The science of biology is shaping everything around us from agriculture, psychology, medicine, to technology. This article revisits the top life-changing biology discoveries in the history of man.

Illustration art of the human body, medical science, with an element of biotechnology.

Scientists are changing the way we live every day through discoveries and inventions. Scientific knowledge has been improving our way of life for a very long time now. From the very routine workings of our daily lives to massive global issues, scientific discoveries have occupied every single niche of our lives. These discoveries are meant to make life easier, help create jobs, others save lives, and others actually harm the very life we treasure.

Biology is one of the branches of science that has massively contributed to saving, prolonging, and preserving our lives. From the first inventions in medical science, the simple and merely functional, to the current complex tech discoveries, all around biology has been a life-changing science with a myriad of scientific discoveries and inventions. 

Studying this science in school, however, can be a little challenging. With the large volumes of content to be covered by the long critical hours that are demanded by the course, biology-related courses really suck the sap out of students. This is why we are here to help. buybiologyessay.com is always ready to offer you help by writing your biology essays and reports, taking the load off of you.  

In this article, we shall look at the role of biology in our society today. Review the daily applications of life and then take it to a larger stage and analyse the life-changing biology science discoveries that have impacted our current modern-day lives. What are they? How do we use them? How do they affect us? And of course the big question, would we do without them?  

The Important Role of Biology as a part of our Daily Life

Every single typical day, we wake up to brushing our teeth, making breakfast, preparing for work or school. Others go a mile ahead and do some work out sessions in the gym or take a jog. All these routine workings repeat themselves over and over again. They have become so mundane to our lives that we never see anything special about them. They are basic, and without them, most of us can barely survive.

In schools, biology has become a very basic subject that one way or another, we have all come into contact with the subject. Biology refers to living things, both plants and animals. The knowledge in biology helps in explaining various living phenomena both around and within us. This makes it vital to understand what we require on a daily basis to sustain life. Through biology, we get to understand the available resources and the potential threats within and around us. This can only come by understanding our own bodies and know when they require sustenance and when they need to get treated.

In biology-related professions, scientists are identified according to the subset of organisms they major and concentrate in. The subset could either be plants or animals. It could go as a minute as being a bacteria or less. This makes biology a vital aspect of life. The following factors emphasize the critical facets of the subject: 

• It deals primarily with the study of life.
• It provides comprehension of both the living and the non-living organisms. By so doing, we get to understand how different they are and how we interact and coexist with them. 
• It clarifies the diversity between the different life-forms in the world.
• It has been crucial in the identification of diseases and the eventual medication of these ailments.
• It is a basis of several other branches of biology, such as human anatomy, food biology, medicines, biotechnology, and so many others.

With this knowledge, even with a minute portion of this knowledge, we still apply it in our daily mundane activities. Below are areas where biology applies on a daily basis:

Understanding the Human Body

Biology explains the components that not only make but enable the functioning of the human body. These range from large physiological features to minute genetic components. Understanding our bodies gives us insights on how we relate to foods, air, and the general environment. Therefore we can control our weight, bacteria, and food. 

Treatment of Diseases

Biology has been the main contributor to pharmacology, the development of medicine that ease pain, cure ailments, and control some aspects of our bodies, such as brain activities like depression. By understanding biology, we get to know the various diseases covered in pathology, how they come about, and, most importantly, how to treat them. Due to technology, scientists can predict diseases beforehand. Simply put, the concepts of biology span on a very huge scope when it comes to the sector of medicine and health.

The importance of Nutrition

Nutrition sustains our bodies by providing us with energy, healing, growth, and repair. We apply nutrition when we have a better understanding of our physical mechanisms. Nutritionists major in this kind of knowledge, and by understanding our bodies, they guide us on the appropriate mode of nutrition.

How To Use Biology Knowledge Every Day

On earth, biology covers the surface and the spaces under the ground. Being the epitome of intelligent beings on our planet, human beings have harnessed biology and science in general and put it into application in almost every facet of our lives. The list below shows the areas in which we apply biology knowledge in our daily activities:

Foods and beverages

Foods and beverages are biological products, and we consume them daily to sustain ourselves and sometimes for enjoyment. We get these products from other living things such as meat, milk, and eggs from livestock, vegetables from plants, and wine and juices from fruits.

Clothing and textiles

Our clothes are either made from cotton, linen, polyester, and nylon. They are then coloured in fabric dyes. Our footwear is made from various types of skins. These textile products are biological substances. Cotton fibres and linen are plant-based fabrics from cotton and flax, respectively. Other fabrics such as polyester and nylon are made from fossil fuels which are a product of biomass.

Beauty and personal care

Similarly, almost every personal care and beauty products are made from biological ingredients. This could be soap, shampoo, lotions, perfumes, and many others.

Transport and leisure

Tires are manufactured from rubber which comes from rubber trees. Sports, on the other hand, has a number of old equipment made from wood such as bats and bowling pins. In entertainment, we have guitars, pianos and several other types of equipment made from wood.

Building

Majority of buildings today have to use wood at some point in the construction process. Other types of equipment used in construction such as pencils and rubbers and in-house materials like rugs and pint are all plant-based.

Fuels

Most fuels today have a biological origin. Fossil fuels are a result of millions of years of decay. Today, we have biofuels which are made from plant material.

Healthcare and medicine

In healthcare, biology is almost a major subject. Physicians need to study the human body to understand how to treat it. Medicines, on the other hand, are made from several medicinal plants such as willow trees and foxglove.

Discoveries in Biology That Became Life-Changing

Illustration of a DNA strand. DNA has seen some of the biggest discoveries in the recent past.

While biology influences our daily activities such as what we eat and what we wear, biological discoveries have gone a long way to change and improve the way we live. In the wake of modern technology, biotechnology has seen the advancement of so many medicinal developments. Even before such advanced technology, human beings still researched and discovered a lot of life-changing improvements.

In the list below, we shall look at discoveries made both on a medicinal to a molecular level that have gone a long way to change the way we live.

Antibiotics

In 1928 a Scottish scientist by the name Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin. Penicillin, obtained from Penicillium moulds, was used to treat bacteria based infections, such as respiratory infections. This set in motion for research by several other researchers. In the 1940s the discovery of more antibiotics had begun rising as it reached its peak in the 60s. Human beings saw a considerable decline in mortality rates due to the treatment of diseases. 

Today, scientists are working on target-drug combinations to counter bacterias which develop resistance to the present drugs. The very discovery of antibiotics changed life considerably.    

Vaccinations – Smallpox

For three thousand years, mankind was scourged by smallpox. It killed so many people all around the world, and things got worse when population establishments began to grow. In 1977 however, humankind got a break. A harmless virus obtained from cows could now protect man against smallpox. This was the birth of vaccination. By 1978, smallpox was declared the first infectious disease that humans eradicated through deliberate intervention.

From this discovery, humankind has gone a long way to develop so many other vaccinations preventing us from life-damning infections. It is the same effort in place as the world races towards a Coronavirus vaccine. 

DNA Technology 

DNA technology has had three major discoveries over the years. They include the eventual functional understanding of the DNA molecule, the recombinant DNA technology, and Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR).

Francis Crick, one of the innovators in the DNA sector, proposed the idea of codons and the basics of the central dogma of molecular biology in 1961. Identifying the transcription process, which is the direct flow from DNA to RNA, and the translation process, which is the assembling of RNA proteins kickstarted the understanding of genetic information in DNA and its functions.

Over a decade after this, in the 70s, a new technique was discovered – recombinant DNA. This is an artificial model of DNA strand that is a result of an engineering combination of two or more gene sequences. This is a big field in biotechnology which till today is used in the management of some health conditions. Scientists Werner Arber, Daniel Nathans, and Hamilton Smith would later be awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1978 for their technological discoveries that aided the discovery, isolation, and application of recombinant DNA.   

A few years down the line, in 1983, the most impactful DNA discovery awaited – the PCR. Kary Mullis developed a technique that could be used to amplify small samples of DNA into millions and billions of copies. This technique has aided the Human Genome Project, and it is used in the diagnosis of diseases, cloning, and sequencing of genes. 

Identification of HIV/AIDS

Identified in the 1980s, HIV is a retrovirus believed to have jumped species to humans. The theory states that this might have happened in the late 19th or early 20th century. Without the identification and diagnosis of persons with this virus, the continuum of medical care and treatments would not have kicked off. Based on the PCR amplification, Multiregion Hybridization Assay (MHA) is the only existent method used to detect dual infections without further sequence analysis. A discovery that greatly saved the human race from the danger that loomed. This has raised the quality of life massively.

Stem Cells 

Stem cells are specialised cells that have the ability to self-renew themselves and rise to one or more differentiated or mature cell types. They are a cornerstone in all vertebrates. Simply stated, stem cells produce new replacement cells for tissues during development and homeostasis. Recent biotechnological advances have given rise to tissue engineering and regenerative medicine which combines biomaterials, growth factors, and stem cells to repair failing organs.