Biology 173 Exam 1 Vocabulary

Ecological Diversity

_____________________ deals with the variations in ecosystems within a geographical location and its overall impact on human existence and the environment.

Community Composition

___________________ is the identity and relative abundance of different species within a particular ecological community.

Species Interactions

____________________ are the effects that different species have on one another when they share a habitat or ecosystem.

Interspecific Competition

__________________ is between individuals of different species.

Intraspecific Competition

____________________ is between individuals of the same species.

Interference Competition

__________________ is between individuals that interact directly with one another.

Exploitative Competition

_________________ is when organisms compete through the consumption of a limited resource.

Mutualism

____________ is a relationship between two organisms where both species benefit from their interaction with each other.

Commensalism

________________ is a symbiotic relationship where one organism benefits from another organism without causing harm or benefit to the latter.

Amensalism

______________ is a type of biological interaction where one species is harmed or inhibited while the other species is unaffected.

Predation/Parasitism

____________________ is a biological relationship between two organisms where one organism benefits at the expense of the other.

Independent Variable

A __________________ is the factor that a researcher intentionally manipulates or changes in an experiment to observe its effect on another variable.

Dependent Variable

A ________________ is the factor that is measured or observed in an experiment.

Positive Control

A _________________ is a sample that is treated in a way that is known to produce a specific result.

Negative Control

A _________________ is a sample or group in an experiment that is not exposed to the experimental treatment and is expected to show no change.

Hypothesis Testing

___________________ is a statistical method used to determine whether data collected from an experiment provides enough evidence to support or reject a proposed explanation.

Null Hypothesis

A ___________________ is a statement that there is no statistically significant difference or relationship between two variables being tested.

de Wit Replacement Series

An experimental design used to study competition between two species by growing them in different proportions, from pure monocultures to mixtures with varying ratios, while maintaining a constant total population density.

Monoculture

A ________________ is a crop or a population of a single kind of organism.

Enzyme

An _______________ is a protein molecule that acts as a catalyst, significantly speeding up chemical reactions within living organisms without being consumed in the process.

Catalyst

A ______________ is a substance that speeds up a chemical reaction within an organism without being consumed in the process.

Catalytic Cycle

The _____________ is the series of steps an enzyme undergoes to facilitate a chemical reaction.

Substrate

A __________ is the molecule or substance that an enzyme acts upon and transforms into a different molecule.

Cell Homogenization

_________________ is the process of breaking down cells into a uniform mixture by disrupting their membranes, releasing the cellular components like proteins, nucleic acids, and organelles, allowing for further analysis of individual cell parts in a laboratory setting.

Centrifugation

______________ is a laboratory technique that uses centrifugal force to separate and purify enzymes (or other biological particles) from a mixture based on their size and density.

Spectrophotometry

_________________ is a technique used to measure enzyme activity by monitoring the change in light absorption at a specific wavelength during an enzyme reaction.

Saturated Enzyme

A ________________ an enzyme where all of its active sites are occupied by substrate molecules

V-max

___________ is the maximum reaction rate possible when an enzyme is fully saturated with its substrate.

Km

______ is the "Michaelis constant," which is the substrate concentration at which an enzyme reaches half of its maximum reaction rate.

Competitive Inhibition

______________ is a process where a molecule, called a competitive inhibitor, binds to the active site of an enzyme, preventing the natural substrate from binding and thus hindering the enzyme's activity by directly competing for the same binding site.

Non-Competitive Inhibition

_____________ is a type of enzyme inhibition where an inhibitor molecule binds to a site on the enzyme distinct from the active site causing a change in the enzyme's shape and preventing it from effectively binding to its substrate, thus reducing the enzyme's activity regardless of the substrate concentration present.

Percent Inhibition

_____________ is the percentage decrease in an enzyme's activity when an inhibitor molecule is present.

Chelator

____________ is a molecule that can bind tightly to metal ions, effectively removing them from solution by forming a stable complex.

Denaturation

_____________ is the process where an enzyme loses its natural three-dimensional structure, usually due to extreme conditions like high temperature or pH changes, which results in the enzyme becoming inactive and unable to perform its catalytic function because its active site is no longer properly shaped to bind to a substrate

Gene Regulation

_________________ is the process used to control the timing, location and amount in which genes are expressed.

Microbiome

_________________ is the collection of all microbes, such as bacteria, fungi, viruses, and their genes, that naturally live on our bodies and inside us.

Fermentation

_________________ is a metabolic process where organisms break down sugar molecules (like glucose) into simpler compounds, producing energy in the form of ATP without the need for oxygen.

Metabolite

A _______________ is a substance that is produced or used when the body breaks down food, drugs, or chemicals.

Fermentable Carbohydrates

_____________________ are a type of carbohydrates that can be broken down by bacteria in the gut.

Non-Fermentable Carbohydrates

__________________ are a type of carbohydrates that cannot be broken down by bacteria in the gut.

Inulin

_____________ is a type of soluble dietary fiber considered a “prebiotic” that is readily fermented by beneficial bacteria in the gut microbiome. ________ is also a key substrate for the production of butyrate in the gut microbiome.

Butyrate

____________ is a short-chain fatty acid produced by gut bacteria when they ferment dietary fiber.

Streak Plating

_________________ is a laboratory technique used to isolate individual bacterial colonies from a mixed culture by spreading a sample of bacteria across the surface of a solid agar plate in a specific pattern, gradually diluting the bacteria to achieve well-separated colonies that can be studied individually.

Freezer Stock

A _____________ is a collection of frozen bacterial cultures that are preserved using glycerol.

Gene

A _________ is the basic unit of heredity. It is a specific sequence of DNA located on a chromosome that contains the instructions for making a particular protein, which ultimately determines a specific trait or characteristic of an organism.

Chromosome

A thread-like structure located within the nucleus of a cell, composed of DNA tightly coiled around proteins, which carries genetic information in the form of genes and is passed from parents to offspring.

DNA Replication

_______________ is the process by which a cell copies its DNA molecule, producing two identical replicas of the original DNA strand, ensuring that each new daughter cel receives a complete set of genetic information when a cell divides.

Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR)

_________________ is a laboratory technique that uses repeated temperature cycles to rapidly amplify a specific region of DNA from a sample.

DNA Sequencing

___________________ is the laboratory technique used to determine the exact order of nucleotides within a DNA molecule.

Mean

The _______ of a dataset is the average of the values.

Variance

____________ refers to a measure of how spread out a set of data points are from the mean.

Standard Deviation

__________ is a measure of variability. It is the average distance between each data point and mean value.

Normal Curve

A ______________ is a unimodal, symmetrical curve.

T-Score

A _____________ is the number of standard deviations away from the mean that an observed sample value falls from the parameter.

P-Value

A ___________ is the percentage of results that fall at the t-score and beyond. Essentially, the probability getting results the same as or more extreme as the observed sample value if assuming the null is true.

Chromatogram

A __________________ is a visual representation of the separation of different components within a mixture.

BLAST Analysis

A ______________ refers to comparing a biological sequence against a large database of sequences, identifying regions of similarity and providing statistical significance scores to assess the likelihood of finding such matches by chance.