Key Life Processes: Nutrition, Respiration, Transportation & Excretion
Basic Life Processes
Life on earth is mainly due to specific processes and functions. Many basic yet important processes are necessary for organisms for remaining healthy and maintain the proper functioning of the organ system of that specific organism. These processes are all vital for survival. Talking about life processes, it consists of six different processes that are possessed by an organism that calculate the overall condition of life. The different types of life processes include:
1. Nutrition
2. Metabolism
3. Respiration
4. Transportation
5. Reproduction
6. Metabolism(Image to be added soon)
Nutrition
Nutrition is the process in which both plants and animals obtain food and use it to get energy. It is a basic and essentially biological process that aid living beings to get their energy from different sources. The substances that provide this nutrition are nutrients depending on the requirement of the body.
However, the mode of nutrition tends to vary from one species to the other. Plants possess autotrophic nutrition since they synthesize their food through photosynthesis by using sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide.
Animals, on the other hand, are heterotrophs, meaning that they depend on plants and other organisms for their food. All vertebrates, which includes humans, and a few unicellular organisms like an amoeba, have a holozoic mode of nutrition.
Transportation
The transportation in both plants and animals differ from one another. In animals, the transportation system is via the circulatory system, which consists of blood, the heart, and the blood vessels that carry blood.
Plants, on the other hand, have vascular tissues to conduct and transport the materials throughout the parts of the plants. These vascular tissues are the xylem and phloem. Xylem tends to conduct both water and minerals from the roots to the shoots, whereas the phloem transports the food which is prepared from the leaves to the other parts of the plant.
Metabolism
Metabolism refers to the chemical process by which different kinds of chemical reactions get involved to control the living state of the cells of that organism. It is further divided into anabolism and catabolism.
Anabolism
Anabolism is the process in which the energy gets stored for future requirements.
Catabolism
Catabolism is the process in which the energy gets released.
Respiration
Respiration is the process in which the exchange of gases takes place. Animals possess a well-defined respiratory system to carry out the process of respiration.
In respiration, glucose breaks down to release energy. It is a type of redox reaction that takes place with or without oxygen. The process of respiration occurs in the mitochondria of the cells, and the energy that gets released is in the form of ATP.
Respiration is Mainly of Two Different Types
Aerobic Respiration: The respiration in the presence of oxygen
Anaerobic Respiration: The respiration that occurs in the absence of oxygen
Reproduction
The biological process to reproduce offspring determines the species continuity, one generation after the other. Reproduction is of two types:
Sexual Reproduction: The process to reproduce its offspring by involving two gametes or parents is known as sexual reproduction.
The process to reproduce its offspring by involving a single gamete or parent is known as asexual reproduction.
Excretion
Excretion refers to the process of eliminating toxic waste substances from the organism’s body. There are different ways in which organisms excrete.
Plants possess different types of modes of excretion. The oxygen during the process of photosynthesis and the carbon dioxide during the process of respiration are given out through stomata. The excessive water gets removed by the process of transpiration. Plants even shed dead cells and leaves. These waste products get stored in the plant vacuoles and the leaves, which fall off. The other waste products are resins and gums, etc.
Humans, on the other hand, have a very well developed excretory system that consists of a pair of kidneys, urinary bladder, and urethra. The structural unit of kidneys are nephrons in which the blood gets filtered. Pureblood, after the process of filtration, circulates to the other parts of the body and the waste products that get extracted pass to the ureter and enter the urinary bladder. In the urinary bladder, urine gets collected and is then excreted out through the urethra.
FAQs on Life Process in Biology: Explanation, Types & FAQs
1. What are life processes and why are they essential?
Life processes are the fundamental activities performed by all living organisms to maintain and sustain life. These processes are essential because they ensure the organism can grow, repair damage, get energy, and remove waste. Without these coordinated functions, such as nutrition, respiration, transportation, and excretion, an organism cannot survive.
2. What are the major types of life processes studied in the CBSE Class 10 syllabus?
The CBSE Class 10 syllabus for the chapter 'Life Processes' primarily focuses on four critical processes:
Nutrition: The process of obtaining and utilising food for energy, growth, and repair. This includes autotrophic nutrition in plants and heterotrophic nutrition in animals.
Respiration: The process of breaking down food to release energy. It can be aerobic (with oxygen) or anaerobic (without oxygen).
Transportation: The movement of food, oxygen, water, and waste materials from one part of the body to another. This involves the circulatory system in humans and the xylem/phloem in plants.
Excretion: The process of removing metabolic waste products from the body to prevent toxicity.
3. What is the key difference between autotrophic and heterotrophic nutrition?
The key difference lies in how organisms obtain their food. Autotrophic nutrition is the process where organisms produce their own food from simple inorganic raw materials like carbon dioxide and water, using sunlight as an energy source (e.g., green plants through photosynthesis). In contrast, heterotrophic nutrition is the mode where organisms cannot synthesise their own food and depend directly or indirectly on autotrophs for their energy and nutritional requirements (e.g., humans, animals, fungi).
4. How are the lungs designed in humans to maximise the area for gas exchange?
The lungs are designed for maximum efficiency in gas exchange through several features. The primary one is the presence of millions of tiny, balloon-like structures called alveoli at the end of bronchioles. These alveoli provide a vast surface area for the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide. Furthermore, the walls of the alveoli are extremely thin (one-cell thick) and are surrounded by a dense network of blood capillaries, which minimises the diffusion distance and facilitates rapid gas exchange between the air in the lungs and the blood.
5. Why is diffusion insufficient to meet the oxygen needs of multicellular organisms like humans?
In small, unicellular organisms, all cells are in direct contact with the environment, so diffusion is a fast and effective way to transport substances like oxygen. However, in large multicellular organisms like humans, most cells are not in direct contact with the surroundings. The distance between the body's surface and the internal cells is too great for oxygen to reach every cell in time by diffusion alone. Therefore, complex organisms have evolved specialised transport systems, like the circulatory system with blood and haemoglobin, to carry oxygen efficiently to all body parts.
6. What is meant by 'double circulation' in the human heart?
Double circulation is a system where blood passes through the heart twice for each complete circuit of the body. It consists of two loops:
Pulmonary Circulation: Deoxygenated blood is pumped from the right ventricle to the lungs to get oxygenated and returns to the left atrium.
Systemic Circulation: Oxygenated blood is pumped from the left ventricle to all parts of the body and deoxygenated blood returns to the right atrium.
This system prevents the mixing of oxygenated and deoxygenated blood, ensuring a highly efficient supply of oxygen to the body's cells.
7. How do plants transport water and food to different parts?
Plants have two specialised vascular tissues for transport. Xylem tissue transports water and minerals absorbed from the soil by the roots up to the rest of the plant. This movement is primarily driven by transpiration pull. Phloem tissue transports food (sugars) produced during photosynthesis in the leaves to other parts of the plant, such as roots, fruits, and storage organs. This process of food transport is called translocation.
8. What is a nephron and what is its role in the human body?
A nephron is the basic structural and functional unit of the kidney. Each kidney contains about a million nephrons. Its primary role is to filter blood and form urine. This involves three main steps: glomerular filtration (filtering blood under high pressure), selective reabsorption (reabsorbing useful substances like glucose, amino acids, and water back into the blood), and tubular secretion (secreting waste ions like potassium and hydrogen into the filtrate). This entire process helps regulate blood composition and remove metabolic wastes.
9. How do plants manage their waste products?
Unlike animals, plants lack a specialised excretory system and manage waste in several ways. Gaseous wastes like oxygen from photosynthesis and carbon dioxide from respiration are released through stomata. Excess water is removed through transpiration. Some solid or liquid wastes are stored in the vacuoles of cells, in leaves that eventually fall off, or as resins and gums in the old xylem. Some waste products are also excreted into the soil around them.
