Biology is the subject that studies life in all of its forms.
The most basic unit and the foundation of all life is the cell.
They’re incredibly complicated molecular factories and cellular biology studies the
structure and functions of the many different things inside a cell.
Cells were evolving for over 3 billion years until multicellular animals appeared.
That’s over two thirds of the age of the Earth!
So no wonder they are so complicated.
Cells are the smallest things that we think can be counted as life.
Unfortunately there isn’t a good definition of life that everyone agrees on.
For example, viruses, evolve and replicate but they need other life to do so.
Are they alive?
Sort of but not really.
Molecular Biology looks into the insides of cells and studies how the different systems
work with each other on a molecular basis.
It looks at DNA, RNA, amino acids and the creation of proteins, how they interact with
each other and what affects these interactions.
This is related to structural biology which looks at the shape of biological molecules
like amino acids, nucleic acids, and enzymes; why they have those structures and how differences
in their structure affects how they work.
Biochemistry goes one step even deeper and looks at how these biological molecules interact
with each other on a chemical level.
Life is essentially a load of complex chemical reactions and biochemistry studies the underlying
chemical signals and reactions of life.
The molecules of life are too small to see with optical microscopes and so many techniques
in physics like x-ray crystallography, or cryo-electron microscopy are used to see the
structure of biomolecules.
As well as tools for studying life, biophysics and quantum biology also look at the physics
that underpins biological processes, seeking to explain how things work on a physical level.
Your DNA holds the blueprint of who you are and genetics is the study of how this information
is expressed to create all of the different forms of life through genes, and how this
information is passed on from one generation to the next.
Population genetics looks at the genetic differences within a species and how species differ from
one another.
The DNA code of an organism is huge and so we need computers to find patterns in the
data.
Bioinformatics is the subject that uses computer programming to analyse and interpret biological
data in genetics, and also many other fields.
Wherever the amount of data is too large to analyse with previous statistical methods.
Biomathematics uses the tools of mathematics to build models of biological processes and
is used in many different areas from genetics to biotechnology to studying ecosystems.
You started off as a single cell, how that cell divided and grew into you is studied
by developmental biology.
An interesting area in developmental biology is the growth and differentiation of stem
cells into the different cells in your body.
Anatomy looks at the the structure and organisation at the scale of entire organisms.
It includes both plants and animals and seeks to label all of the different components that
make up an organism.
Biomechanics looks at how parts of the body are designed for movement.
The most obvious is the articulation of our limbs, but it also includes the flow of fluids
or the mechanical properties of bones or tissues like the valves in our heart.
At the microscopic level it also looks at the strength or flexibility of cells or parts
of cells.
While anatomy studies what organisms are made of, Physiology studies how these parts work
and interact with each other.
It seeks to understand how all of the different components in an organism work together to
keep it functioning normally.
Immunology studies our immune system, how it protects us from infection in a multitude
of ways.
It also investigates the many different ways our immune system can go wrong: allergies,
autoimmunity where your immune system attacks your own body, to wider conditions like cancer
and many other illnesses.
The increased lifespan of humans has been helped significantly by biomedical research:
trying to find ways to tackle the causes of illness and death.
This spans many areas from basic research, to developing new medical devices and new
ways of finding and diagnosing illnesses.
Or developing new drugs through clinical trials in the pharmaceutical industry.
Bioengineering takes the principles of engineering and the knowledge of biological systems and
mashes them together to solve real world problems.
This can be used to make devices to help in medicine like artificial organs which called
biomedical engineering.
And it can be used to create biotechnology like genetic engineering where the genetic
code of organisms is modified to tackle diseases or for example to make crops that are resistant
to challenging growing conditions.
Synthetic biology is another branch of bioengineering where scientists can make organisms that don’t
occur in nature by making new sequences of DNA from scratch.
Or re-designing existing systems like genetically engineering e. coli to perform useful tasks
like making drugs or targeted delivery of drugs in the body.
It is worth pointing out that all of the subjects on this map are very interrelated.
Most of them draw upon many of the other areas in their research.
A good example is neuroscience the study of the nervous system and especially the brain.
It involves the anatomy of the brain, the physiology of neurons as well as molecular
biology and biochemistry inside the brain.
So in Biology, as with most of science, there is a lot of cross pollination between fields.
Pharmacology studies the effects drugs have in the body.
It looks at many aspects of drugs, how to make them, what to make them from and their
effect in different biological systems.
Pharmacology is related pharmacy which is the science of preparing and dispensing drugs.
Pathology is the study of the causes and effects of diseases, and the diagnosis of disease
through taking samples from the body like blood or tissue.
It also looks at how cells adapt to injury, the healing of wounds, inflammation, or abnormal
growth of new cells like with cancer.
It is also used to investigate how people have died using post mortem examinations.
Epidemiology looks at health and disease in whole populations and looks at the patterns
of disease, how it is transmitted and the effects on the overall health of a population.
Diseases are monitored all the time and if there is an outbreak epidemiologists swoop
in to work out how it is spreading to try mitigate the damage.
Taking a wider view, biology includes the study of the entire natural world.
Looking at the deep past we get Palaeontology the study of prehistoric life, looking at
fossils to work out what ancient creatures looked liked and how they evolved.
It is closely related to evolutionary biology which looks at how all of the life on Earth
originated from a single common ancestor and studies how evolution led to the wide diversity
of life on Earth.
The many plants and animals that live on the Earth today fall under the study of zoology,
marine biology and botany.
These look at animals, plants and fungi, their development, behaviour, physiology and how
to classify all of the different species.
Ecology looks at how whole groups of animals and plants interact with each other in an
environment: how animals compete or cooperate with each other, and how many different kinds
of plants and animals inhabit the same environment.
This is closely related to environmental biology which looks at how eco-systems can be thrown
off balance by humans through pollution, agriculture or our fossil fuel emissions causing changes
to environments and the climate.
So far, the only life we have seen in the Universe exists on Earth, but are we the only
planet in the Universe with life on it?
Or are there other planets out there with their own strange forms of life?
Astrobiology is our attempt to answer this question, to work out how life may arise from
chemical reactions and to probe distant planets and moons for signs of life.
If there is one word that describes biology, it is complexity.
There is a huge amount we still don’t understand about how life works, how it started and how
it ended up with intelligent apes like us who are able to look back and try and work
it all out.
I feel like we’ll be making new biological discoveries for many many years to come.
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