EXAM Bio1

• Biology is the scientific study of life.
• The cell is the smallest unit of life.
• The building blocks of life are proteins.
• Domain Bacteria and Archaea are prokaryotic and has no nucleus. They contain organisms with simple cells.
• Domain Eukarya are eukaryotic and have a nucleus. These include kingdom, fungi, plantae, animalia, and protists.
• A hypothesis is constructed before any applicable research has been done. A theory, on the other hand, is supported by evidence
• Scientific Method Steps: observation, research, hypothesis, experiment, analyze data, conclusion.
• The factor that is manipulated is called the Independent Variable.
• The measure used to judge the outcome of the experiment is called the dependent variable.
• A controlled experiment compares an experimental group with a control group.
• Life is disguisable by its unity and diversity.
• Evolution is the process of change that has transformed life on Earth from its earliest forms to the vast array of organisms living today.
• The two observations that led Darwin to his theory of Natural Selection are: heritable variations and overproduction of offspring.
• DNA is responsible for the heredity and programming the activities of cells. They are the instructions for making proteins.
• Energy flows through an ecosystem in one direction. It enters as sunlight, converted to chemical energy by producers, passed on to consumers, and exists as heat.
• Systems Biology is the study of the interactions between the parts of a biological system.
• Darwin road on the HMS Beagle.
• Darwin went on a five year voyage. He did not own the boat. The Galapagos Islands was one of the stops.
• Order Of Fossil Era: Paleozoic (most diverse), Mesozoic (dinos and reptiles), and Cenozoic (mammals and flowery plants).
• Similarities resulting from common ancestry is called Homology.
• Vestigial structures are remnants of features that served important functions in an organisms ancestors.
• Homologies structures (tree) can include: anatomical structure and or molecular structures.
• Key Evolutionary points: Individuals do not evolve, populations do. Natural selection can amplify or diminish heritable traits. Evolution is not goal directed.
• Natural selection is an editing process, not a creating process.
• Natural selection is dependent on time and place, it favors the current local environment.
• Mutations and sexual reproduction creates variety in a population.
• A population is a group of individuals of the same species that live in the same area and interbreed.
• A gene pool consists of all copies of every type of allele, at every locus, in all members of the population.
• Microevolution is a change in the frequencies of alleles in a populations gene pool and evolution occurring on its smallest scale.
• An allele is a variation of a gene.
• The four mechanisms of evolution are: genetic drift, natural selection, gene flow, and mutations.
• Genetic drift is the random change in allele frequencies in a population due to chance.
• Gene flow is the movement of alleles from one population to another.
• Bottleneck Effect leads to a loss of genetic diversity when a population is greatly reduced.
• Founder effect is when few individuals colonize an island or other new habitat.
• Relative fitness is the contribution an individual makes to the gene pool of the next generation relative to the contribution of others.
• Stabilizing selection favors intermediate phenotypes.
• Directional selection shifts the overall makeup of the population by acting against individuals at one of the phenotypic extremes.
• Disruptive selection occurs when environmental conditions vary in a way that favors individuals at both ends of a photopic range over individuals with intermediate phenotypes.
• Intrasexual Selection is in which individuals compete directly with members of the same sex for mates.