What is Biology?

Introduction

Since the emergence of life on earth, there arise the need of man to distribute his knowledge into different parts for simplifying the basic understanding of man. Initially, the science was studied in a same subject but with the passage of time, it became very difficult to study every aspect of science in a same subject. Hence the science has been divided into different parts.
The topic of discussion in this article is ‘biology’. The term biology is actually an assemblage of two different Greek words which are bios (literal; life) and logos (literal; thought or reasoning). Hence the term biology means ‘The Scientific Study of Life’. It is basically a branch of science which deals with the living organisms and physical and chemical factors affecting on life.

Although we are using biological sciences since the emergence of life, but with the passage of time it has now became very vast in its types, applications and its aspects. The simple example arise here is that our ancestors were used to live in forests, whenever they get caught by some poison they begin to use natural herbs to treat that particular poison. This was the basic emergence of biological sciences. Since then, man has evolved the biological studies and made it to such a vast topic to discuss. Image Credit goes to Biology by TEP.

Classification of Biology

Likewise other subjects, biology has also been classified into different branches and types. These include;
Zoology: the study of animal and their behavior.
Botany: the study of plants and different physical and chemical factors affection growth of plants.
Human biology: the study of human life especially related to its health and behavior.

These portions of biology have been further divided into different branches. Some of them are as follows:

• Anatomy
• Histology
• Physiology
• Biochemistry
• Microbiology
• Embryology
• Ethology
• Genetics
• Palaentology
• Molecular biology
• Ecology

Applications of biology

Biological sciences have become very vast in its applications. It has become very difficult to discuss every application in this discussion. Some of them are discussed here.

• While discussing the applications of biology, the contributions of biology towards the way of living style should be discussed. Biology has established the standard of living by providing the basic information of hygiene and physical fitness.
• The biological sciences have provided us with treatment to many diseases in the form of medicine, surgery and vaccines. Now we can perform many tests i.e. ECG, EEG, ultrasound etc. to pervent diseases.
• Since the discovery of microorganisms by Antoni Van Leuwenhoek and Robert Hooke, the scientist began to work on these tiny living creatures. Later it was found these were the causative agents for most diseases. The improvements in biological study gave the power to man to prepare particular antibiotics to treat those microorganisms caused diseases. Today, we are having those medicines in the form of different antibiotics. Antibiotics are the chemical substances which control the growth of bacteria by either stopping their production or by killing them. The first antibiotic was prepared by Alexander Flaming by a fungi called as penicillin. Since this preparation, there are many other antibiotics which have been prepared in the laboratory using biological techniques.

• Today, man has also known about the virus which causes diseases in the living organisms. These viruses are neither living nor non-living. These viruses became a topic to discuss by biologists due to its particular nature. Hence with the advancement of biological studies, we have reached to point where we could stop the diseases caused by these viruses. The main type of advancement to stop viral diseases is by the use of vaccines. Vaccines are actually of different kinds. Most vaccines are actually dead or weak pathogens or viruses which work with the immune system of living organisms and induce the immunity in those organisms. Today, biologists are able to synthesize vaccines against many viral diseases. Some familiar examples are of vaccines against mumps, measles, polio virus etc. Polio virus was considered as an epidemic in the 20th century. But with the advancement of study on polio virus, biologists are now able to prepare vaccine in the laboratory and now it is considered to be eradicated from the world.

• Another achievement in the biological study is the ‘Surgery’. It is actually a process by which a part of living body has been opened by cutting and the organ or tissue being damage is removed or replaced by the surgeon. Then the wound is closed by placing stitches. It requires great technique to be handled. There are different types of surgeries being performed by the surgeons and biologists are working on this technique to get further advancement. Some familiar examples of surgery are surgery of appendix, liver transplant, kidney transplant, etc. We hope to get more advancement in this technique in future.

• Biological studies also include study of genetics in which a student learns about the nucleotides and DNA relationship. There are various aspects of this study. With the help of genetics, we came to known about different diseases as related to chromosomes and genes. The most familiar example is of Diabetes Mellitus which is also a genetic disorder which occur due to disarrangement of nucleotides in a gene. Biologist are now working to cure this disease. Genetic engineering is gaining popularity to cure many diseases. Gene therapy has been done practically. It includes the replacement of a defective genes with the normal gene. The Human genome project has also been published to provide the sequence of nucleotide to a particular gene. This field is expected to be used by genetic engineers in near future.

• We can now find the age of a dead fossil with the help of biological studies through Carbon Dating. Radioactive fossils are being used by scientist to get the exact age of fossil. Through this study, we became able to know about 76000 years old mummified brain.

• There was a time when there was no cure for even fever but now because of biology we are able to cure almost all major disease i.e. check this ECG MATLAB Simulation.

• The biological study has also provided us with the knowledge of evolution processes. Since Darwin published the theory of evolution in ‘the origin of species’, we are now known to the evolutionary changes done by the passage of time which will tell us about our ancestors and also help us to prepare for upcoming evolutionary changes.