Search for a Better Health Biology
The Search for Better Health
1. What is a healthy organism?
Discuss the difficulties of defining the terms ‘health’ and ‘disease’
Health is a state of physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease of infirmity. Disease is any condition that affects the proper functioning of a body. It is any disturbance of structure or function of the body of an organism generally associated with characteristic of symptoms and structural changes to the body.
These definitions however are sometimes difficult to define as it is possible to be healthy and still have a disease for example, cystic fibrosis, tinea. Many people could seem fine even thought their bodies might be affected by a serious disease like cancer.
Outline how the function of genes, mitosis, cell differentiation and specialisation assist in the maintenance of health
▪ Genes - unit of inheritance that code for the synthesis of polypeptides and consequently proteins. Proteins produced affect the structure and function of the cell and are required for normal growth and repair. ▪ Mitosis - cell division resulting in identical cells for repair, growth and reproduction. ▪ Cell differentiation - each cell has potential genetic code to change into different specialized cell types. ▪ Cell specialization - each cell carries out a particular cell function.
|Gene expression |Coding for amino acids, the building blocks of enzymes and structural proteins |
| |Control mitosis and meiosis in cells |
| |Place limits on mitotic division and replacement preventing cancer |
|Mitosis |Maintains body tissues that die every day for malfunction or aging (e.g. red blood cell) |
| |Repairing injured
1. What is a healthy organism?
Discuss the difficulties of defining the terms ‘health’ and ‘disease’
Health is a state of physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease of infirmity. Disease is any condition that affects the proper functioning of a body. It is any disturbance of structure or function of the body of an organism generally associated with characteristic of symptoms and structural changes to the body.
These definitions however are sometimes difficult to define as it is possible to be healthy and still have a disease for example, cystic fibrosis, tinea. Many people could seem fine even thought their bodies might be affected by a serious disease like cancer.
Outline how the function of genes, mitosis, cell differentiation and specialisation assist in the maintenance of health
▪ Genes - unit of inheritance that code for the synthesis of polypeptides and consequently proteins. Proteins produced affect the structure and function of the cell and are required for normal growth and repair. ▪ Mitosis - cell division resulting in identical cells for repair, growth and reproduction. ▪ Cell differentiation - each cell has potential genetic code to change into different specialized cell types. ▪ Cell specialization - each cell carries out a particular cell function.
|Gene expression |Coding for amino acids, the building blocks of enzymes and structural proteins |
| |Control mitosis and meiosis in cells |
| |Place limits on mitotic division and replacement preventing cancer |
|Mitosis |Maintains body tissues that die every day for malfunction or aging (e.g. red blood cell) |
| |Repairing injured