Computer virus

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Jump to: navigation, search Not to be confused with Malware. A computer virus is a computer program that can replicate itself[1] and spread from one computer to another. The term "virus" is also commonly but erroneously used to refer to other types of malware, including but not limited to adware and spyware programs that do not have the reproductive ability. A true virus can spread from one computer to another (in some form of executable code) when its host is taken to the target computer; for instance because a user sent it over a network or the Internet, or carried it on a removable medium such as a floppy disk, CD, DVD, or USB drive.[2] Viruses can increase their chances of spreading to other computers by infecting files on a network file system or a file system that is accessed by another computer.[3][4] As stated above, the term "computer virus" is sometimes used as a catch-all phrase to include all types of malware, even those that do not have the reproductive ability. Malware includes computer viruses, computer worms, Trojan horses, most rootkits, spyware, dishonest adware and other malicious and unwanted software, including true viruses. Viruses are sometimes confused with worms and Trojan horses, which are technically different. A worm can exploit security vulnerabilities to spread itself automatically to other computers through networks, while a Trojan horse is a program that appears harmless but hides malicious functions. Worms and Trojan horses, like viruses, may harm a computer system's data or performance. Some viruses and other malware have symptoms noticeable to the computer user, but many are surreptitious or simply do nothing to call attention to themselves. Some viruses do nothing beyond reproducing themselves.

Academic work

John von Neumann The first academic work on the theory of computer viruses (although the term "computer virus" was not used at that time) was done in 1949 by John von Neumann who held lectures at the University of Illinois about the "Theory and Organization of Complicated Automata". The work of von Neumann was later published as the "Theory of self-reproducing automata". In his essay von Neumann described how a computer program could be designed to reproduce itself.[5] In 1972 Veith Risak, directly building on von Neumann's work on self-replication, published his article "Selbstreproduzierende Automaten mit minimaler Informationsbertragung" (Selfreproducing automata with minimal information exchange).[6] The article describes a fully functional virus written in assembler language for a SIEMENS 4004/35 computer system. In 1980 Jrgen Kraus wrote his diplom thesis "Selbstreproduktion bei Programmen" (Selfreproduction of programs) at the University of Dortmund.[7] In his work Kraus postulated that computer programs can behave in a way similar to biological viruses. In 1984 Fred Cohen from the University of Southern California wrote his paper "Computer Viruses - Theory and Experiments".[8] It was the first paper to explicitly call a self-reproducing program a "virus", a term introduced by Cohen's mentor Leonard Adleman. An article that describes "useful virus functionalities" was published by J. B. Gunn under the title "Use of virus functions to provide a virtual APL interpreter under user control" in 1984.[9]

Science fiction
The actual term "virus" was first used to denote a self-reproducing program in a short story by David Gerrold in Galaxy magazine in 1969 - and later in his 1972 novel, When HARLIE Was One. In that novel, a sentient computer named HARLIE writes viral software to retrieve damaging personal information from other computers to blackmail the man who wants to turn him off. The Terminal Man, a science fiction novel by Michael Crichton (1972), told (as a sideline story) of a computer with telephone modem dialing capability, which had been programmed to randomly dial phone numbers until it hit a modem that is answered by another computer. It then attempted to program the answering computer with its own program, so that the second computer would also begin dialing random numbers, in search of yet another computer to program. The program is assumed to spread exponentially through susceptible computers.

Virus programs
The Creeper virus was first detected on ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet, in the early 1970s.[10] Creeper was an experimental self-replicating program written by Bob Thomas at BBN Technologies in 1971.[11] Creeper used the ARPANET to infect DEC PDP-10 computers running the TENEX operating system.[12] Creeper gained access via the ARPANET and copied itself to

the remote system where the message, "I'm the creeper, catch me if you can!" was displayed. The Reaper program was created to delete Creeper.[13] A program called "Elk Cloner" was the first computer virus to appear "in the wild"that is, outside the single computer or lab where it was created.[14] Written in 1981 by Richard Skrenta, it attached itself to the Apple DOS 3.3 operating system and spread via floppy disk.[14][15] This virus, created as a practical joke when Skrenta was still in high school, was injected in a game on a floppy disk. On its 50th use the Elk Cloner virus would be activated, infecting the computer and displaying a short poem beginning "Elk Cloner: The program with a personality." The first PC virus in the wild was a boot sector virus dubbed (c)Brain,[16] created in 1986 by the Farooq Alvi Brothers in Lahore, Pakistan, reportedly to deter piracy of the software they had written.[17] Before computer networks became widespread, most viruses spread on removable media, particularly floppy disks. In the early days of the personal computer, many users regularly exchanged information and programs on floppies. Some viruses spread by infecting programs stored on these disks, while others installed themselves into the disk boot sector, ensuring that they would be run when the user booted the computer from the disk, usually inadvertently. PCs of the era would attempt to boot first from a floppy if one had been left in the drive. Until floppy disks fell out of use, this was the most successful infection strategy and boot sector viruses were the most common in the wild for many years.[1] Traditional computer viruses emerged in the 1980s, driven by the spread of personal computers and the resultant increase in BBS, modem use, and software sharing. Bulletin board-driven software sharing contributed directly to the spread of Trojan horse programs, and viruses were written to infect popularly traded software. Shareware and bootleg software were equally common vectors for viruses on BBS's.[citation needed] Macro viruses have become common since the mid-1990s. Most of these viruses are written in the scripting languages for Microsoft programs such as Word and Excel and spread throughout Microsoft Office by infecting documents and spreadsheets. Since Word and Excel were also available for Mac OS, most could also spread to Macintosh computers. Although most of these viruses did not have the ability to send infected email messages, those viruses which did take advantage of the Microsoft Outlook COM interface.[citation needed] Some old versions of Microsoft Word allow macros to replicate themselves with additional blank lines. If two macro viruses simultaneously infect a document, the combination of the two, if also self-replicating, can appear as a "mating" of the two and would likely be detected as a virus unique from the "parents".[18] A virus may also send a web address link as an instant message to all the contacts on an infected machine. If the recipient, thinking the link is from a friend (a trusted source) follows the link to the website, the virus hosted at the site may be able to infect this new computer and continue propagating.

Viruses that spread using cross-site scripting were first reported in 2002,[19] and were academically demonstrated in 2005.[20] There have been multiple instances of the cross-site scripting viruses in the wild, exploiting websites such as MySpace and Yahoo.

Infection strategies
In order to replicate itself, a virus must be permitted to execute code and write to memory. For this reason, many viruses attach themselves to executable files that may be part of legitimate programs. If a user attempts to launch an infected program, the virus' code may be executed simultaneously. Viruses can be divided into two types based on their behavior when they are executed. Nonresident viruses immediately search for other hosts that can be infected, infect those targets, and finally transfer control to the application program they infected. Resident viruses do not search for hosts when they are started. Instead, a resident virus loads itself into memory on execution and transfers control to the host program. The virus stays active in the background and infects new hosts when those files are accessed by other programs or the operating system itself.

Nonresident viruses
Nonresident viruses can be thought of as consisting of a finder module and a replication module. The finder module is responsible for finding new files to infect. For each new executable file the finder module encounters, it calls the replication module to infect that file.

Resident viruses
Resident viruses contain a replication module that is similar to the one that is employed by nonresident viruses. This module, however, is not called by a finder module. The virus loads the replication module into memory when it is executed instead and ensures that this module is executed each time the operating system is called to perform a certain operation. The replication module can be called, for example, each time the operating system executes a file. In this case the virus infects every suitable program that is executed on the computer. Resident viruses are sometimes subdivided into a category of fast infectors and a category of slow infectors. Fast infectors are designed to infect as many files as possible. A fast infector, for instance, can infect every potential host file that is accessed. This poses a special problem when using anti-virus software, since a virus scanner will access every potential host file on a computer when it performs a system-wide scan. If the virus scanner fails to notice that such a virus is present in memory the virus can "piggy-back" on the virus scanner and in this way infect all files that are scanned. Fast infectors rely on their fast infection rate to spread. The disadvantage of this method is that infecting many files may make detection more likely, because the virus may slow down a computer or perform many suspicious actions that can be noticed by anti-virus software. Slow infectors, on the other hand, are designed to infect hosts infrequently. Some slow infectors, for instance, only infect files when they are copied. Slow infectors are designed to avoid detection by limiting their actions: they are less likely to slow down a computer noticeably and will, at most, infrequently trigger anti-virus software that detects

suspicious behavior by programs. The slow infector approach, however, does not seem very successful. PDFs, like HTML, may link to malicious code. PDFs can also be infected with malicious code. In operating systems that use file extensions to determine program associations (such as Microsoft Windows), the extensions may be hidden from the user by default. This makes it possible to create a file that is of a different type than it appears to the user. For example, an executable may be created named "picture.png.exe", in which the user sees only "picture.png" and therefore assumes that this file is an image and most likely is safe, yet when opened runs the executable on the client machine. An additional method is to generate the virus code from parts of existing operating system files by using the CRC16/CRC32 data. The initial code can be quite small (tens of bytes) and unpack a fairly large virus. This is analogous to a biological "prion" in the way it works but is vulnerable to signature based detection. This attack has not yet been seen "in the wild".

Methods to avoid detection

In order to avoid detection by users, some viruses employ different kinds of deception. Some old viruses, especially on the MS-DOS platform, make sure that the "last modified" date of a host file stays the same when the file is infected by the virus. This approach does not fool anti-virus software, however, especially those which maintain and date Cyclic redundancy checks on file changes. Some viruses can infect files without increasing their sizes or damaging the files. They accomplish this by overwriting unused areas of executable files. These are called cavity viruses. For example, the CIH virus, or Chernobyl Virus, infects Portable Executable files. Because those files have many empty gaps, the virus, which was 1 KB in length, did not add to the size of the file. Some viruses try to avoid detection by killing the tasks associated with antivirus software before it can detect them. As computers and operating systems grow larger and more complex, old hiding techniques need to be updated or replaced. Defending a computer against viruses may demand that a file system migrate towards detailed and explicit permission for every kind of file access.

Avoiding bait files and other undesirable hosts

A virus needs to infect hosts in order to spread further. In some cases, it might be a bad idea to infect a host program. For example, many anti-virus programs perform an integrity check of their own code. Infecting such programs will therefore increase the likelihood that the virus is detected. For this reason, some viruses are programmed not to infect programs that are known to be part of anti-virus software. Another type of host that viruses sometimes avoid are bait files. Bait files (or goat files) are files that are specially created by anti-virus software, or by anti-virus

professionals themselves, to be infected by a virus. These files can be created for various reasons, all of which are related to the detection of the virus:

Anti-virus professionals can use bait files to take a sample of a virus (i.e. a copy of a program file that is infected by the virus). It is more practical to store and exchange a small, infected bait file, than to exchange a large application program that has been infected by the virus. Anti-virus professionals can use bait files to study the behavior of a virus and evaluate detection methods. This is especially useful when the virus is polymorphic. In this case, the virus can be made to infect a large number of bait files. The infected files can be used to test whether a virus scanner detects all versions of the virus. Some anti-virus software employs bait files that are accessed regularly. When these files are modified, the anti-virus software warns the user that a virus is probably active on the system.

Since bait files are used to detect the virus, or to make detection possible, a virus can benefit from not infecting them. Viruses typically do this by avoiding suspicious programs, such as small program files or programs that contain certain patterns of 'garbage instructions'. A related strategy to make baiting difficult is sparse infection. Sometimes, sparse infectors do not infect a host file that would be a suitable candidate for infection in other circumstances. For example, a virus can decide on a random basis whether to infect a file or not, or a virus can only infect host files on particular days of the week.

Stealth
Some viruses try to trick antivirus software by intercepting its requests to the operating system. A virus can hide itself by intercepting the antivirus softwares request to read the file and passing the request to the virus, instead of the OS. The virus can then return an uninfected version of the file to the antivirus software, so that it seems that the file is "clean". Modern antivirus software employs various techniques to counter stealth mechanisms of viruses. The only completely reliable method to avoid stealth is to boot from a medium that is known to be clean. Self-modification Most modern antivirus programs try to find virus-patterns inside ordinary programs by scanning them for so-called virus signatures. A signature is a characteristic byte-pattern that is part of a certain virus or family of viruses. If a virus scanner finds such a pattern in a file, it notifies the user that the file is infected. The user can then delete, or (in some cases) "clean" or "heal" the infected file. Some viruses employ techniques that make detection by means of signatures difficult but probably not impossible. These viruses modify their code on each infection. That is, each infected file contains a different variant of the virus. Encryption with a variable key A more advanced method is the use of simple encryption to encipher the virus. In this case, the virus consists of a small decrypting module and an encrypted copy of the virus code. If the virus

is encrypted with a different key for each infected file, the only part of the virus that remains constant is the decrypting module, which would (for example) be appended to the end. In this case, a virus scanner cannot directly detect the virus using signatures, but it can still detect the decrypting module, which still makes indirect detection of the virus possible. Since these would be symmetric keys, stored on the infected host, it is in fact entirely possible to decrypt the final virus, but this is probably not required, since self-modifying code is such a rarity that it may be reason for virus scanners to at least flag the file as suspicious. An old, but compact, encryption involves XORing each byte in a virus with a constant, so that the exclusive-or operation had only to be repeated for decryption. It is suspicious for a code to modify itself, so the code to do the encryption/decryption may be part of the signature in many virus definitions. Polymorphic code Polymorphic code was the first technique that posed a serious threat to virus scanners. Just like regular encrypted viruses, a polymorphic virus infects files with an encrypted copy of itself, which is decoded by a decryption module. In the case of polymorphic viruses, however, this decryption module is also modified on each infection. A well-written polymorphic virus therefore has no parts which remain identical between infections, making it very difficult to detect directly using signatures. Antivirus software can detect it by decrypting the viruses using an emulator, or by statistical pattern analysis of the encrypted virus body. To enable polymorphic code, the virus has to have a polymorphic engine (also called mutating engine or mutation engine) somewhere in its encrypted body. See Polymorphic code for technical detail on how such engines operate.[21] Some viruses employ polymorphic code in a way that constrains the mutation rate of the virus significantly. For example, a virus can be programmed to mutate only slightly over time, or it can be programmed to refrain from mutating when it infects a file on a computer that already contains copies of the virus. The advantage of using such slow polymorphic code is that it makes it more difficult for antivirus professionals to obtain representative samples of the virus, because bait files that are infected in one run will typically contain identical or similar samples of the virus. This will make it more likely that the detection by the virus scanner will be unreliable, and that some instances of the virus may be able to avoid detection. Metamorphic code To avoid being detected by emulation, some viruses rewrite themselves completely each time they are to infect new executables. Viruses that utilize this technique are said to be metamorphic. To enable metamorphism, a metamorphic engine is needed. A metamorphic virus is usually very large and complex. For example, W32/Simile consisted of over 14000 lines of Assembly language code, 90% of which is part of the metamorphic engine.[22][23]

REVIEWS OF BOOKS 71 and midwives, as well as other trained persons who have had a sufficiently varied experience

in imparting birth-control information, and of studying, over a sufficient period, the reactions of patients to a variety of contraceptive techniques. It is thus an elastic tern, but it cannot stretch so far as to include persons whose knowledge has been derived from reading books, even a large number of books and papers, on the subject, or who know the human body from diagrams and the human mind from the works of Freud, Jung and Adler. Nor can it be held to include those who have strong convictions on the subject based on their personal contraceptive practices or those of their respective
wives or husbands.

One asks the question but surely it answers itself. On every page of Dr. Malleson's book there is evidence of her skilled observation, her long accumulated and systematized experience. One finds an understanding attitude towards the patient, as an individual person, that can only be obtained by many years of sympat-hetic personal contact with all sorts of men and women; and an undogmatism, a tolerance of other views and tastes which suggest that the author has encountered too many prejudices to retain many, if any, of her own. If clinicians in general would follow the example of this book, and no more attempt to meddle in such matters as chemistry and physics than for instance Dr. Baker and Dr. Voge would in matters of clinical medicine, there would be a considerable improvement in the standard of works on contraception. And if those without clinical experience would find some other outlet for their gifts of imagination-but we must not be too Utopian! Nature's Way of Birth Control may be recommended as an on the whole accurate guide to the safe-period method of contraception. In beginning this book the reader

may perhaps be discouraged by the muddled, ungraceful and occasionally even ungrammatical writing, or by the tub-thumping denunciations of "'unnatural" contraceptive methods (" imposing on the marriage bed the practices and atmosphere of the brothel "), or by the author's ignorance or misrepresentation of the results obtained by these methods in birth-control clinics. Nevertheless he would be well advised to persevere. There is much useful information in this book; indeed the reader may learn from it, probably the last thing the author wishes to teach, how safe-period contraception can be used as an auxiliary to the methods which our present experience has shown to be the most generally useful and dependable. E. M. HOLMES.

HEREDITY
Watkins, A. E. Heredity and Evolution. London, I935. John Murray. Pp. 243. Price 7s. 6d. Walker, Charles. Evolution and Heredity. London, I936. A. and C. Black. Pp. 2i6. Price 6s.
MR. WATKINS has written an admirable book for its scope and price it is by far the best that has so far appeared and it can be warmly recommended to all who wish to understand the present day attitude of experimental geneticists to the problems of evolution. One very great virtue of the book is Mr. Watkins' studied simplicity of language. His words are mostly of one syllable, and his sentences correspondingly short and direct-nothing need be read through twice. One may not always agree with Mr. Watkins' conclusions, but there is never any doubt as to what his words mean. It must not be supposed that because Mr. Watkins has written in simple language that he has

therefore " simplified" in the popular sense the problems with which he deals. On the contrary, the text is singularly free from inaccuracy and over-simplification; moreover a very large part of the book is taken up with discussing the difficulties and unsolved problems which confront the geneticist to-day. In particular he stresses the peculiar difficulties of the species problem; his discussion of this matter is excellent and few would quarrel with his conclusion that it is impossible to say exactly what is a species. These two books have this in common 72 THE EUGENICS REVIEW that unlike all other textbooks of genetics they both give prominence to Winter's selection experiments in maize, experiments which the EUGENICS REVIEW was largely responsible for rescuing from obscurity. Mr. Watkins rightly stresses their great importance for a proper understanding of the problem of adaptation. Mr. Walker, on the other hand, has completely misunderstood the whole gist of these experiments; so much so, that one is tempted to suppose that he failed to look at the original paper-since he assumes that what the Americans call " corn " is wheat. And the fact that maize is cross-fertilizing while wheat is selffertilizing has put Mr. Walker sadly on the wrong track in interpreting Winter's results. Mr. Watkins' good sense of perspective has enabled him to make an excellent selection of material, choosing always the relevant and salient facts whether from plants or animals, and giving them their right emphasis in the whole picture. Eugenists will be sorry that Mr. Watkins has so little to say about man, and his peculiar problems of practical genetics-but none the less all eugenists would do well to read this book. No doubt considerations of price limited

the number of illustrations: nevertheless, more pictures would be a great improvement. If books could be mendelized, the wanted hybrid type would combine Major Hurst's magnificent wealth of cogent illustration with Mr. Watkins' austerity of text. Mr. Walker's book is a disappointment. The author is evidently widely read; he has strung together in book form selected passages from many authors (including Gibbon); but few date from post-war years. Neither Willis nor Vavilov, Fisher nor Haldane are even mentioned as having contributed anything to the evolution problem. The underlying notion of the book is that mendelismn is not of much account in evolution: and while it is a very good thing that professional geneticists should be from time to time reminded that mendelism is not enough, yet when Mr. Walker says that mendelism is concerned only with morphological characters he shows himself to be so sadly behind the times that few geneticists will be inclined to take his warning seriously. MICHAEL PEASE.

POPULATION
Population and Social Planning. Reprinted
from Social Forces, October I935. Reprinted for the Population Association of America. Price $0.50.
THE papers collected together in this reprint* concern fundamental aspects of the population question in the United States, and they show clearly that the subject has ceased to be of merely academic interest. Administrators are already attempting to plan population growth in a country where the net reproduction rate is still considerably higher than our own. A full list of the papers is given in the footnote, and although they are all important in their own fields, three of them held the greatest interest for me-those by Tugwell,

Osborn, and Notestein and Kiser. The first analyses the position of the rural population with regard to replacement. Throughout the nineteenth century, women of child-bearing age lving in rural areas produced some 50 per cent. more children than similar women in urban communities. This situation is no less marked to-day. In the period I925 to I929, farm women bore about 50 per cent. more children than were necessary to replace their group, as compared with an 8 per cent. deficit on the part of women in small towns and a 20 per cent. deficit in large cities. Moreover, proportionately the bulk of rural children were and still are being born in those areas where the farm income is smallest. A threefold problem thus arises. First, the urban areas are becoming increasingly dependent upon rural districts for their population supply in spite of the decline in urban mortality. Secondly, the children-producing areas are the poorest
Tugwell, R. G. National Significance of Recent Trends in Farm Population. Reeves, F. W. Rural Educational Problems in Relation to New Trends in Population Distribution. Woofter, T. J. Southern Population and Social Planning. Osborn, F. Significance of Differential Reproduction for American Educational Policy. Notestein, F. W., and Kiser, C. V.
*

Factors Affecting Variations in Human

Fertility.

Class X: Biology Chapter 9: Heredity and Evolution Key Learnings 1. Variations arise during the process of reproduction. They may be few in asexual reproduction, but many in case of sexual reproduction. 2. The minor variations arising during asexual reproduction are caused by slight inaccuracies in DNA copying. In sexual reproduction, variations are also caused by crossing over process of meiosis. 3. Beneficial variations help the species to survive better in the environment. 4. Nature selects the beneficial variations thereby leading to evolution.

5. Reproduction produces offsprings with similar body design of the parents. However the offspring are not identical, but show a great deal of variation from the parents. 6. Sexually reproducing organisms like humans have 2 (or more) versions of genes for each trait, called alleles. 7. Gregor Johann Mendel carried out several experiments on pea plants. He carried out large number of monohybrid and dihybrid crosses using many contrasting characteristics and put forward several important conclusions. 8. In case of monohybrid cross with pure variety of plants, the phenotypic ratio obtained in F2 generation is 3:1. 9. In case of dihybrid cross involving 2 pairs of contrasting characters, the phenotypic ratio obtained in F2 generation is 9:3:3:1.

10. Mendel concluded that out of any pair of contrasting characters, one is dominant and the other recessive. 11. The homozygous dominant trait is denoted by two capital letters whereas the homozygous recessive trait is denoted by two small letters. 12. The factors or genes controlling a particular trait separate from each other during gamete formation. Hence gamete is always pure as far as

contrasting characters are considered. Each gamete will possess only one gene set. 13. In crossing if two or more traits are involved, their genes assort independently, irrespective of the combinations present in the parents. 14. Genes carry information for producing proteins, which in turn control the various body characteristics. 15. For a particular trait, the offspring receives one allele from the father and one allele from the mother. 16. The combination of the male and female germ cells gives a diploid zygote. Thus the normal diploid number of chromosomes in the offspring is restored. 17. Different mechanisms are used for sex determination in different species. 18. The sex of human offspring is genetically determined. 19. Humans have 22 pairs of autosomes and one pair of sex chromosomes. 20. Females have similar sex chromosomes XX, whereas males have an imperfect pair i.e. XY. All eggs carry X chromosome. 21. The sex of the child depends on whether the egg fuses with the sperm carrying X chromosome (resulting in a girl) or with the sperm carrying Y chromosome (resulting in a boy). 22. Variations beneficial to a species have a greater chance of flourishing in the species than the harmful or neutral variations. 23. Genetic drift can alter gene frequencies in small population and provide diversity without any survival benefits. 24. Several factors like environment, mutations, reproduction etc can cause alterations in gene frequencies in a population over generations, leading to evolution. 25. Changes occurring in the DNA of germ cells are heritable whereas changes taking place in the non-reproductive tissues are not inherited.

26. Charles Darwin proposed that evolution of species occurred by natural selection, but he did not know the underlying mechanism. 27. Natural selection, genetic drift, variations and geographical isolation can lead to speciation in sexually reproducing organisms. 28. Gene flow between the members of a population prevents speciation. 29. The o o o o fundamental characteristics used to classify organisms are: presence of prokaryotic or eukaryotic cells. whether the organism is unicellular or multicellular. ability to perform photosynthesis. presence of endoskeleton or exoskeleton in heterotrophic organisms.

30. Classification of living organisms is closely related to their evolution. 31. As we go back in time to trace common ancestors, we find that all organisms must have arisen and radiated from a single species, which in turn originated from non-living material. Thus life arose from non-living matter. 32. Study of homologous organs, e.g. hand of man and wing of bird, helps in tracing the evolutionary relationship between different species. 33. Analogous organs, e.g. wing of insect and wing of bird, do not have common origins, but arose in different species to fulfill similar functions. 34. Fossils help in tracing evolutionary pathways. 35. The age of fossils can be determined by using the relative method or the isotope dating method. 36. Evolution is not a one-step process, but a continuous process occurring in several stages. 37. Complex organs are formed slowly over many generations, sometimes with intermediate forms playing an important role. 38. Sometimes the use of certain features gets modified with time. For example, feathers may have provided insulation initially but later became associated with flight.

39. Evolutionary studies have shown that birds are closely related to reptiles. 40. Humans have carried out artificial selection for various features of cabbage and produced different vegetables. Vegetable produced Selected feature Broccoli Arrested flower development Cauliflower Sterile flowers Kohlrabi Swollen parts Kale Larger leaves Scribd
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HEREDITY AND EVOLUTION

Heredity Variation genetics Mendels factor Chr o mos o me genes DNA St r uc t ur e of Chr o mos o me Ka r yo t yp e DNA Sex Determination Organic evolutionevidences Theories of Evolution

In asexual reproduction, all the off springs are exactly identical to one another as well as to parents because of same genetic makeup.

In s e xua l r ep r oduc t i on t h e va r i ous of f sp r i ngs ar e s i mi l ar t o t hei r p ar ent s b ut ar e not identical to items or to one another because of genetic various except IDENTICAL TWINS.

I d e n t i c a l T w i n s : grow from a single cell which splits after fertilization . Look alike

N o n I d e n t i c a l t w i n s : Look less like they grow from 2 different fertilized cells & hence dont have exactly same genetic material.

H e r e d i t y : T he t r a ns mi s s i on of c ha r ac t er s ( t ra i ts ) f r om t he p a r ent s t o t hei r of f s pr i ngs i s called Heredity.

V a r i a t i o n : The differences in the characters among the individuals of a species is called variation is necessity for organic evolution. Both Heredity & variation are fundamental factors in the process of Evolution of an organism.

G e n e t i c s : The branch of biology which studies heredity & variation is called genetic.

Terms gene was coined by scientist Johanssen in 1909.

C h r o m o s o m e s : Chromos omes are thread like structures present in the nucleus of a cell which contain hereditary information of the cell. They are made up of DNA & proteins. Chrom osom e 2 c hr oma t i ds = 1 chromosome One species = fixed no. of chromosome Hum ans = 46 chromosomes = 23 pairs of homologues chromosomes

chromatids centromere

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(Same size and Shape) Types:

D i p o i d C e l l : A cell which has the full no. of chromosomes with two of each pair, is called a diploid us.

H i p l o i d C e l l : A cell c half the no. of chromosomes with one of each pair e.g. gamete cell/sex cell.

A u t o s o m e s : All the chromosomes in a cell (except sex chromosomes) are called autosom es.

K a r y o t y p e : During metaphase stage of cell division, the chromosomes become shorter,

thicker & can be seen very clearly. In order to study the no. shape, size and type of chromosomes of an individual, the chromosomes during melaphase, are arranged acc to their length & position of centromere. Such an arrangement of chromosomes for the purpose of studying is called Karyotype. Identifying a chromosome thru microscope, special staming technique called Banding Technique is used. Study of karyotype of an individual helps in the diagnosis of genetically disorders. D o w n s S y n d r o m e : An y v a r ia t i on i n t he no. of c hr omo s omes f r om t h e n or ma l no or a ny change in the shape of chromosome during fertilization can lead to severe abnormality or disorder in the child after birth which are called Genetic / Heredity Disorder e. g. Dow n s s yndr o me w hi c h i s ca us ed b y i nt er i t a nc e of a n ext r a 2 1 stch r o m o so m e . In t hi s s yn dr o me, f ul l me nt a l de vel op me nt do es not t a k e p l ac e. Symptoms: Mental retardation, Flattened , nose, Defective ears, widely separated eyes, short & b r oa d nec k , pr ot r udi ng t o ng ue, s ma l l & s t ur d y ha n ds wi del y. G e n e : Gene is the unit of inheritance. Various genes are located in the chromosomes at fixed position genes are responsible for our characteristic features.

Chemically gene is a segment of a large polynucleotide molecule called deoxyribonucleic acid D N A : Dexyribo nucleic acid DNA was first isolated by Frederick meisher from the nucleus of the pus cells. It is acidic in nature so the name is nucleic acid.

Metacentric SubMetacentric Acrocentric Telocentric

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DNA is a macromolecule/polymer which is made up of a large no. of smaller units called Nucleotide. So DNA is a polynucleotide. Nucleotide is the basic structure unit of DNA. Components of a Nucleotide: 1. a nitrogen containg base

2. a pentose sugar 3. a p hos p ha t e gp Any one of nitrogen base pairs up only c a specific nitrogenous base of the opposite side. Such specific pairing is called COMPLI MENTARY PAI RI NG. (Adenine) A pairs up c T ( T h y mi n e ) ( C yt os o me) C p a i rs up cG (Guanine)

DNA molecule is like that of a spiral staircase in which both the railing of the staircase are made of sugar & phosphate molecules alternative each other and held together by strong chemical bonds whereas the steps of the staircase are made of complimentary nitrogenous bases held together by weak bonds. N . B . : DNA structure established by Wastson & Crick in 1953. Each helical turn of the DNA molecule has a length of 3.4 nm in which 10 nucleotide units are p r es ent .

G e n e t i c E n g i n e e r i n g : T h e t ec hni q ue f or a l t er i ng a n o r ga ni s ms ge net i c ma k e up i n s er t i ng genes from other organism its chromosomes is called Genetic Engineering.

S e x D e t e r m i n a t i o n : The process by which the sex of a per is determined is called sex d e t e r mi n a t i o n .

Purines Purimidiness G A T C

Pentose sugar P hos p ha t e gp A Adenine T Thymine

C Cytosine G Guanine AB TGC o m p l i m e n t a r y p a r s i n g

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The Chromosomes which determine the sex of a person called sex chromosomes which are of 2 t yp es X & Y.
Q

XX combination is always found in females XY combination is always found in males. So it is the sperm (carrying either X or Y) which determines the sex of a child ORGANI C EVOLUTI ON Evolution is the sequence of gradual changes which take place in the primitive organisms o ver millions of yrs. In which non species are provided. Some imp. Sources which provide evidence for organic evolution are

Fossils

Homologus organs

Analogus organs

Vestigial organ

E mb r yol o g y

H o m o l o g u s o r g a n : Or ga n s ha vi n g s i mi l a r b as i c s t r uctur e & or i gi n b ut di f f er ent f u nc t i ons e. g. p or el nub s of a f r og, b ir ds & ma n.

A n a l o g o u s o r g a n s : T he o r ga ns wi t h di f f er ent b a s ic st ruc t ur e b ut ha ve s i mi l a r appearance & performs similar functions. e.g. wings of an insect & a bird.

V e s t i g i a l o r g a n s : Organs which are functionless useless but were functional in aucestors e. g. Ver mi f or m a p p endi x Ni e t ut i ng me mb r a me.

E m b r g o l o g y : The study of the development of the embryo of an animal is called E mb r gol o y.

B i o g e n e t i c l a w : It st a t es c ha t Ont ogen y r ec a p i t ul at es P hyl og en y It mea ns t ha t dur i ng t h e d e vel op me nt of t he e mb r yo of a n y or ga ni s m, i t s c omp l et e e vol ut i ona r y hi s t or y i s r ep ea t ed.

THEO RI E S OF EVOL UT I O N 1. Lam arckism 2. Darwinism 3. S ynt het i c Th eor y of E vol ut i on 1. L a m a r c k i s m : I t s t a t es (a) The use & disuse of an organ by an organism leads to acquiring of variation in the f ea t ur es of t ha t or ga n. (b) These variations (acquired characters) are inherited by the offsprings. (c) This leads to evolution
Males Female X & Y
X X

XX XY Zygote (Male Child) (Female Child)

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This theory was criticsed by August weismann who ejected the idea of inheritance of acquired characteristics. DARWI NI SM / Theory of Natural Selection (a) All the species produce a large no of offsprings but population remains fairly constant due to struggle bt the members of same species & different species for food, space & mate ( b ) Thi s s t r uggl e el i mi na t es t he u nf i t i ndi vi dua l s . ( Sur vi va l of t he f i t t es t ) (c) This gives orgin to variations which pass into progeny & over a long period of time, leads to origin of new species. L i m i t a t i o n s : It could not explain how the variations arise.

S ynt het i c Th eor y of E vol ut i on: The most accepted theory these a days which says that origin of species is based on the interaction of genetic variation & natural selection.

Heredity and Evolution

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