IGCSE Biology: Characteristics of living organisms

Thursday, 3 January 2013

1.1 Understand that living organisms share the following characteristics:

they require nutrition
they respire
they excrete their waste
they respond to their surroundings
they move
they control their internal conditions
they reproduce
they grow and develop.

What you need to know is that to be a living organism you must do all of the above.

A good way to remember this is a pneumonic: Mrs C. Gren is one example, trying to think of the colour sea green may help.

Movement

Respiration

Sensitivity

Control

Grow

Reproduce

Excrete

Nutrition

Here, C can be replaced by H to represent homoeostasis (control of internal conditions).

This blog was originally set up for my own revision purposes, and not for other people to read, so you can't rely on everything that I have written. Obviously the notes are combinations of what my teachers have taught me, what my tutor has said and things I have found in revision guides or sites, so I'd like to think that everything is reliable! This is just my disclaimer and a little note to make sure that it is understood I may have made mistakes that I wouldn't want anyone to repeat!

On a more happy note, I'm so glad that people are using this as a source, and am overjoyed with the comments that I have been left ;) I'm happy to have helped and I hope everybody does the best in their exams!