1. "Excuse me, are you alive?"

2. Aim: What are the characteristics of living things?
I. Organism – a whole living thing that carries out life functions.
A. All organisms carry out the following life functions:
1. Nutrition – the activities by which living things obtain food and process it for their use.
a. Autotrophic nutrition – organisms (green plants) make their own food (photosynthesis)
b. Heterotrophic nutrition – organisms must obtain their foods from outside sources (ingest food) of organic nutrients.

3. Autotroph
Heterotroph

4. 2. Transport – the life function by which substances are absorbed, circulated, and released by living things.
3. Respiration – the life function by which living things convert the energy organic foods into a form more easily used by the cell.
4. Excretion - the life function by which living things eliminate metabolic wastes from their cells.
**Metabolism – the sum total of all the cell’s chemical activity.

6. 5. Synthesis – involves the chemical processes of building large molecules from smaller molecules.
6. Regulation - the life function by which living things respond to changes within and around them, and by which all life processes are coordinated.
7. Growth – A process in which cells increase in number and size, resulting in an increase in size of the organism.
8. Reproduction – The life process by which new cells arise from preexisting cells by cell division.