Would you believe that the idea of inoculating people against diseases such as smallpox, measles, and mumps originated in ancient China? Healers there ground up scabs taken from a smallpox survivor into a powder and blew this dust into the nostrils of their patients. Gross as this may sound, these ancient healers were actually inoculating their patients to help prevent the spread of the disease.

Scientists are working with cells, the smallest unit of life, to come up with new therapies to help people with organ failure and devastating injuries. Stem cells, which have the potential to become any kind of cell, have the most potential for this research. Scientists working on ways to coax cells to grow into new organs in the lab were recently able to get human cells to grow into an organized structure that looked like an immature heart and that started beating when they gave it some electricity. Was ist eine Zelle und wofür ist sie überhaupt gut? Was passiert, wenn wir krank werden? Diese und weitere Fragen werden in diesem Buch beantwortet. Hier werden die Geheimnisse des Lebens gelüftet und ein spannendes Feld der Wissenschaft erläutert. Perhaps you don’t think about extinction much, but it’s something worth being aware of. If you need an example, consider the case of polar bears. As global temperatures rise, the polar ice is melting, leaving polar bears with less and less habitat. Not quite so noticeable, but also endangered, are 1,900 other species of plants and animals. Through his experiments, Mendel was able to establish that genetic factors are passed from parents to offspring and remain unchanged in the offspring so that they can be passed on again to the next generation. Although his work was done before the discovery of DNA and chromosomes, the genetic principles of dominance, segregation, and independent assortment that Mendel originally defined are still used to this day. Rene Fester Kratz und Donna Rae Siegfried erklären dem Leser, wie die Welt funktioniert. Genauer - die Pflanzen, Tiere, Menschen, Viren, Bakterien...Wir gehen hinein in die Körper der Lebewesen und erforschen sie von Grund auf. Dies ist wahnsinnig spannend, teilweise etwas verwirrend aber die Lektüre lohnt sich definitiv!Cells are the smallest living component of your body, and they can do amazing things. Every minute of every day, your cells are quietly working away, digesting your food, sending signals that control your responses, transporting oxygen around your body, contracting so you can move, and making all of your other bodily processes happen. If your cells weren’t functioning, your tissues, organs, and organ systems wouldn’t be either. Providing you with clean water

Sometimes science seems like something that happens in a lab somewhere far removed from everyday life. That may be, but the effects of scientific research have a huge impact on your day-to-day existence, from the food you eat to the energy that powers your home. Following is a rundown of ten important ways that biology affects your life. Most are good; others aren’t so good. Either way, you just may be surprised by a couple of them. Organisms with the best-suited characteristics for their environment are more likely to survive and reproduce.This is the heart of natural selection. If there’s competition for survival and not all the organisms are the same, then the ones with the advantageous traits are more likely to survive. If these traits can be inherited, then the next generation will show more of these advantageous traits. Offspring must inherit some characteristics from their parents.During Darwin’s time, the laws of inheritance were just beginning to be figured out, so Darwin didn’t know exactly how parents passed on their traits. Modern scientists know that traits are inherited when parents pass genes on to their offspring. Cytokinins stimulate cell division, promote leaf expansion, and slow down the aging of leaves. Florists actually use them to help make cut flowers last longer. As this scenario repeats over time, populations of bacteria eventually become super-resistant to antibiotics, explaining why sometimes doctors don’t have the drugs to help people who are infected with an antibiotic-resistant bacteria For the first time in a long time, people can die from an infection simply because doctors can’t kill the bacteria.Individuals in the population must produce more offspring than can survive.Human beings are somewhat unique among living things in that we can make conscious choices about how many offspring we have. Most other organisms, however, produce as many offspring as they can. Some people object to the idea of GMOs in their diets, but genetic modification of organisms has enabled some amazing health breakthroughs. If you know someone who takes insulin to treat diabetes, that insulin is made by bacteria that scientists engineered to contain the human gene for insulin. Man muss kein Vorwissen haben, um die Bücher die Dummies-Reihe zu lesen. So ist es auch bei "Biologie für Dummies". Alles wird ganz einfach erklärt und die Autoren verwenden oft plastische Beispiele oder Sinnbilder, sodass der Leser sich leichter merken kann, wie der beschriebene Vorgang funktioniert. Microbes aren’t just for making foods; they have a wide variety of industrial applications too. Manufacturers put bacterial enzymes in laundry detergent to help break down greasy stains and in meat tenderizers to help break down proteins in meats. If you take vitamin C, chances are that vitamin was produced by a fungus. If you drink a protein shake regularly, the amino acids in that shake probably also came from bacteria. So you see, not all microbes are to be feared. Some of them actually improve your life by simplifying tasks and keeping you healthy.