Portal:Biology
Introduction
Biology is the scientific study of life and living organisms. It is a broad natural science that encompasses a wide range of fields and unifying principles that explain the structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, and distribution of life. Central to biology are five fundamental themes: the cell as the basic unit of life, genes and heredity as the basis of inheritance, evolution as the driver of biological diversity, energy transformation for sustaining life processes, and homeostasis, the maintenance of internal stability.
Biology examines life across multiple levels of organization, from molecules and cells to organisms, population, and ecosystems. Subdisciplines include molecular biology, physiology, ecology, evolutionary biology, developmental biology, and systematics, among others. Each of these fields applies a range of methods to investigate biological phenomena, including observation, experimentation, and mathematical modeling. Modern biology is grounded in the theory of evolution by natural selection, first articulated by Charles Darwin, and in the molecular understanding of genes encoded in DNA. The discovery of the structure of DNA and advances in molecular genetics have transformed many areas of biology, leading to applications in medicine, agriculture, biotechnology, and environmental science.
Biologists classify organisms—from single-celled archaea and bacteria to multicellular plants, fungi, and animals—based on shared characteristics and evolutionary relationships, using taxonomic and phylogenetics. (Full article...)
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In evolutionary biology, function is the reason some object or process occurred in a system that evolved through natural selection. That reason is typically that it achieves some result, such as that chlorophyll helps to capture the energy of sunlight in photosynthesis. Hence, the organism that contains it is more likely to survive and reproduce, in other words the function increases the organism's fitness. A characteristic that assists in evolution is called an adaptation; other characteristics may be non-functional spandrels, though these in turn may later be co-opted by evolution to serve new functions.
In biology, function has been defined in many ways. In physiology, it is simply what an organ, tissue, cell or molecule does. (Full article...)
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Major topics
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James Dewey Watson (April 6, 1928 – November 6, 2025) was an American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist. In 1953, he and Francis Crick co-authored an academic paper in Nature proposing the double helix structure of the DNA molecule, building on research by Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling. In 1962, Watson, Crick, and Maurice Wilkins were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material".
Watson graduated from the University of Chicago in 1947 and received his doctorate from Indiana University Bloomington in 1950. After a post-doctoral year at the University of Copenhagen with Herman Kalckar and Ole Maaløe, Watson worked at the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory in England, where he met his future collaborator Francis Crick. From 1956 to 1976, Watson was employed by the faculty of the Harvard University Biology Department, promoting research in molecular biology. (Full article...)
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Carefully engineered strains of the bacterium Escherichia coli are crucial tools in biotechnology as well as many other biological fields. (from History of biology)
Efforts are made to preserve the natural characteristics of Hopetoun Falls, Australia, without affecting visitors' access. (from Conservation biology)
The "central dogma of molecular biology" (originally a "dogma" only in jest) was proposed by Francis Crick in 1958. This is Crick's reconstruction of how he conceived of the central dogma at the time. The solid lines represent (as it seemed in 1958) known modes of information transfer, and the dashed lines represent postulated ones. (from History of biology)
In Micrographia, Robert Hooke had applied the word cell to biological structures such as this piece of cork, but it was not until the 19th century that scientists considered cells the universal basis of life. (from History of biology)
Some biodiversity loss is more insidious than others due to systemic neglect. For example, sport killing and wanton waste of tons of native fishes from unregulated 21st century bowfishing in the United States. New conservation movements are needed to deter irreparable biodiversity loss to fragile freshwater ecosystems. (from Conservation biology)
Charles Darwin's first sketch of an evolutionary tree from his First Notebook on Transmutation of Species (1837) (from History of biology)
Wendell Stanley's crystallization of tobacco mosaic virus as a pure nucleoprotein in 1935 convinced many scientists that heredity might be explained purely through physics and chemistry. (from History of biology)
An art scape image showing the relative importance of animals in a rain forest through a summary of (a) child's perception compared with (b) a scientific estimate of the importance. The size of the animal represents its importance. The child's mental image places importance on big cats, birds, butterflies, and then reptiles versus the actual dominance of social insects (such as ants). (from Conservation biology)
Description of rare animals (写生珍禽图), by Huang Quan (903–965) during the Song dynasty (from History of biology)
Mendelian inheritance states characteristics are discrete and are inherited by the parents. This image depicts a monohybrid cross and shows 3 generations: P1 generation (1), F1 generation (2), and F2 generation (3). Each organism inherits two alleles, one from each parent, that make up the genotype. The observed characteristic, the phenotype, is determined by the dominant allele in the genotype. In this monohybrid cross the dominant allele encodes for the colour red and the recessive allele encodes for the colour white. (from History of genetics)
Aristotle's model of transmission of movements from parents to child, and of form from the father. The model is not fully symmetric. (from History of genetics)
Penicillin was viewed as a miracle drug that brought enormous profits and public expectations. (from History of biotechnology)
Inside of a 48-well thermal cycler, a device used to perform polymerase chain reaction on many samples at once (from History of biology)
Frontispiece to a 1644 version of the expanded and illustrated edition of Historia Plantarum, originally written by Theophrastus around 300 BCE (from History of biology)
Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir on Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park (from Conservation biology)
Summary of 2006 IUCN Red List categories:EX (Extinct) — EW (Extinct in the Wild) — CR (Critically Endangered) — EN (Endangered) — VU (Vulnerable) — NT (Near Threatened) — LC (Least Concern) (from Conservation biology)
Thomas Hunt Morgan discovered sex linked inheritance of the white eyed mutation in the fruit fly Drosophila in 1910, implying the gene was on the sex chromosome. (from History of genetics)
Cabinets of curiosities, such as that of Ole Worm, were centers of biological knowledge in the early modern period, bringing organisms from across the world together in one place. Before the Age of Exploration, naturalists had little idea of the sheer scale of biological diversity. (from History of biology)
2016 conservation indicator which includes the following indicators: marine protected areas, terrestrial biome protection (global and national), and species protection (global and national) (from Conservation biology)
Thomas Hunt Morgan's illustration of crossing over, part of the Mendelian-chromosome theory of heredity (from History of biology)
De arte venandi, by Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, was an influential medieval natural history text that explored bird morphology. (from History of biology)
Diagram of Charles Darwin's pangenesis theory. Every part of the body emits tiny particles, gemmules, which migrate to the gonads and contribute to the fertilised egg and so to the next generation. The theory implied that changes to the body during an organism's life would be inherited, as proposed in Lamarckism. (from History of genetics)
Synthetic insulin crystals synthesized using recombinant DNA technology (from History of biotechnology)
August Weismann's germ plasm theory. The hereditary material, the germ plasm, is confined to the gonads. Somatic cells (of the body) develop afresh in each generation from the germ plasm. (from History of genetics)
The frontispiece to Erasmus Darwin's evolution-themed poem The Temple of Nature shows a goddess pulling back the veil from nature (in the person of Artemis). Allegory and metaphor have often played an important role in the history of biology. (from History of biology)
Clay models of animal livers dating between the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries BCE, found in the royal palace at Mari (from History of biology)
Brewing was an early example of biotechnology (from History of biotechnology)
A Genentech-sponsored sign declaring South San Francisco to be "The Birthplace of Biotechnology." (from History of biotechnology)
Innovative laboratory glassware and experimental methods developed by Louis Pasteur and other biologists contributed to the young field of bacteriology in the late 19th century. (from History of biology)
Blending Inheritance (from History of genetics)
In the course of his travels, Alexander von Humboldt mapped the distribution of plants across landscapes and recorded a variety of physical conditions such as pressure and temperature. (from History of biology)
A biomedical work by Ibn al-Nafis, an early adherent of experimental dissection who discovered the pulmonary and coronary circulation (from History of biology)
A pie chart image showing the relative biomass representation in a rain forest through a summary of children's perceptions from drawings and artwork (left), through a scientific estimate of actual biomass (middle), and by a measure of biodiversity (right). The biomass of social insects (middle) far outweighs the number of species (right). (from Conservation biology)
Gregor Mendel, "father of modern genetics" (from History of biology)
Statue of Robert Koch in Berlin. Koch directly provided proof for the germ theory of diseases, therefore creating the scientific basis of public health, saving millions of lives. For his life's work Koch is seen as one of the founders of modern medicine. (from History of biology)
More conservation research is needed for understanding ecology and behaviour of the dhole in central China. (from Conservation biology)
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Did you know -
- ... that the p19 protein (dimer pictured) evolved in an arms race between plants and viruses?
- ...that there are about a million nephrons in a human kidney?
- ... that the semi-aquatic grasshopper Cornops aquaticum is being trialled in South Africa as a biological control agent for the invasive water hyacinth?
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| Chemical basis | ||
| Cells | ||
| Genetics | ||
| Evolution | ||
| Diversity | ||
| Plant form, function | ||
| Animal form, function | ||
| Ecology | ||
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| Theories, concepts | |
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A complete list of scientific WikiProjects can be found here. See also Wikispecies, a Wikimedia project dedicated to classification of biological species.
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