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Biological Science, 8th edition

Published by Pearson (January 9, 2024) © 2025

  • Scott Freeman University of Washington
  • Kim Quillin Salisbury University
  • Lizabeth Allison College of William and Mary
  • Michael Black California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
  • Jeff Carmichael University of North Dakota
  • Emily Taylor California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
  • Greg Podgorski Utah State University
  • Jeremy Hsu Chapman University

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For introductory biology courses for science majors.

Think like a biologist, develop skills and make connections

Known for its discovery-based, student-centered approach, Scott Freeman’s Biological Science emphasizes higher-order thinking, skill development and active learning. Strategies in the text go beyond memorization and guide students in making connections between core concepts and content.

In the 8th Edition, cutting-edge and core biology content is seamlessly intertwined with development of skills with an emphasis on metacognition, study strategies and quantitative reasoning. Features guide students to reflect on their thinking, construct their own knowledge and think like biologists.

Hallmark features of this title

  • Big Picture concept maps integrate visuals and words to help students synthesize concepts, patterns and information across chapters.
  • BioSkills reference section appears between Chapters 1 & 2, draws attention to key skills that students need to succeed in biology, and makes it easier for students to access them throughout the course.
  • Focus on Real Data lets students develop skills in working with real data from primary literature.
  • Put It All Together Case Studies enable students to apply knowledge they’ve learned in the chapter to a related situation from contemporary research.
  • Making Models boxes target skills and applications at strategic points and encourage students to interpret and create visual models to deepen understanding.

New and updated features of this title

  • Human Angle feature is designed to help students feel a sense of belonging in the learning space, build a science identity, discover careers in biology and engage in the coursework.
  • Check Your Learning questions now include tagged Reflect questions to help students learn and apply the skills of metacognition and to prompt them to reflect on the results of their learning and modify their approach as needed.
  • BioSkills on Metacognition introduces students to metacognition with Reflecting on Thinking and Learning in the Check Your Learning boxes and provides support for the new Reflect questions.
  • UPDATED: Reflecting greater diversity, equity and inclusion, visuals, language and terminology have been meaningfully revised throughout.
  • NEW & UPDATED: Key New Content is updated based on currency, relevancy and feedback from reviewers. Throughout each chapter there is a focus on increasing inclusivity; highlighting careers in science; and applying concepts and skills to solving societal challenges. New case studies have been added that are updated for more recent developments, relevancy and alignment with chapter content.

Features of Mastering Biology for the 8th Edition

  • NEW: Interactive Reading Assignments let students read, watch and practice in one seamless experience. Instructors can now assign the eTextbook along with curated content, including multimedia and practice questions for auto-grading. 
  • EXPANDED: Insider Tips videos are a series of student-designed videos that share study strategies for success in the biology course and feature a new video that guides students through the process of metacognition. 
  • EXPANDED: 30 Interactive Figure Walkthrough Videos guide students through challenging figures with brief videos that break down the art and provide explanatory narration to help students better understand key concepts and develop critical thinking skills. 
  • EXPANDED: 46 Making Models Activities feature whiteboard videos that bring the Making Models feature from the book to life to help students develop their visual modeling skills. 
  • NEW: Biology in Numbers Activities include videos that support development of quantitative reasoning in a biological context.
  • NEW: Data Modeling Activities feature 10 activities that give students practice with quantitative reasoning skills and include simulations that allow students to manipulate variables, examine data, and draw conclusions. The simulations are embedded in Mastering tutorials and are auto gradable.

Features of Pearson+ eTextbook for the 8th Edition

  • NEW: Biology in Numbers Activities include videos to support the development of quantitative reasoning in a biological context, addressing the scale of life and inciting a feeling of awe.
  • EXPANDED: Insider Tips are brief, student-designed videos featuring expert-student study strategies and feature a new video that guides students through the process of metacognition. Other tips include understanding terminology, retrieval practice, confronting misconceptions, drawing models, transferring knowledge, spacing study, cultivating a growth mindset and other expert-student skills.
  • EXPANDED: 30 Interactive Figure Walkthrough Videos guide students through challenging figures with brief videos that break down the art and provide explanatory narration to help students better understand key concepts and to develop critical thinking skills.
  • Put It All Together case study questions from the end of each chapter are assignable in Mastering Biology.
  • Blue Thread Questions provide over 500 questions based on the Blue Thread questions in the textbook and are interactive in the P+ eTextbook.
  1. Biology: The Study of Life

BIOSKILLS

UNIT 1 THE MOLECULAR ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF LIFE

  1. Water and Carbon: The Chemical Basis of Life
  2. Protein Structure and Function
  3. Nucleic Acids and an RNA World
  4. An Introduction to Carbohydrates
  5. Lipids, Membranes, and the First Cells

UNIT 2 CELL STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION

  1. Inside the Cell
  2. Energy and Enzymes: An Introduction to Metabolism
  3. 9 Cellular Respiration and Fermentation
  4. 10 Photosynthesis
  5. 11 Cell–Cell Interactions
  6. 12 The Cell Cycle

UNIT 3 GENE STRUCTURE AND EXPRESSION

  1. Meiosis
  2. Mendel and the Gene
  3. DNA and the Gene: Synthesis and Repair
  4. How Genes Work
  5. Transcription, RNA Processing, and Translation
  6. Control of Gene Expression in Bacteria
  7. Control of Gene Expression in Eukaryotes
  8. The Molecular Revolution: Biotechnology, Genomics, and New Frontiers
  9. Genes, Development, and Evolution

UNIT 4 EVOLUTIONARY PATTERNS AND PROCESSES

  1. Evolution by Natural Selection
  2. Evolutionary Processes
  3. Speciation
  4. Phylogenies and the History of Life

UNIT 5 THE DIVERSIFICATION OF LIFE

  1. Bacteria and Archaea
  2. Diversification of Eukaryotes
  3. Green Algae and Land Plants
  4. Fungi
  5. An Introduction to Animals
  6. Protostome Animals
  7. Deuterostome Animals
  8. Viruses

UNIT 6 HOW PLANTS WORK

  1. Plant Form and Function
  2. Water and Sugar Transport in Plants
  3. Plant Nutrition
  4. Plant Sensory Systems, Signals, and Responses
  5. Flowering Plant Reproduction and Development

UNIT 7 HOW ANIMALS WORK

  1. Animal Form and Function
  2. Water and Electrolyte Balance in Animals
  3. Animal Nutrition
  4. Gas Exchange and Circulation
  5. Animal Nervous Systems
  6. Animal Sensory Systems
  7. Animal Movement
  8. Chemical Signals in Animals
  9. Animal Reproduction and Development
  10. The Immune System in Animals

UNIT 8 ECOLOGY

  1. An Introduction to Ecology
  2. Behavioral Ecology
  3. Population Ecology
  4. Community Ecology
  5. Ecosystems and Global Ecology
  6. Biodiversity and Conservation Biology

APPENDICES

  • A. Answers
  • B. Periodic Table of Elements

About our authors

Lizabeth A. Allison is Chancellor Professor and Chair of Biology at William & Mary. She received her PhD in Zoology from the University of Washington, specializing in molecular and cellular biology. Before coming to William & Mary, she spent eight years as a faculty member at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. Liz taught introductory biology for many years and currently teaches upper division molecular biology/molecular genetics courses. She has mentored graduate students and more than 160 undergraduate research students, many of them coauthoring papers with her on intracellular trafficking of the thyroid hormone receptor. Liz is the recipient of numerous awards, including a State Council for Higher Education in Virginia Outstanding Faculty Award in 2009, the 2020 Thomas A. Graves, Jr. Award for Sustained Excellence in Teaching, the 2020 Ruth Kirschstein Diversity in Science Award from the American Society for Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, and a Plumeri Award for Faculty Excellence in 2022. In addition to her work on this text, she is author of Fundamental Molecular Biology, now in its third edition.

Lead Author; Chapters 1, 33, 48 and BioSkills

laalli@wm.edu

Michael Black received his PhD in Microbiology and Immunology from Stanford University School of Medicine as a Howard Hughes Predoctoral Fellow. After graduation, he studied cell biology as a Burroughs Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellow at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England. His current research focuses on the genetic modification of yeast to investigate HIV assembly and virus production in a non-human model system. Michael is a professor of Cell and Molecular Biology at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, where he has been teaching introductory and advanced classes to majors and nonmajors for more than 20 years. In addition to his teaching and research activities, Michael is actively involved in the integration of research projects and inquiry-based lab activities into undergraduate classes.

Chapters 2–12

mblack@calpoly.edu

Greg Podgorski received his PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology from Penn State University and has been a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Plank Institute for Biochemistry and Columbia University. His research interests are in biology education, developmental genetics, and computational biology. Greg’s most recent work has been in mathematical modeling of how patterns of different cell types emerge during development and how tumors recruit new blood vessels in cancer. Greg taught at Utah State University for more 35 years in courses that include introductory biology for majors and for nonmajors, genetics, cell biology, developmental biology, and microbiology, and he has offered courses in nonmajors biology in Beijing and Hong Kong. He has won teaching awards at Utah State University and has been recognized by the National Academies as a Teaching Fellow and a Teaching Mentor. He served for 5 years as Associate Dean for Undergraduate Programs in the Utah State University College of Science and is now an Emeritus Associate Professor of Biology.

Chapters 13–21

greg.podgorski@usu.edu

Kim Quillin received her BA in Biology at Oberlin College summa cum laude and her PhD in Integrative Biology from the University of California, Berkeley, as a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow. Kim has worked in the trenches with Biological Science since the first edition with Scott Freeman in 1999. In addition, she serves as a curriculum coordinator for Introductory Biology at Salisbury University, a member of the University System of Maryland, where she designs curriculum based on inclusive, evidence-based teaching and learning strategies. Kim has received two Salisbury University Assessment Awards for her work promoting professional development, curricular reform, and assessment. And in 2023, she was awarded the President’s Diversity and Inclusion Champion Award.

Chapters 22–25, 30–32, 49–54

kxquillin@salisbury.edu

Jeff Carmichael received his BS in Biology from Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania and his PhD in Plant Biology from the University of Georgia. As an undergraduate student, he spent some time studying enzyme kinetics through a fellowship at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. His graduate work focused on sexual reproduction in an intriguing group of seed plants. He has been teaching and coordinating Introductory Biology at the University of North Dakota (UND) for more than 28 years. He also helps new faculty members incorporate evidence-based best teaching practices in their courses. He has received excellence in teaching awards at UND and as a graduate student in Georgia.

Chapters 26–29 and 34–38

Jeffrey.Carmichael@und.edu

Emily Taylor earned a BA in English at the University of California, Berkeley. She then earned a PhD in Biological Sciences from Arizona State University, where she conducted research in the field of environmental physiology as a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. She is currently a professor of Biological Sciences at the California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. Her student-centered research program focuses on the physiology of free-ranging reptiles, especially rattlesnakes. She teaches numerous undergraduate and graduate courses, including introductory biology, anatomy and physiology, endocrinology, and herpetology. Her awards include Cal Poly's Distinguished teaching Award, plus the Meritorious Teaching Award in Herpetology, the Margaret Stewart Award for Excellence in Herpetology, and the Robert K. Johnson Award for Excellence in Service, all from the American Society of Ichthyology and Herpetology.

Chapters 39–47

etaylor@calpoly.edu

Jeremy Hsu earned his AB in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology from Harvard University and his Ph.D. in Biology from Stanford University, where he researched how environmental changes impacted the evolutionary genetics of the tuco-tuco, a rodent from South America. Jeremy is now an Assistant Professor of Biology at Chapman University, where he conducts biology education research that examines how students learn in undergraduate biology courses and explores how different factors shape students’ experiences inside and outside the classroom. He is committed to evidence-based teaching and is involved with multiple organizations that train instructors or advance biology education research. At Chapman, he teaches courses on molecular genetics, evolution, and more. Jeremy has been recognized with teaching awards at both Stanford and Chapman University.

Chapter 23

hsu@chapman.edu

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