Biological process in the context of "Metamorphosis"

Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of the secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high-tech, but it is most commonly applied to industrial design, in which raw materials from the primary sector are transformed into finished goods on a large scale. Such goods may be sold to other manufacturers for the production of other more complex products (such as aircraft, household appliances, furniture, sports equipment or automobiles), or distributed via the tertiary industry to end users and consumers (usually through wholesalers, who in turn sell to retailers, who then sell them to individual customers).

Manufacturing engineering is the field of engineering that designs and optimizes the manufacturing process, or the steps through which raw materials are transformed into a final product. The manufacturing process begins with product design, and materials specification. These materials are then modified through manufacturing to become the desired product.

In religion, a nature deity is a deity in charge of forces of nature, such as water, biological processes, or weather. These deities can also govern natural features such as mountains, trees, or volcanoes. Accepted in animism, pantheism, panentheism, polytheism, deism, totemism, shamanism, Taoism, Hinduism, and paganism, the nature deity can embody a number of archetypes including mother goddess, Mother Nature, or lord of the animals.

Life is matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and the ability to sustain itself. It is defined descriptively by the capacity for homeostasis, organisation, metabolism, growth, adaptation, response to stimuli, and reproduction. All life over time eventually reaches a state of death, and none is immortal. Many philosophical definitions of living systems have been proposed, such as self-organizing systems. Defining life is further complicated by viruses, which replicate only in host cells, and the possibility of extraterrestrial life, which is likely to be very different from terrestrial life. Life exists all over the Earth in air, water, and soil, with many ecosystems forming the biosphere. Some of these are harsh environments occupied only by extremophiles. The life in a particular ecosystem is called its biota.

Life has been studied since ancient times, with theories such as Empedocles's materialism asserting that it was composed of four eternal elements, and Aristotle's hylomorphism asserting that living things have souls and embody both form and matter. Life originated at least 3.5 billion years ago, resulting in a universal common ancestor. This evolved into all the species that exist now, by way of many extinct species, some of which have left traces as fossils. Attempts to classify living things, too, began with Aristotle. Modern classification began with Carl Linnaeus's system of binomial nomenclature in the 1740s.

A natural phenomenon is an observable event which is not man-made. Examples include: sunrise, weather, fog, thunder, tornadoes; biological processes, decomposition, germination; physical processes, wave propagation, erosion; tidal flow, and natural disasters such as electromagnetic pulses, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes and earthquakes.

Limestone is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate CaCO₃. Limestone forms when these minerals precipitate out of water containing dissolved calcium. This can take place through both biological and nonbiological processes, though biological processes, such as the accumulation of corals and shells in the sea, have likely been more important for the last 540 million years. Limestone often contains fossils which provide scientists with information on ancient environments and on the evolution of life.

About 20% to 25% of sedimentary rock is carbonate rock, and most of this is limestone. The remaining carbonate rock is mostly dolomite, a closely related rock, which contains a high percentage of the mineral dolomite, CaMg(CO₃)₂. Magnesian limestone is an obsolete and poorly defined term used variously for dolomite, for limestone containing significant dolomite (dolomitic limestone), or for any other limestone containing a significant percentage of magnesium. Most limestone was formed in shallow marine environments, such as continental shelves or platforms, though smaller amounts were formed in many other environments. Much dolomite is secondary dolomite, formed by chemical alteration of limestone. Limestone is exposed over large regions of the Earth's surface, and because limestone is slightly soluble in rainwater, these exposures often are eroded to become karst landscapes. Most cave systems are found in limestone bedrock.

Photosynthesis (/ˌfoʊtəˈsɪnθəsɪs/ FOH-tə-SINTH-ə-sis) is a system of biological processes by which photopigment-bearing autotrophic organisms, such as most plants, algae and cyanobacteria, convert light energy — typically from sunlight — into the chemical energy necessary to fuel their metabolism. The term photosynthesis usually refers to oxygenic photosynthesis, a process that releases oxygen as a byproduct of water splitting. Photosynthetic organisms store the converted chemical energy within the bonds of intracellular organic compounds (complex compounds containing carbon), typically carbohydrates like sugars (mainly glucose, fructose and sucrose), starches, phytoglycogen and cellulose. When needing to use this stored energy, an organism's cells then metabolize the organic compounds through cellular respiration. Photosynthesis plays a critical role in producing and maintaining the oxygen content of the Earth's atmosphere, and it supplies most of the biological energy necessary for complex life on Earth.

Some organisms also perform anoxygenic photosynthesis, which does not produce oxygen. Some bacteria (e.g. purple bacteria) uses bacteriochlorophyll to split hydrogen sulfide as a reductant instead of water, releasing sulfur instead of oxygen, which was a dominant form of photosynthesis in the euxinic Canfield oceans during the Boring Billion. Archaea such as Halobacterium also perform a type of non-carbon-fixing anoxygenic photosynthesis, where the simpler photopigment retinal and its microbial rhodopsin derivatives are used to absorb green light and produce a proton (hydron) gradient across the cell membrane, and the subsequent ion movement powers transmembrane proton pumps to directly synthesize adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the "energy currency" of cells. Such archaeal photosynthesis might have been the earliest form of photosynthesis that evolved on Earth, as far back as the Paleoarchean, preceding that of cyanobacteria (see Purple Earth hypothesis).

Death is the end of life, the irreversible cessation of all biological functions that sustain a living organism. Death eventually and inevitably occurs in all organisms. The remains of a former organism normally begin to decompose shortly after death. Some organisms, such as Turritopsis dohrnii, are biologically immortal; however, they can still die from means other than aging. Death is generally applied to whole organisms; the equivalent for individual components of an organism, such as cells or tissues, is necrosis. Something that is not considered an organism can be physically destroyed but is not said to die, as it is not considered alive in the first place.

As of the early 21st century, 56 million people die per year. The most common reason is aging, followed by cardiovascular disease, which is a disease that affects the heart or blood vessels. As of 2022, an estimated total of almost 110 billion humans have died, or roughly 94% of all humans to have ever lived. A substudy of gerontology known as biogerontology seeks to eliminate death by natural aging in humans, often through the application of natural processes found in certain organisms. However, as humans do not have the means to apply this to themselves, they have to use other ways to reach the maximum lifespan for a human, often through lifestyle changes, such as calorie reduction, dieting, and exercise. The idea of lifespan extension is considered and studied as a way for people to live longer.

Reproduction (or procreation or breeding) is the biological process by which new individual organisms – "offspring" – are produced from their "parent" or parents. There are two forms of reproduction: asexual and sexual.

In asexual reproduction, an organism can reproduce without the involvement of another organism. Asexual reproduction is not limited to single-celled organisms. The cloning of an organism is a form of asexual reproduction. By asexual reproduction, an organism creates a genetically similar or identical copy of itself. The evolution of sexual reproduction is a major puzzle for biologists. The two-fold cost of sexual reproduction is that only 50% of organisms reproduce and organisms only pass on 50% of their genes.