Characteristics of Life

• mnemonic to remember the characteristics of life: Remember My Red Hat And Happy Green Coat, reproduction, metabolism, response to stimuli, homeostasis, adaptation, heredity, growth+development, cellular organization
• homeostasis is the maintenance of a constant internal environment despite changes in the external environment, such as water and temperature levels
• sexual reproduction is when cells from both parents form the first cell of a new organism
• asexual reproduction is when a single parent produces offspring with the same genes identical to the parent
• viruses have DNA/RNA in a capsid, they only reproduce with a host cell, their genetic code is DNA/RNA.
• all cells have cell membrane, DNA, ribosomes, and cytoplasm, they can reproduce on their own (asexually or sexually), they have DNA, and they are multicellular organisms