Chapter 1 Flashcards
What is is biology?
The study of life.
The science of life and of living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, and distribution.
What is life
The property or quality that distinguishes living organisms from dead organisms and inanimate matter manifested in functions such as metabolism, growth, reproduction, and response to stimuli or adaptation to the environment originating from within the organism.
A system in which proteins and nucleic acids interact in ways that allow the structure to grow and reproduce
What did Aristotle and NASA say about life?
Life is something that grows, is self-sustaining and reproduces
Self-sustaining system capable of Darwinian evolution
What do Anishinaabe people refer to Earth and Rocks?
Mama Aki (mother) and Grandfathers
What does Pimachiowin Aki mean in the Ojibwe language Anishinaabemowin?
the Land that Gives Life, is a gift from the Creator to share with the world – a healthy boreal forest and all life that emerges from and flows across it.
What are the Creator’s Gifts?
Sun, water, wind, rain, fire, rock, soil, plants, and animals.
Why is hard to define life?
No universally accepted definition of life, very variable, A lot of things found in nature are also considered living (rivers, trees), Different questions involve different disciplines of life (scientists, astrobiologists, artificial life)
What are the differences between parasites and viruses?
Parasites
- Require a host to live, reproduce and grow
Viruses
- Don’t have their own metabolism
-Don’t respire or carry out photosynthesis
- Evolve rapidly by natural selection (nucleic acid)
- Can’t complete the life cycle without invading living cells.
- Does not have own protein-making factories (ribosomes, enzymes to replicate)
- Rickettsia is considered to be alive despite not being able to live outside a host cell.
Are viruses living organisms?
Similarities
* Can store and transmit information (reproduce)
* Evolve over time
Differences
* Viruses lack cellular machinery and metabolism
* Viruses can’t break down chemical compounds and obtain/transform energy on their own
* They require cells as hosts in order to replicate and use the information in their genetic material
What are the characteristics of life?
Displays order
Harnesses and utilizes energy
Reproduces
Responds to stimuli
Exhibits homeostasis
Grows and develops
Evolves
Could RNA be able to possess all the 7 characteristics of life?
Yes
Why do many scientists consider viruses NOT to be a form of life?
They lack ribosomes
Which characteristics of life are able to regulate their internal environment such that conditions remain relatively constant? Sweating is one way in which the human body attempts to remove heat and thereby maintain a constant
Exhibit homeostasis
Which characteristics of life describe organisms that can make adjustments to their structure, function and behaviour in response to changes in the external environment? A plant can adjust the size of the pores (stomata) on the surface of its leaves to regulate gas exchange.
Respond to stimuli
Definition of Display Order?
All forms of life, including this flower, are arranged in a highly ordered manner, with the cell being the fundamental unit that exhibits all properties of life
The Seven Characteristics of Life Are…
Emergent
An emergent property is a new characteristic that only results from the combination of other properties
What does it mean to be emergent?
More than the sum of their parts, but the organism is fundamentally different than the collection of individual characteristics
They come about, or emerge, from many simpler interactions, that on their own would not confer the properties
What does the Termite cathedral show
How properties can do things and individuals cannot
When did earth form?
4.6 bya
What is Radiometric dating?
Looks at specific isotopic ratios in rocks and knowledge of their rate of decay.
Timeline of the earth?
The earliest humans were 150,000 years ago
Earliest eukaryotes 2 bya
Oxygen in the atmosphere is 2.5 bya
Earliest porkaryotes and fossils 3.5 bya
Earth formed 4.6 bya
What was early earth like?
The original atmosphere of Earth contained lots of water vapour and large quantities of hydrogen, carbon dioxide, ammonia, and methane. Lack of oxygen
What are the 4 biologically important marcomlecules that are important for all forms of life and are constantly being synthesized within cells by various biochemical pathways and metabolic pathways?
Nucleic acids (DNA and RNA)
Proteins
Lipids
Carbohydrates
What is abiotic synthesis?
The production of organic compounds in the absence of life
Which polymers are not made up from
simpler building blocks and all are made within cells by complex metabolic pathways
Lipids
What was the Oparin-Haldane Hypothesis?
Oparin-Haldane Hypothesis: Organic molecules essential for life formed through abiotic synthesis
(production of organic compounds in absence of life) given conditions on the primitive earth.
Reducing the atmosphere (lack of hydrogen, methane and ammonia) that lacked oxygen favoured the formation of organic molecules
Lack of O2 = no ozone layer (O3) = UV light w/ lightning able to reach lower atmosphere =
gave energy for the formation of biologically important molecules
What is the Miller-Urey Experiment
Miller-Urey Experiment: a first experiment that demonstrates that organic molecules can be synthesized under conditions simulating primordial earth using MU apparatus (abiotic formation of molecules critical of life)
Hydrogen, methane and ammonia were placed in a closed apparatus and exposed to an energy source (sparking electrodes Water vapour was added to the “atmosphere” which condensed back into the water by cooling another part of the apparatus. One week after, organic molecules such as urea, amino acids, lactic, formic and acetic acids were found in condensed water.
Abiotic synthesis of biologically important molecules s/a amino acids, urea, lactic acid
Adding HCN and CH2O produced amino acids, fatty acids, purines/pyrimidines, sugars and
phospholipids
What are the basic requirements for life?
Biologically important molecules and macromolecules
System for storing, replicating and passing on information
Ability to capture and utilize (i.e. transform) energy
Separate these systems and processes from the surrounding environment in the distinct compartment(s)
What is the difference between a reducing atmosphere and oxidizing atmosphere?
Reducing atmosphere - lots of water vapour, presence of H2, CO2, NH3, + CH4, lack of O2 = no
ozone layer (O3)
Oxidizing atmosphere - ↑ O2 = O2 primary e- acceptor from organic molecules = reduced to H2O =
complex e- rich molec not formed
Why did the Oparain-Halden hypothesis support the Miller-Urey experiment?
Proved that early earth could produce biologically
important molecules can be synthesized outside living cells but cannot produce polymers (nucleic acids, proteins, lipids, carbs)
Which key macromolecules of life that are polymers were not formed by the Miller-Urey experiment?
Proteins and nucleic acids
Why is it unlikely that polymers would form in an aqueous environment, but instead polymerization reactions could have occurred on solid surfaces such as clay?
Polymerization on solid surfaces s/a clay - charged, thin, microscopic, layered structure which can also store potential energy for polymerization reactions = formation of short polymers of proteins/nucleic acids long enough
impart a specific function, allowing molecular adhesion forces to bring monomers together in orientation to lead to polymer formation.
What are monomers and polymers?
Monomer: simpler and easier to synthesize (amino acids, nucleotides) than the key chemical components of life.
Polymers: macromolecules formed from bonding together of individual monomers (nucleic acids and proteins). Synthesizes by dehydration synthesis, sufficient length to impart specific function (like protein) or store sufficient information (like nucleic acid) to make formation advantageous.
Nucleic acids = polymers of nucleotides
Proteins = polymers of amino acids
Polysaccharides (starch, cellulose) = polymers of simple sugars
What is the process of the Central Dogma?
Information is stored in DNA (deoxyribose nucleic acid provides cells with the instructions necessary to function.) - THROUGH TRANSCRIPTION, the information in DNA is copied into RNA - THROUGH TRANSLATION, the information in RNA guides the production of proteins
Why proteins?
Proteins provide structure and carry out many essential activities in a cell.
Such a sophisticated system couldn’t have been instantly established with the initial abiotic synthesis of simple organic macromolecules and the development of the first cells
Which of the following is essential to the Oparin– Haldane hypothesis of the nature of Earth’s early atmosphere?
The near absence of O2
What was the significance of the 1953 Miller–Urey experiment testing the Oparin–Haldane hypothesis?
The synthesis of complex biological molecules is possible in a reducing atmosphere.
In what ways are ribozymes similar and different from enzymes?
Ribozymes - RNA molecules have the ability to catalyze rxns
Discovered by Thomas Cech + Sidney Altman
Similarities
● Carry out critical reactions relative to gene function
● Proteins
● Tertiary, 3-D structure (structure affects function)
● Have catalytic activity
● Can self-replicate
Differences
● Ribozymes catalyze slower vs enzymes catalyze faster
● Ribozymes RNA molecules vs enzymes protein molecules
● Ribozymes less abundant vs enzymes more abundant
● Ribozymes in ribosomes vs enzymes in the cytoplasm, mitochondria, Golgi complex
Ribozymes < proteins < enzymes
Functions of RNA Ribozymes?
Some RNA molecules are not just long and linear molecules, but mot all RNA. Molecules are like that. Some fold up into 3D structures. Enzymes fold up into a specific 3D object as well.
Ribo(RNA)- zymes (enzymes): RNA that has Catalytic activity
Even In the absence of proteins, ribozymes can still catalyze reactions
RNA molecules can self-replicate, ribozymes self-replicating ribozymes
Ribozymes allow for early metabolic processes to occur
Ribozymes are involved in many biological processes (The CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing system relies on ribozymes)
Process of ribozyme?
Messenger RNA - Ribioenzyme-mediated cut (cleaved part is important in cells such as during transcription) - cut (cleaved) messenger
Why are Proteins and DNA evolutionarily advantageous compared to RNA?
DNA (information storage) and proteins (catalysis) are far better than RNA by themselves.
DNA is double-stranded and more stable than RNA and thus evolved as better repository of genetic information
Proteins became the dominant structural and functional macromolecule of all cells
* Greater diversity
* Much higher rate of catalysis the ribozymes
What are three reasons why proteins are more versatile than RNA molecules and more dominant structural and functional molecules of a modern cell?
- Catalytic power of enzymes is greater than a ribozyme(catalyze the same reaction using a poll of substrate molecules thousands of times a second)
- Cell synthesis of a huge array of different proteins. Twenty different kinds of amino acids, in different arrangements, can be incorporated into a protein, whereas an RNA molecule is composed of different combinations of only four nucleotides.
- Amino acids can interact chemically with each other in more complex and varied bonding arrangements which are not possible between nucleotides.