Questions 1 - Living Organisms

Past Paper Questions

Note that some may have been reworded to fit this blog format

1.a) A student was asked to write a list of the characteristics shared by all living organisms. The list is shown below, but it is not complete. Complete the list by writing down the missing characteristics. (2 marks)

• Growth
• Excretion
• Movement
• Respiration
• Sensitivity
• ____________
• _____________

Answer: A simple way to do this would be to spell out Mrs Gren(c):

M - Movement, done!

R - Respiration, done!

S - Sensitivity, done!

G - Growth, done!

R - Reproduction, not done

E - Excretion, done!

N - Nutrition, not done

C - Control of internal conditions, not done but probably isn't included in this list anyway.

So you would complete the list by adding reproduction and nutrition! :)

b) Suggest why excretion is important to living organisms. (2 marks)

Answer : Waste produced from biological reactions can be toxic, and excretion is the removal of these products. This is necessary so the organism is not poisoned by its own toxic waste!

2. a) Living organisms can be put into major groups based on common features that they share. The table below shows some of the main groups of organisms, their features and examples of each. Complete the table to show the correct groups, two features of each group and an example of an organism in each group. (5 marks)

Answer: For an example of animals, you could literally write any animal you know. I'm going to say "mammoth" because I feel like it now, but I feel like it's better to talk about an animal that ISN'T extinct, so in an exam, I'd write something like "elephant". Features of bacteria include the fact that they are unicellular (are only made up of 1 cell) and do not contain a nucleus, only a chromosome of DNA. An example of a bacterium is pneumoccus, which is responsible for causing pneumonia. The third group is a virus. This can be seen from the fact that it is always parasitic and only reproduces inside living cells.

b) Organisms that cause disease are known as pathogens. Give two groups of organisms that include pathogens. (2 marks)

Answer: The safest things you can write are bacteria and viruses. Viruses are nearly always pathogenic and some bacteria are. I guess you could also write "protoctists" but that might be a little risky, though some are in fact pathogenic (like plasmodium).