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In biology a thermal optimum describes the ideal boundaries for biological processes such as growth and development, and is usually characteristic of a species or population. Most biological processes are dependent upon enzymatic activity that can be impacted by the organism's body temperature, which in term is a function of the organism's ...
Allen's rule is an ecogeographical rule formulated by Joel Asaph Allen in 1877, [2][3] broadly stating that animals adapted to cold climates have shorter and thicker limbs and bodily appendages than animals adapted to warm climates. More specifically, it states that the body surface-area-to-volume ratio for homeothermic animals varies with the average temperature of the habitat to which they ...
Thermoreceptor. A thermoreceptor is a non-specialised sense receptor, or more accurately the receptive portion of a sensory neuron, that codes absolute and relative changes in temperature, primarily within the innocuous range. In the mammalian peripheral nervous system, warmth receptors are thought to be unmyelinated C-fibres (low conduction ...
For example, the GC-content levels in the coding regions of some signature genes were consistently identified as correlated with the temperature range condition when the association analysis was applied to mesophilic and thermophilic organisms regardless of their phylogeny, oxygen requirement, salinity, or habitat conditions.
The evolution of homeothermy is a complex topic with various hypotheses proposed to explain its origin. Here are the most common hypotheses: Metabolic Efficiency Hypothesis: This hypothesis suggests that homeothermy evolved as a result of increased metabolic efficiency. Maintaining a consistent internal temperature allows for optimal enzyme activity and biochemical reactions. This efficiency ...
Z-value is a term used in microbial thermal death time calculations. It is the number of degrees the temperature has to be increased to achieve a tenfold (i.e. 1 log 10) reduction in the D-value. The D-value of an organism is the time required in a given medium, at a given temperature, for a ten-fold reduction in the number of organisms.
Nucleic acid thermodynamics is the study of how temperature affects the nucleic acid structure of double-stranded DNA (dsDNA). The melting temperature (Tm) is defined as the temperature at which half of the DNA strands are in the random coil or single-stranded (ssDNA) state. Tm depends on the length of the DNA molecule and its specific ...
Thermoregulation is the ability of an organism to keep its body temperature within certain boundaries, even when the surrounding temperature is very different. A thermoconforming organism, by contrast, simply adopts the surrounding temperature as its own body temperature, thus avoiding the need for internal thermoregulation. The internal thermoregulation process is one aspect of homeostasis: a ...