dihybrid crossing illustrate this
incomplete dominance.

Multiple Alleles
Diploid organisms naturally have a maximum of 2 alleles for each gene expressing a
particular characteristic, one deriving from each parent. In some cases, however, more
than two types of allele can code for a particular characteristic, as is the case of
genetic coding for blood type in humans. Their are up to 6 possible genotypes that
code for the four blood groups, A, B, AB and O.

Example of a Cross
The following dihybrid cross involves two true breeding pea plants, where two factors
are looked at, the shape of the seed and the colour of the seed.G.Mendel, an
experimenter found that when we cross a giant verity of peas with dwarf verity. The
giant were called Dominant; the disappearing dwarfs “recessive” but among the
second generation of this giant offspring giants and dwarfs appeared in the proportion
of 3 to 1. When the dwarfs were self-fertilized, successive generation were landwards.
The successive character was not lost, but appeared again.

Chromosomes X and Y
and Sex
Determination
- Genetics and
Evolution
In a human, the normal chromosomes complement is 46, 44 of which are autosomes
while 2 distinct chromosomes are deemed sex chromosomes, which determine the sex
of an organism and various sex linked characteristics.
In most animals, those who possess XX chromosomes are female while male animals
possess an X and a Y chromosome. However, this is not true of all organisms, as it
can be reversed in some species.

4
Sex Determination
A humans' sex is predetermined in the sperm gamete.
The egg gamete mother cell is said to be homogametic, because all its cell possess the
XX sex chromosomes. sperm gametes are deemed heterogametic because around half
of them contain the X chromosome and others possess the Y chromosome to
compliment the first X chromosome.
In light of this, there are two possibilities that can occur during fertilisation between
male and female gametes, XX and XY. Since sperm are the variable factor (i.e. which
sperm fertilises the egg) they are responsible for determining sex.

Chromosomes X and Y
Chromosomes X and Y do not truly make up a homologous pair. They act similarly in
their roles, but they are not homologous (the same). The X chromosome in humans is
much longer than the Y chromosome and also contains many more genes.
These genes are said to be sex linked, due to the fact they are present in one of the sex
chromosomes. During fertilisation, when the opposing homologous chromosomes
come together, the smaller Y chromosome offers no dominance against the 'extra' X
chromosomes as indicated below.

The arrows indicate sex linked genes in the X chromosome. In this homologous
pairing, all those genes are dominant, because there are no opposing genes in the Y
chromosome to offer dominance.
So when the organism has an XY chromosome compliment (i.e. a male), these sex
linked genes are freely expressed in the organisms phenotype, an example being hairy
ears developing in old age.

Sex Linked
Characteristics
These sex linked genes on the X chromosome display a number of characteristics. The
following are just some examples of phenotypes as a result of these genes in
expression;
• Red-Green colour blindness
• Haemophilia - A condition which prevents the clotting of the blood
4
 • Hairy ears in men through advancing age

References
Feisher, paul (Ed. 2009) The Big Bang. Minneapolis: lerner publishing group
ENCYCLOPEDIA II -ORIGIN OF LIFE- HISTORY OF THE CONCEPT: ABIOGENESIS. retrieved from
EXPERIENCE FESTIVAL.com
Charles dormin Kelly Johnson, The law of biogenesis. Retrieved from ehow.com
Ridle, mark (Ed.3rd) Evolution. Blackwell publisher
Darwin’s theory Retrieved from SPACEANDMOTION.COM
Walmswell, joe” Eclipse of Darwin” Retrieved from www.crist.cam.ac.uk
J bowler, peter (Ed.1983 ) .Eclipses of Darwinism john Hopkins university press
Mendelen law Retrieved from biology help.com