WebBoard Questions : Campbell Sixth

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CHAPTER 1: THEMES
1. Describe the hierarchy of biological organization. Give an example for each level from something you are interested in, but was not used as an example in the book.
2. What are the properties of life? Provide some ways that they are similar, yet unique from non-living things for each property. For example, you could suggest that rocks “reproduce” because when you smash them, you end up with lots of little rocks, but the process and mechanism is not the same as for biological reproduction.
3. Compare and contrast a prokaryote and a eukaryote. Define each term. How many similarities can you find between the two cell types? How many differences?
4. What are protists? What are viruses (you may have to look somewhere else in the book)? What Kingdom do humans belong to? Why?
5. Explain what Darwin contributed to the science of biology.
6. Who is Thomas Eisner and what contributions has he made to science?
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CHAPTER 2: CHEMISTRY
1. What is the difference between an element, a compound, and a molecule?
2. What are some of the most common naturally occurring elements in the human body (or any other living organism)?
3. What does the configuration (layout) of the periodic table tell you about the elements, the number of valence electrons, and their ability to form chemical bonds?
4. What is a covalent bond? What is a polar covalent bond? What is a non-polar covalent bond?
5. What is an ionic bond?
6. What are hydrogen bonds?
7. What are reactants? What are products?
8. What is equilibrium?
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CHAPTER 3: WATER
1. Why is water polar?
2. What is cohesion?
3. What is adhesion?
4. How does this contribute to the importance of water in biology?
5. What is the importance of water in relation to temperature? Why is this important? Use the terms kinetic energy, specific heat and temperature in your reply.
6. When is water least dense?
7. Why is this important?
8. What is a solvent?
9. What is a solute?
10. Is water a “universal solvent”? Why is the terminology so important?
11. What makes water such a good solvent? Explain by describing the polarity of water.
12. What does hydrophobic mean?
13. What does hydrophilic mean?
14. What is a hydroxide ion?
15. What is a hydrogen ion?
16. What does each do to a solution of water? (Explain the pH scale) How many hydrogen ions are there in a solution of pH 7? 8? 9? 14? How many hydroxide ions are there in a solution of pH 7? 4? 3? 11?
17. What is the concentration of hydrogen ions in a pH 8 solution?
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CHAPTER 4: CARBON AND FUNCTIONAL GROUPS
1. What does the term tetravalent mean?
2. What does organic mean?
3. What are hydrocarbons?
4. What is a functional group?
5. Name and describe the seven most common functional groups.
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CHAPTER 5: MACROMOLECULES
1. What is a monomer?
2. What is a polymer?
3. What is a condensation reaction?
4. What is a dehydration reaction?
5. What is hydrolysis?
6. Who was Linus Pauling?
7. What are some other more scientific names for sugars and their polymers? What is the difference in the terms? What types of bond hold sugar units together?
8. What are two specific functions for polysaccharides?
9. What are the structural units of lipids?
10. What are two specific functions for lipids?
11. What is the difference between a saturated and an unsaturated fatty acid?
12. Describe the structure of the major component of cell membranes.
13. What is the structure of a steroid? Name two functions of steroids (look on p 141 for one).
14. What is a polypeptide made of?
15. How many different amino acids are there? How are they categorized?
16. What type of reaction is used to make a protein?
17. What is the name of the bond between amino acids?
18. Name two functions for proteins.
19. Describe the primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary structure of a protein.
20. What is denaturation? How does it occur?
21. What are nucleic acids?
22. What is the monomer that makes them us?
23. What is the difference between a pyrimidine and a purine?
24. What is the difference between a ribonucleotide and a deoxyribonucleotide? Similarity?
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CHAPTER 6: METABOLISM
1. What is catabolism?
2. What is anabolism?
3. What is metabolism?
4. Which term, catabolism or anabolism should be used when describing condensation reactions?
5. Which term, dehydration or hydrolysis should be used when describing anabolic reactions?
6. How does the first law of thermodynamics differ from the second?
7. What is the difference between potential and kinetic energy?
8. What is entropy?
9. What is the difference between exergonic and endergonic reactions?
10. What type of reaction (endergonic or exergonic) do you think anabolic reactions are? Why?
11. When a cell grows, is its entropy increasing or decreasing?
12. Why is the second law of thermodynamics valid even though so many organisms are so organized?
13. Compare and contrast the three types of work performed by a cell.
14. What is the source of energy for the work performed by all organisms?
15. What is the difference between ATP and ADP?
16. What important functions occur in organisms when ATP is dephosphyorylated to form ADP? Give at least two examples about some process you’d like to better understand. (Select something you are learning about for your poster).
17. How often is ATP regenerated from ATP? How much ADP must we consume to remain alive in comparison to how much we use?
18. Give an example of an enzyme that performs in a metabolic process that is on your poster. Explain what is does and why it is important.
19. What are enzymes made of?
20. What is responsible for an enzymes 3-dimensional shape and therefore its activity (What level of organization and what environmental conditions)?
21. What might occur to an enzyme of you move it from an acidic to a basic environment? Why?
22. What is the difference between a competitive and an allosteric inhibitor?
23. Which type of reaction can you change the rate of if you change the amount of substrate present? Why?
24. How could the same molecule serve as both an activator and an inhibitor of a metabolic pathway?
25. What happens when you phosphorylate an enzyme? How and why?
26. Why do cells have organelles and “skeletons”?
27. What is the similarity between actin and a train track, and why is it important to George Langford?
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CHAPTER 7:THE CELL

1. Compare and Contrast a mitochondria and a lysozyme.
2. What type of microscope would you use to observe a metabolic pathway that occurs on the folds of a mitochondrion? Why?
3. Which is larger, a prokaryote or a eukaryote? By how much?
4. How did cells probably acquire mitochondrion and chloroplasts? Refer to Chapter 28, especially figures 28.4 and 28.5.
5. Name at least 7 organelles and 4 other cellular components (cytoskeletal types or particular locations) shared between plants and animals.
6. Name 3 organelles not present in animal cells.
7. Name 2 organelles not present in plant cells and explain why.
8. What other organisms besides animals (or plant sperm) have flagellum?
9. Distinguish between the two types of endoplasmic reticulum (both structure and function).
10. Why are there free ribosomes in addition to ribosomes bound to the endoplasmic reticulum?
11. What is chromatin?
12. How is a chromosome different from a chromosome?
13. What is an endomembrane system?
14. Compare and contrast a central vacuole and a lysosome.
15. Which cytoskeletal type is responsible for muscle contraction? Which for moving organelles?
16. What is the difference between a centriole and a centrosome?
17. Compare and contrast cilia and flagella
18. What is an extracellular matrix?
19. Distinguish between the different types of cellular junctions (plant and animal- include plasmodesmata).
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CHAPTER 8: MEMBRANE

1. What is the fluid mosaic model and what did it replace?
2. What is a lipid bi-layer.
3. Which regions of a lipid bi-layer are hydrophilic? Explain, in terms of the structure of a fatty acid why the lipid bi-layer has these properties.
4. How are the fluidity of a membrane influenced by cholesterol and the degree of saturation of the fatty acid side-chains of the phospholipid bi-layer. You may want to refer to chapter 5.
5. How would you decrease the fluidity of a membrane that is made of totally saturated hydrocarbons?
6. How could you increase the fluidity of a membrane that is made of totally saturated hydrocarbons? Suggest at least 3 changes you could make.
7. Name the type of proteins that spans a cell membrane. What is their function(s)? What is their structure?
8. Of the approximately 22 amino acids, name those you might expect to find in the hydrophobic region of a lipid bi-layer. Explain why?
9. Explain how the primary sequence of amino acids helps explain where in the lipid membrane that region of the protein is located.
10. Name a macromolecule that usually located only on the extracellular region of an integral membrane protein. Note that this macromolecule is not located on intracellular proteins.
11. Which organelles make integral and secreted proteins?
12. Compare and contrast facilitated diffusion and active transport.
13. What is the difference between an isotonic and a hypertonic solution?
14. Name two ways you can distinguish between a hypotonic and a hypertonic solution (See your lab manual!).
15. What is a proton pump and why is it important?
16. Distinguish between pinocytosis and phagocytosis.

Chapter 9
CHAPTER 9:CELLULAR RESPIRATION

1. How does cellular respiration differ from fermentation? Which is more efficient?
2. Where in the cell does cellular respiration occur?
3. What is a metabolic pathway?
4. What is a redox reaction?
5. What is glycolysis?
6. What is the Krebs cycle?
7. Compare oxidative phosphorylation and substrate-level phosphorylation.
8. What molecule acts as an electron shuttle in glycolysis?
9. What is an exergonic reaction?
10. How many carbon molecules are there in glucose?
11. How many carbon molecules are there in the two pyruvate molecules that are the product of glycolysis?
12. What is an isomer?
13. What does a coupled arrow represent in the diagrams?
14. Why does an enzyme convert a molecule to an isomer?
15. How many hydrogen molecules are there on the two molecules of pyruvate?
16. Where are the remaining hydrogen molecules from glucose?
17. What is an acetyl group?
18. What is the generic name of any protein that catalyzes a reaction?
19. What macromolecules are enzymes made of?
20. Where in the cell does the Krebs cycle occur?
21. What is the first step of the Krebs cycle?
22. What happens to pyruvate to yield acetyl coA?
23. What are the products and by-products of the Krebs cycle (what comes off the arrows)?
24. Finally, what is the electron transport chain made of?
25. What does it do?
26. What are cyctochromes?
27. What is the function of oxygen in the electron transport chain? What does it mean that oxygen is reduced?
28. What is the name of the molecule that allows hydrogen ions to pass through and generates ATP when they enter the mitochondrial matrix?
29. What is a proton motive force?
30. Compare a proton motive force to sucrose in our diffusion lab. Describe how it is similar, and how it is different.
31. What is chemiosmosis?
32. What is aerobic?
33. What is anaerobic?
34. What is the difference between alcohol fermentation and lactic acid fermentation?
35. What are facultative anaerobes?
36. Which metabolic pathway, glycolysis or the krebs sycle is probably the oldest? Why?
37. Describe how proteins and fats are catabolized.
38. What is a feedback control mechanism?
39. What changes to the cellular environment can be made to influence a catalyst’s activity? How does this occur (What do the changes do to the catalyst)?

CHAPTER 10: PHOTOSYNTHESIS

1. Compare and contrast autotrophs and heterotrophs.
2. What are humans, autotrophs or heterotrophs?
3. What is chlorophyll (remember that these questions require structure and function replies)?
4. What is light energy?
5. What does splitting of water mean, and why is it important in photosynthesis?
6. Does the light reaction produce sugar?
7. What does the light reaction produce?
8. What is the Calvin cycle?
9. What are organic compounds?
10. What is carbon fixation?
11. What is visible light?
12. How much energy does a photon of green light have compared to a photon of red light?
13. Why are most plants green?
14. Why is the action spectrum of a plant different from the absorption spectrum of any one chlorophyll pigment?
15. How does chlorophyll a differ from chlorophyll b? How di they differ from the carotenoids in function?
16. Compare and contrast photosystem I and II
17. What is noncyclic electron flow?
18. How is a mitochondrion similar to a chloroplast?
19. What is rubisco?
20. What is the final product of the Calvin Cycle?
21. What does it take for the Calvin cycle to occur (substrates)?
22. Why is photorespiration different from cellular respiration?
23. Compare C3 and C4 plants.

CHAPTER 12: CELL CYCLE

1. What is a genome?
2. What are chromosomes?
3. What is a somatic cell?
4. What is a gamete?
5. What chromatin?
6. What is mitosis?
7. What is s sister chromatid?
8. What is interphase?
9. Describe the 3 phases of interphase and what occurs in each.
10. Describe mitosis and what occurs in each of the 4 primary phases.
11. What is cytokenesis?
12. How is binary fission like mitosis?
13. What are cyclins?
14. What is density-dependent inhibition of cell division?
15. What is cancer?
16. What is the difference between a malignant and a benign tumor?
17. What has Nancy Hopkins contributed to molecular biology?

CHAPTER 13 MEIOSIS AND SEXUAL LIFE CYCLES

1. What are genes?
2. Where (all) in a cell are genes located?
3. What is the difference between sexual and asexual reproduction?
4. What is a karyotype?
5. What does it mean to be diploid?
6. What are homologous chromosomes?
7. What are somatic chromosomes or autosomes?
8. What is haploid?
9. What id triploid? Tertraploid?
10. What is meiosis?
11. What is a gamete?
12. What is fertilization?
13. What is a zygote?
14. What is alternation of generations?
15. How does the life cycle of an animal differ from that of a plant?
16. What is the difference between homologous chromosomes and sister chromatids?
17. Compare and contrast meiosis I with meiosis II.
18. Compare mitosis with meiosis I.
19. Compare mitosis with meiosis II.
20. What is crossing over?
21. What is a tetrad?
22. What is a chiasmata?
23. What is the difference between crossing over and a chiasmata?
24. What is independent assortment?

CHAPTER 14: MENDEL AND THE GENE IDEA

1. When and where did Mendel do his work?
2. List the characteristics that made the garden pea such a good model for Mendel’s genetic studies.
3. What is the difference between a character and a trait?
4. Describe P, F1 and F2 generations.
5. What are alleles?
6. What is the law of segregation?
7. What is a dominant trait?
8. What is a recessive trait?
9. What does it mean to be homozygous?
10. What does it mean to be heterozygous?
11. What is a testcross? Give an example.
12. What is a phenotype? Give an example.
13. What is a genotype? Give an example.
14. What is a dihybrid cross? What is the product of a dihybrid cross?
15. What is the rule of addition?
16. What is the rule of multiplication?
17. What is incomplete dominance?
18. What are multiple alleles?
19. What is pleiotropy?
20. What is epistasis?
21. What is polygenic inheritance?
22. Does the environment impact our phenotype? If so, how? Give an example other than the one in the book. Use an example from your poster project.
23. What causes cystic fibrosis?
24. How is Huntingtons disease inherited?
25. What is sickle-cell anemia? Is there any possible benefit to being heterozygous for this condition?
26. Give an example of a Mendelian characteristic that is important in your poster topic.
27. What is the difference between Mendelian and non-Mendelian genetics?

CHAPTER 15: CHROMOSOMAL BASIS OF INHERITANCE

1. Describe two ways sex is determined besides with X and Y chromosomes.
2. What is hemophilia?
3. What is a Barr body?
4. Do males usually have Barr bodies? Why?
5. Why are calico cats usually female?
6. What is a methyl group? What role do they play in gene expression?
7. What is aneuploidy?
8. What is trisomy?
9. What is monoploidy?
10. What is nondisjunction?
11. Describe 3 or 4 types of chromosomal alterations.
12. What is Down syndrome.
13. Why might people with Down syndrome get Alzheimer more often?
14. Why might people with Down syndrome survive, while no other people with an extra chromosome have been known to survive?
15. What is genomic imprinting?
16. What is non-Mendelian inheritance and why does it occur? Is it important when considering disorders (name some)?

CHAPTER 16: MOLECULAR BASIS OF INHERITANCE

1. When was the structure of DNA discovered?
2. Who described the structure of DNA?
3. What was the significance of Griffith’s experiments (Don’t forget what heat does to protein).
4. What was so important about Hershey and Chase’s experiment?
5. What are “Chargaff’s Rules”?
6. What information did Rosalind Franklin contribute about the structure of DNA?
7. Where in the structure of DNA are there hydrogen bonds?
8. Where in the structure of DNA are there covalent bonds?
9. What is a nucleotide?
10. What does semi-conservative mean?
11. Who demonstrated that DNA was replicated in a semi-conservative way and how?
12. What is an origin of replication? Do eukaryotes have one?
13. What is DNA polymerase?
14. What is the difference between ribose and deoxyribose?
15. What is DNA ligase? Why is it needed?
16. What does antiparallel mean?
17. What is a nuclease?
18. What do you know about a word that ends in “ase”?

CHAPTER 17: FROM GENE TO PROTEIN

1. What does a “scribe” do?
2. What does a translator do?
3. What is transcription?
4. What is translation?
5. What are the structural differences between DNA and RNA (look in the macromolecule chapter)?
6. Compare and contrast DNA replication and transcription.
7. What is RNA polymerase? How is it different from DNA polymerase? How is it the same?
8. What is RNA processing?
9. What is the difference between a primary transcript and a “finished” mRNA. Are they the same in eukaryotes? Are they the same in prokaryotes? Why?
10. Name the 3 types of RNA’s
11. What is a codon?
12. What is a template strand?
13. How can you decipher the genetic code?
14. Can you take a gene from a human and put it in a bacterium? Why?
15. What is the significance of the 5’-3’ designation? Why is it important?
16. What are promoters?
17. What are caps and poly-A tails? What function do they serve? What type of cells have them?
18. What are introns? What are exons?
19. What is heteronuclear RNA?
20. How are exons related to protein domains?
21. Where does a tRNA line up to a mRNA?
22. Name the three stages in protein synthesis.
23. What is a signal mechanism?
24. What amino acid is the first in every protein made?
25. Is it always the first amino acid in the finished protein? Why?
26. Where are secreted proteins synthesized? Why?
27. Where are proteins that work in the cytoplasm synthesized?
28. What amino acid does the codon UUU code for?
29. What amon acid does the codon CUG code for?
30. What is UGA?
31. What is the difference between initiation and elongation?
32. Compare and contrast protein synthesis in prokaryotes and eukaryotes.

CHAPTER 18: CONTROL

1. What is the size of a bacteria, a eukaryotic cell and a virus (recall your “cell” lab too)?
2. What is a virus made of?
3. Can it reproduce on its own?
4. What is transformation?
5. What is transduction?
6. What is conjugation?
7. What is a plasmid?
8. Do eukaryotic cells typically have plasmids that are used to transmit genetic information?
9. Give an example of conditions where a bacteria might need to alter the genes it expressed.
10. What is an operon?
11. What is an operator?
12. What is a promoter?
13. What is a repressor?
14. What is tryptophan?
15. What macromolecule are enzymes made of?
16. What is the difference between the “gene for the enzyme” and the enzyme”? this is important to remember when you are understanding control of metabolism.
17. What is a corepressor?
18. What is lactose?
19. Compare and contrast a repressor and an inducer.
20. What type of pathways (anabolic or catabolic) are usually controlled by repressible enzymes?
21. How does cAMP contribute to the control of the lac operon?
22. Why do we spend so much time explaining genetic control in such a “simple’ organism as a bacteria? Do you think there are similarities between bacterial and eukaryotic gene control? Explain.

Chapter 19: Eukaryotic Genes

1. What are histones? 

2. How do histones assist in DNA packaging.  Explain the structure/function relationship.

3. What is a nucleosome?

4. Describe 3 types of repetitive DNA and possible finctions.

5. What conditions result from triple repeats of DNA sequences?

6. What are gene families? 

7. How is myoglobin related to hemoglobin?  Explain the structure/function relationship.

8. What percentage of a genes does a human cell typically express?  Why?

9. Explain the ways Gene expression can be controlled. 

10. What role was DNA methylation play in gene expression?  Can you give 2 examples? 

Chapter 20: DNA Technology

1. What are restrictions enzymes?

2. How are they used in biotechnology?

3. Name the one most important structural feature that makes DNA sequencing possible.

4. What can be discovered by comparing gene sequences among species?

5. What is a microarray?

6. Describe one biotechnology application.  (I.e. pharm animals, or genetic engineering in plants) and discuss whether you think it is a valuable technology or an ethical nightmare.

 

 

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Course notes developed by Nora Egan Demers, Ph.D. Banner designed by Mason B. Meers, Ph.D .All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Updated 2003 by Nancy Edwards.