Disease and Bioenergetics Flashcards
What is a communicable disease?
An infectious disease caused by pathogens that can be passed from one person to another.
What are non-communicable diseases?
Diseases that cannot be transmitted from one person to another.
What can both communicable and non-communicable diseases cause?
ill health
What are 3 other factors that can also affect health?
Diet, Stress and life situations (environment, gender, ethnic group)
What is a pathogen?
A microorganisms that cause disease.
Name 4 types of pathogen.
Bacteria, viruses, protists or fungi
Complete the sentence : Communicable diseases are caused either directly by a ____________ or by a ________ made by a pathogen.
Pathogen, toxin
Give 2 examples of mild communicable diseases.
common cold and tonsillitis
What are the differences between bacteria and viruses?
Bacteria are single-celled living organisms that are much smaller than animal or plant cells.
Viruses are even smaller than bacteria and usually have regular shapes. They can cause disease in every type of living organism.
How does bacteria cause disease?
They divide rapidly by splitting in to two (binary fission). They can produce toxins that affect your body, making you feel ill. They can also directly damage cells.
How do viruses cause disease?
Viruses take over the cells of your body. They live and reproduce inside the cells, damaging and destroying them.
How are pathogens spread? Give 3 ways.
Air (including droplet infection)
Direct contact
Water (contaminated)
How do bacteria divide?
By binary fission
What is a culture medium?
A liquid or gel containing nutrients needed to help bacteria grow.
What does a culture medium contain?
Carbohydrates (energy source), minerals, nitrogen source (to make proteins), sometimes other chemicals
How can you prepare an uncontaminated culture of microorganisms in a lab?
Step 1:
Sterilise the petri dishes. Glass- autoclave, Plastic- bought sterilised or UV light/Gamma radiation. The nutrient agar must also be sterilised to kill unwanted microorganisms.
Step 2:
Inoculate the sterile agar with the microorganisms you want to grow
Step 3:
Incubate the dishes for several days, stored upside down so condensation doesn’t fall from the lid onto the agar surface.
How do you sterilise and inoculating loop?
Heat in the blue flame of a bunsen burner
How do you sterilise glass petri dishes?
In an autoclave
What is the maximum temperature at which cultures are incubated in schools? Why?
25°C, because higher temperatures means a higher risk of growing harmful pathogens at a faster rate.
Why are bacterias incubated at higher temperatures in hospitals?
So that human pathogens can grow as fast as possible and are identified sooner
The mean division time for a population of bacteria is 30 minutes. Calculate how many bacteria will result from each individual bacterium after 8 hours.
2 times/hour
16 times in 8 hours
1x2^16 = 65536
What are disinfectants?
Chemicals used to kill bacteria in the environment around us.
What are antibiotics?
Chemicals that can be used inside our bodies to kill bacteria or prevent them from growing.
Explain how to investigate the effect of disinfectants and antibiotics. RP
- Sterilise a petri dish containing agar gel.
- Add circles of filter paper soaked in different types or concentrations of disinfectant or antibiotic. Add a control disc containing no antibiotic or disinfectant.
- Incubate.
- Measure the zone of inhibition for each paper disc to see its effectiveness. Use πr².
Who was Ignaz Semmelweis?
A doctor in the mid 1850s who discovered who diseases were transmitted.
He noticed that when medical students went from dissecting a deceased body to delivering a baby, the woman was more likely to die than if the baby was delivered by a midwife. Semmelweis wondered if they were carrying the disease from the corpses to their patients.
What are 5 hygiene measures that can help prevent the spread of diseases?
- Hand washing
- Disinfectant
- Keeping raw meat away from food
- Coughing or sneezing into a tissue rather than hands
- Maintaining the hygiene of people, animals and agricultural machinery to prevent the spread of plant diseases
If someone had a serious infectious disease, what should they do?
Isolate
What are vectors?
Organisms that carry a disease but are not affected by it
What is a vaccine?
A small amount of a dead or inactive pathogen introduced to the body to help prevent disease.
Give 2 viral diseases in humans.
Measles and HIV/AIDs
What is a viral disease in plants?
Tobacco mosaic virus
Give two bacterial diseases in humans.
Salmonella food poisoning, Gonorrhoea
What are the symptoms of measles?
fever and red skin rash
How is measles spread?
By the inhalation of droplets of coughs or sneezes.
What are the symptoms of HIV?
mild, flu-like at first, gradually damages immune system leading to AIDS
How is HIV spread?
Direct sexual contact, exchange of body fluids, such as blood, or passed from mother to child in breast milk
What are the symptoms of tobacco mosaic virus?
discolouration of leaves and affected growth
What is salmonella?
Bacteria that live in the guts of many animals
What is gonorrhoea?
A sexually transmitted bacterial disease (STD)
What are the symptoms of gonorrhoea?
A thick yellow or green discharge from the vagina or penis and pain on urination.
Give an example of a fungal disease in humans.
Athletes foot
What can be used to treat fungal diseases in humans?
Antifungal drugs
Name a fungal disease in plants.
Rose black spot
What are the symptoms of rose black spot disease?
Purple or black spots develop on the leaves. Leaves then turn yellow and drop early, weakening the plant.
How are fungal diseases in plants spread?
Carried by the wind and spread over a plant during rainfall.
What can be used to treat fungal diseases in plants?
chemical fungicides
What is a protist?
A single-celled organisms that usually involve a vector.
Name a protist disease in humans.
Malaria
What is malaria?
A disease caused by protist pathogens that are parasites - they live and feed on other living organisms.
How is malaria spread?
Vector - female Anopheles mosquito
True or false : The Malaria protists reproduce asexually in the mosquito.
False - They reproduce sexually in the mosquito and asexually in the human body.
How can the spread of malaria be controlled?
- Insecticide mosquito nets
- Using insecticides to kill mosquitoes
- Preventing mosquitoes from breeding (remove standing water/ spray with insecticides)
- Travellers can take anti malaria drugs that kill the parasites if infected
Give 5 examples of human defence systems against disease.
Skin - barrier, produces antimicrobial secretions
Nose - hairs, mucus
Trachea and Bronchi - mucus, cilia
Stomach - Acids
Immune system - white blood cells
What are three ways that white blood cells protect against disease?
Ingesting microorganisms, Producing antibodies, Producing antitoxins
What are aphids?
Insect plant pests that penetrate into the phloem to feed off sugar-rich phloem sap. They damage and weaken the plant.
What is chlorosis?
When the level of magnesium ions in the soil is low, the plant cannot make enough chlorophyll causing the leaves to become yellow. Growth slows as photosynthesis cannot take place.
What will happen to a plant if there is a nitrate deficiency in the soil?
Growth of plants will be stunted
What does stunted growth in a plant indicate?
A nitrate deficiency
What do dark spots on leaves indicate?
Black spot fungus
What do areas of decay or rotting on plants indicate?
black spot or blights on potatoes
What do growths on plants suggest?
Crown galls caused by bacterial infection
What is the name of a plant bacterial infection?
Crown gall
What do malformed stems and leaves suggest?
Due to aphids or nematode infestation
What does discolouration on a plant suggest?
yellowing chlorosis - magnesium deficiency
mosaic patterns - tobacco mosaic virus
How can plant diseases be treated?
fungicides, pesticides, fertilisers
Give 4 physical barriers that help protect plants from disease?
Cellulose walls - strengthens the plant and helps resist invasion by microorganisms
Tough waxy cuticle - barrier to the entry of pathogens
Bark on trees - protective layer, hard to penetrate
Leaf fall - any infected leaves fall off taking the pathogens with them
How do plants protect themselves from herbivores?
Poisons - makes the animal unwell
Thorns - unpleasant to eat
Hairy stems/leaves - painful, deters insects
Drooping or curling when touched- dislodges insects
Mimicry - mimic unhealthy plants or eggs on surface to stop insects from laying actual eggs on surfaces
What are antigens?
Proteins on the surface of cells
Explain how a vaccine prevents disease.
A small amount of dead or inactive pathogen is introduced to the body. This stimulates the white blood cells to produce the antibodies needed to kill the pathogen to prevent you from becoming ill. Upon reinfection, white blood cells now respond rapidly and make the antibodies as if you had already had the disease, so that you are protected against it.
What does the MMR vaccine protect humans against?
measles, mumps and rubella
What is herd immunity?
When a large proportion of the population is immune to a disease, the spread of the pathogen in the population is reduced and the disease may disappear.
What are antibiotics?
Medicines that work inside the body to kill bacterial pathogens.
When did antibiotics first become widely available?
1940s
Give an example of an antibiotic.
Penicillin
What is penicillin made from?
Penicillin mould/ fungi
True or false : Antibiotics kill viral pathogens.
False - they kill bacterial pathogens only.
What is the main difference between drugs such as paracetamol and drugs such as penicillin?
Antibiotics cure diseases whereas painkillers only help to relieve pain.
How do antibiotics work?
They damage bacterial cells without harming your own cells. They can be ingested or put straight into the bloodstream.
Why is it more difficult to develop drugs against viruses than bacteria?
Viruses reproduce inside body cells so it is difficult to kill the virus without damaging the cell.
Why are new antibiotics for bacterial diseases in demand?
Some strains of bacterial diseases are becoming antibiotic resistant meaning the antibiotics no longer work on them.
What are digoxin, digitalis and aspirin all examples of?
Drugs made from plants
What plant does digoxin come from?
foxgloves
What is aspirin made from?
Willow bark.
Who discovered penicillin?
Alexander Fleming and then Florey and Chain.
What are the 4 things that a good medicine is?
effective, safe, stable, successfully taken in and removed from the body
What is the first stage of developing a new drug?
Testing in a lab on cells, tissues and organs.
Testing for toxicity and efficacy.
What is the second stage of developing a new drug?
Testing on animals to see how they work on whole organisms. Provides information on dosage and side effects.
What are preclinical trials?
Testing on cells, tissues and then live animals.