The life sciences comprise the fields of science that involve the scientific study of living organisms, such as plants, animals, and human beings, as well as related considerations like bioethics. While biology remains the centerpiece of the life sciences, technological advances in molecular biology and biotechnology have led to a burgeoning of specializations and new, often interdisciplinary, fields.
The following is an incomplete list of life science fields, as well as topics of study in the life sciences, in which several entries coincide with, are included in, or overlap with other entries:
- Affective neuroscience
- Anatomy
- Biomedical science
- Biochemistry
- Biocomputers
- Biocontrol
- Biodynamics
- Bioinformatics
- Biology
- Biomaterials
- Biomechanics
- Biomonitoring
- Biophysics
- Biopolymers
- Biotechnology
- Botany
- Cell biology
- Cognitive neuroscience
- Computational neuroscience
- Conservation biology
- Developmental biology
- Ecology
- Ethology
- Environmental science
- Evolutionary biology
- Evolutionary genetics
- Food science
- Genetics
- Genomics
- Health sciences
- Immunogenetics
- Immunology
- Immunotherapy
- Marine biology
- Medical devices
- Medical imaging
- Microbiology
- Molecular biology
- Neuroethology
- Neuroscience
- Oncology
- Optometry
- Parasitology
- Pathology
- Pharmacogenomics
- Pharmacology
- Physiology
- Population dynamics
- Proteomics
- Sports science
- Structural biology
- Systems biology
- Zoology
Famous quotes containing the words life and/or sciences:
“The sweetest joys of life grow in the very jaws of its perils.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“The great end of all human industry is the attainment of happiness. For this were arts invented, sciences cultivated, laws ordained, and societies modelled, by the most profound wisdom of patriots and legislators. Even the lonely savage, who lies exposed to the inclemency of the elements and the fury of wild beasts, forgets not, for a moment, this grand object of his being.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)