Science Biology notes (2024-25)

~~UNIT 1~~

-Name all the factors of life in RAREHOGG order.

Response To Stimuli, Adaptation/Evolution, Reproduction, Energy Processing, Homeostasis, Order, Genes/Genetics, Growth and Development.

Response To Stimuli-Life will always move to or away from a stimulus.

Adaptation-Life will constantly adapt or evolve to better fit their environment.

Reproduction- Life will consistently reproduce, whether asexually or sexually.

Energy Processing- Life always uses the Energy it takes through eating, photosynthesis, etc., and converts it into nutrients.

Homeostasis-Life will always have a balanced internal structure that works together.

Order-Life will always have an order of cells, organelles, organs, and systems to make a being.

Genes-Life always has DNA.

Growth and Development- Life will always have some system for growth.

~~UNIT 2~~

In the reaction depicted above, maltose is broken down into two glucose molecules. Which of the following best explains the process of this reaction?

-The answer is that the addition of water gets rid of the covalent bond between the maltose. This is because the water shown on the diagram is being added to the new maltose format. We also see in the diagram that the water splits the O molecule holding the maltose together into two HO molecules; thus, adding water splits the covalent bond.

Based on its elemental composition, which of the following molecules does the model most likely represent?

The answer is Glycine. This is because we know that Glycine is a protein, and proteins contain all the elements of the shown molecule (Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, and Hydrogen)

-Practice Test-

What is a Cation? What is an anion?

Isotopes are unstable elements. An ion is when an element has an unequal number of electrons and protons. A cation is a positive ion that loses electrons, and an anion is a negative ion that gains electrons.

How does the polar nature of water lead to hydrogen bonding between water molecules?

Because water is polar, it creates covalent bonds between the hydrogen atoms in the water that share an electron unequally. This causes the hydrogen to have a slightly positive charge and the oxygen to have a slightly negative charge. Thus, they attract to each other. Because they attract to each other, many bonds can form in one water source.

Using the penny lab as an example, explain how surface tension relates to water's properties.

Water attracts each other in a process called cohesion! The rest was fine; I forgot to mention that part.

Why is water’s high-specific heat necessary for life on Earth?

Water absorbs and releases heat slowly, moderating the heat around us and preventing temperature fluctuations.

~~UNIT 3~~

Why is water a neutral pH?

Water is a neutral pH because it has precisely even numbers of Hydrogen ions to Hydroxide ions.

What unique properties does hydrogen bonding give to water?

Hydrogen bonding allows water to bond quickly and with many substances because it’s formed from a polar covenant bond. This bonding gives water the properties of surface tension, universal solvents, cohesion and adhesion, high liquid density, and high specific heat.

What is the difference between a monomer and a polymer?

A monomer is a single molecule that combines with other monomers to form a larger, more complex molecule called a polymer.

In the forest, an increase in deer populations leads to overgrazing, and the food supply decreases. This is an example of:

This is an example of density-dependent factors. Because the statement refers to a limiting factor of deer population, we know it must refer to some density factor. Because the food supply increase is because of overgrazing, that means it is because there are too many deer, and the density is too high. Thus, the factor is dependent on the density. Therefore, this is an example of density-dependent factors.

Using information for this element, determine the following: # of valence electrons and # of bonds needed to fill the 3rd shell.

The element shows us that there are 14 electrons in the element. Because the first electron shell holds 2 electrons, and the 2nd and 3rd electron shells hold 8 electrons, we know that valence electrons are the electrons in the 3rd shell that don’t fill up all 8 spots. We can do 14-10 to get that there are 4 electrons in the 3rd shell and thus four valence electrons. The 3rd shell can hold 8 electrons, so to fill the 3rd shell, we need 4 electrons.

6. Explain how enzymes are essential for breaking down proteins and building molecules in the body.

   Enzymes break down the proteins by breaking down the substrate into products. Enzymes create molecules by releasing energy when the bond is broken into a molecule.

-Practice Test-

3. Below is the general structure of amino acids. Label each atom as either carbon (C), nitrogen (N), hydrogen (H), or oxygen (O).

   Amino acids contain carbon in the center, with two oxygen atoms on the right side and one nitrogen atom on the left. Around all atoms, there are hydrogen atoms.

4. Proteins have five functions: Cell Structure, Cell defense, Hair/Skin/Muscles/Cell-to-cell communication, and Enzymes. Be prepared to explain each one thoroughly. These enzyme are called catalysts and they speed up chemical reactions. These reactions build up cell structures by taking the product and combining it within the activ site of the enzyme, and through dehydration synthesis, forms the two products into a molecule Carbohydrates are an energy source specifically for cell structure. Lipids store energy by being converted into trigylerides and then being stored in fat cells.

   22. Which of the following choices can be used to describe the reaction below?

       The correct answer would be dehydration synthesis. This is because the reaction shows two Amino Acids having a reaction to form a protein as water gets taken away, thus combining the two monomers.

       -Study Guide-

       4. Explain why water can dissolve ionic compounds like sodium chloride (NaCl)?

          Because water has such strong poles on either side, it attracts the ionic bond to each side so strongly that it splits it, dissolving the bond. The water doesn’t dissolve ionic compounds through covenant bonds because if it made covalent bonds with the ions, it wouldn’t split them, instead they would stay whole in the water.

          7. An enzyme is placed in a solution with a very low pH. Which of the following is most likely to happen?

             The enzyme will lose shape due to the excess hydrogen ions in the solution, disrupting the enzyme shape. This is because enzymes are made of amino acids, making them essentially proteins. So, since there the enzyme will have too many hydrogen ions, it will disrupt the hydrogen bonds that hold the protein together (since proteins are Amino Acids+water). The enzyme will be pulled to too many different hydrogen atoms, and thus make the enzyme lose it’s shape and bonds.

       1. What role does amylose play in carbohydrate digestion?

          Amylase breaks down carbohydrates into simple sugars through hydrolysis.

          3. Why are different enzymes needed for carbohydrates and proteins?

             Enzymes are substrate specific, so each one will only match up to one substrate.

          4. How does the body use carbohydrates and protein products for digestion?

             Carbohydrate products (Simple sugars) are used for energy, while protein products (amino acids) are used to repair and build cell tissue.

          Case Study #2:

          Explain how ocean acidification (increased carbonic acid) lowers the pH of seawater and how this might affect the structure and function of the enzyme carbonate.

          1. When the Ocean gets more acidic, it gains more hydrogen ions, which means that the carbonate function will likely decrease in function because it’s optimal pH requires less positive charges to the protein, and therefore less hydrogen ions.

             How might rising ocean temperatures directly affect the enzyme carbonate and the snails' ability to process carbohydrates from algae?

          2. The rising temperatures will cause the carbonate enzyme to decrease in productive function, this will make the snails ability to process carbohydrates weaken.

          How might the acidic environment affect the snails' proteins and overall health? Describe the potential consequences for protein structure and function under such environmental stress.

          3. Because more hydrogen ions are entering the water, they disrupt the end of amino acid chains, breaking the ionic bonds between the positive and negative ions (because water is polar), which causes the protein to lose it’s shape in a process called denaturation. This causes there to be less proteins in the snail, so there will be less repair of tissue and the snail will be weaker.

             ~~UNIT 4~~

             -Digestion Lab-

             2. What element is missing in the cellulose model needed to make collagen-like proteins?

                The element missing from the model is Nitrogen. This is because proteins need Oxygen, Nitrogen, Hydrogen, and Carbon.

                1. What organisms turn Nitrogen into usable Nitrates for plants? Free Living Bacteria, Symbiotic Bacteria, and Denitrifying Bacteria turn Nitrogen into Nitrates by breaking down the organic material and releasing nitrates.

                   7. Why do Plants Obtain Nitrogen?

                      Nitrogen is an essential element for the proteins that make plants function, so Plants collect the Nitrogen (since it is not a naturally made element), which gets converted into Amino Acids, which build the plant’s proteins.

                      1. Explain how glucose moves from the small intestine to the body cells.

                      Glucose moves from the small intestine through the body cells through facilitated diffusion. Facilitated diffusion is when the substance (in this case, Glucose) goes from a high concentrated solution to a low concentration. In this case, the Glucose goes through facilitated diffusion from the small intestine to the bloodstream, and then goes through facilitated diffusion again into the body cell, where it gets converted into energy by going to the mitochondria.

   -Practice Pear Test (uh oh)-

   6. What happens to sugars that are made during photosynthesis? Sugars made through photosynthesis are mainly used for cellular respiration because the sugars give energy to the cells by the glucose combined with oxygen to produce usable cellular energy.

      9. Label the enzyme. Look carefully at the diagram and remember that the enzyme breaks the substrate into products; the enzyme is what the product goes into, while the active site is the original meeting site between the enzyme and substrate.

      10. Which of the following is NOT a monomer? Proteins are not monomers; they are polynomes made from many Amino Acid monomers together.

          13. A red blood cell is placed into a sugar water solution. What is most likely to occur? Water from the red blood cell will diffuse into the solution. The cell has a lesser concentration of proteins in it than the solution, so the cell walls shrink (because the cell is in a hypertonic solution, water is going to go from the low-concentration cell to the high-concentration solution) from Osmosis.

          14. Remember that hypertonic means that the solution (particles) has more particles than the water and hypotonic means that the solution is vice versa. The water will stop moving after Equilibrium is reached because it has no more concentration to move in.

          ~~UNIT 5~~

      1. It is 41 bases (or nucleotides) long. In this example, the flanking sequences consist of 9 bases (although in reality flanking regions are typically much longer). The eight four-base repeat units (GATA) make up the remaining 32 bases. How long would you expect an allele from this same locus to be if it had 10 repeat units?

You would expect the allele to be 49 bases long. This is because the alleles would have four bases for every unit, so if there were 10 units-10×4-there would be 40 bases. Then, we also add on the 9 flanking sequences to the 40 base-repeat units to make a total of 49 bases long.

~~UNIT 6~~

Tusklessness

5) What does the bar on the left tell you?

The graph tells us that 6% of all Elephants that were poached less came out with the tusklessness gene. We know this because the title of the graph shows the % of Tuskless elephants among different groups. The leftmost bar discerns that it represents the Elephant group that was less poached (which had a 6% Tusklessness rate), in comparison to the Civil War survivor Elephants, which had a 50% Tusklessness rate.

3) What is a realistic solution to reducing conflict between Elephants and humans?

A realistic solution to reducing conflict between Elephants and humans is through Education. This is because by educating the public about Elephants, they will be better adapted to work with them, rather than against the Elephants.

What Happens to the Heart Rate while they are holding one’s breath?

The data on the graph shows that the heart rate decreases because the no Apnea heart rate was about 10 beats higher than the Apnea heart rate, and then went up 15 beats after Apnea was acheived for 30 seconds, going from the Apnea rate of 50bpm to 75bpm.

What Caused the subjects heart rate to change when their face was submerged in water?

The dive response caused the heart to conserve Oxygen and beat more efficiently. The heart rate dropped because it is conserving it’s energy to only pump blood into the vital areas . This conserves oxygen (because oxygen is stored in the blood).

-Practice Exam-

Multiple Choice

4) ATP and NADPH are the reactants to the Calvin cycle. Photosynthesis creates ATP and NADPH which then go to the Calvin Cycle to be converted, making the product of glucose, then sending ADP and NADPH+ back to the light reactions to have the process occur again.

8) NADPH has high-energy electrons that are used to synthesize glucose in the Calvin Cycle.

11) The Calvin Cycle produces glucose and requires co2 to do so.

17) Calvin Cycle uses Co2 from light reactions to make glucose

18) When Co2 goes into blood, it combines with the water to make carbonic acid.

Open Response

1) Remember that photosynthesis reactants are water, co2, and light energy.

2) To conserve oxygen, the body uses bradycardia and vasoconstriction. This causes an increased reliance on anearobic respiration in the muscles because of a lack of oxygen. Thus, the body will deter to using glycolysis and lactic acids in order to sustain energy.

3) Oxygen diffuses from the alveoli into the bloodstream, which maintains oxygen levels despite a decrease in the substance.

4) The light reactions produce ATP and NADPH, the reactants to the calvin cycle (which synthesizes glucose). The glucose is then used in cellular respiration to create ATP.

7) Oxygen diffuses from the alveoli into the capillaries and then binds to hemoglobin in the blood, diffuses into cells from the blood, and enters the mitochondria for ETC use.

8) Glucose production would halt, causing a shortage of the substance for cellular respiration and ultimately a decreased ATP production.

10) Make sure to add that Glycoslis produces less ATP—> Less energy production in dive.

Practice MCQ’s

9. Which part of the plasma membrane is hydrophilic?

   The part of the plasma membrane that is hydrophilic is the phospholipid heads. Because the phospholipid heads are filled with a polar phosphate group, making it attracted to water’s simultaneous polarity. Phospholipid tails are not hydrophilic because they are composed of fatty acids, making them non-polar, and thus not attracted to water.

   11. Which of the following describes the structure of the nucleus?

       The nucleus is surrounded by a double membrane called the nuclear envelope, which was made to allow for controlled movement in the molecule between the nucleus and the cytoplasm through numerous pores around it. While the nucleus does contain DNA, the structure is not a single membrane, rather a double one that regulates material to protect that DNA inside the nucleus.

19. What is the role of the phospholipid bilayer in the plasma membrane?

    The phospholipid bilayer allows for selective permeability between materials entering and leaving the cell. This is because the phospholipid bilayer creates a barrier that doesn’t let large molecules in, but let’s selective small ones in through diffusion. There are proteins embedded into the bilayer to do active transport of selective large materials as well. While the bilayer does enhance the rigidity of the cell’s overall structure, this is not it’s primary function as it’s main job is to use it’s embedded proteins to push forward selective materials into the cell; and block others out.

Application Review *ask for sample answers*:

1. Everything else is good, remember that photosynthesis happens in the chloroplast.

2. Everything else is good, remember that Cellular Respiration outputs Water and Co2 along with ATP. In plant cells, pyruvate is where fermented glucose is stored. The Krebs cycle generates energy be breaking down acetyl-CoA from carbohydrates, fats, and proteins, using oxidization to break the bonds. The bond breakage generates high energy electron carriers, which continue into the electron transport chain. This cycle produces Co2 and oxaloacetate to continue the cycle.

3. Include that the other 90% of energy is used in other life processes, such as photosynthesis and respiration and is ultimately made into heat energy before the organism is consumed, thus only 10% is actually ingested. The trophic scale is also called ecological efficiency. Because of this rule and loss of energy, there are usually fewer trophic levels in a food web system.

The kelp performs the process of photosynthesis to make food molecules, which uses the methods of light reactions and the Calvin cycle to transform the light energy, water, and CO2 into glucose, which is then transferred to cellular respiration to be converted into ATP (energy).

Consumers do not perform photosynthesis, as they cannot make food molecules and thus get nourishment from eating instead. Consumers use cellular respiration to convert the glucose they gain from food molecules into ATP. But first, they use enzyme processing in the digestive system to break down complex carbohydrates and other polysaccharides into monomers (simple sugars for carbohydrates-glucose) ready to go to cellular respiration, converting the glucose monomers into ATP for the body's functions. The processes of cellular respiration include aerobic (oxygen-using) and anaerobic (no oxygen-using) respiration. Anaerobic respiration comprises glycolysis, or ‘sugar breaking’ to break the bonds between the glucose, releasing ATP from the breakage. Anaerobic respiration also includes fermentation, where the glucose is stored for later usage in lactic acid in animals and cellulose in plants. Aerobic respiration consists of the glucose going to the Krebs cycle, where the glucose’s electrons are released into the electron transport chain, making ATP. Aerobic respiration leads to the final step of aerobic cellular respiration, the electron transport chain, where the electrons of the molecules are transferred from protein to protein, producing much more ATP, and the electrons eventually stop transferring once they reach the final electron acceptor of an oxygen atom.

10% of the energy made it to the primary consumer level. This is because each level on the trophic scale collects energy at a rate of 10% from the former. Because primary consumers are first after 100% energy (producers), they gain the most available energy from the producer, 10%.

~~UNIT 7~~

-Panther Article-

2. How does natural selection and human intervention each impact the evolution of a population?

Natural Selection impacts a population by purposefully keeping those with genes suited to the enviornment, and killing off those that don’t. This creates a strong population because the undesirable genes were weeded out of the population. Human impact, on the other hand, artificially changes the genes, so it may or may not be suited to the enviornment for the better, and the genes saved don’t depend on current enviornmental conditions. Natural selection will still occur with human impact, so the two factors at play may clash.

-Virtual Urchin Lab-

2. Create a complete foodweb using the predators and prey of the Sea Urchin shown above.

   To make a complete foodweb, make sure to include every animal and keep the arrows in a continous energy chain.

   7. How does the function of the tube feet aid the urchin in it’s role within the food web?

      The tube feet of the Urchin helps it eat kelp and get away from predators, helping it fufill it’s role as a prey primary consumer in the food web.

      9. What takes up a large part of the Urchin body cavity, and why is this part of the Urchin important?

         The Digestive System takes up a large part of the Urchin Body Cavity. This is important because the digestive system digests Cellulose, which takes a long time so the digestive system will naturally also be long and take up a large amount of the body cavity. The digestive system is also used to absorb nutrients and monomers into the Urchin, which will be needed for the Urchin to perform it’s basic bodily functions.

-Creating Kelp Connections-

2. How and why does pH affect the levels of Co2 in the ocean?

   pH affects the levels of Co2 in the ocean because a higher pH causes more hydrogen atoms to infiltrate the water and make it more acidic. The water becomes more acidic because when more Co2 enters the ocean, it combines with the H20 to create H2CO3, which combines with the excess hydrogen present to make CACO3, or carbonic acid, which therefore makes the pH more acidic.

3. What occurs if kelp is unable to absorb CO2 or produce O2?

   If Kelp is unable to absorb CO2, more CO2 will diffuse into water, which will cause more carbonic acid to form, weakening Sea Urchins and other shell-forming organisms. If the Kelp is unable to produce O2, there would be a lack of oxygen in the ocean and the air, causing both fish, aquatic mammals and coastal animals to suffer from a lack of oxygen for respiration and die off. This will destabilize the food chain.

4. What does an ideal Urchin Enviornment look like?

   An ideal Urchin Environment would have an abundance of Kelp, with a natural ocean pH (7.7-8.1). There wouldn’t be an abundance of otters, but enough so the Urchin Population doesn’t exceed it’s carrying capacity. Both the abiotic and biotic factors are important because they must work together to make sure the ecosystem functions efficiently.

-UNIT 8-

How do you know a trait is autosomal recessive?

You can tell a trait is autosomal recessive because the trait was passed down to a child without any of the parents having Albinism. We also know that the trait is autosomal because it affects both males and females equally, both of which are key factors in defining autosomal recessive traits.

Which pattern of inheritance does hemophilia follow in the pedigree shown?

The inheritance pattern shows a X-linked recessive pattern. We know this because the pedigree shows that men are the only people affected on the pedigree, proving it to be sex-linked (X-linked). We know the pedigree is recessive because there are several individuals who are carriers for hemophilia but do not have the gene. Because dominant genes must always overpower the recessive, all carriers will have the full genotype, not just the carrier. Therefore, we know that the pedigree is also recessive. X-linked Recessive pedigree.

MIDTERMS

Unit 1: Biochemistry, Proteins, Carbohydrates, Lab Results. (Done for Notes Reading)

Unit 1, Unit 2, Practice Test,

Unit 2: Lipids, Cell Transport, Nucleic Acids, Cells and Organelles (Notes reading Done)

Unit 3, Practice test

Unit 3: Photosynthesis, Cellular Respiration, Respiratory System, Circulatory System (Notes Reading Done)

Study Guide, Case Study #2, Digestion Lab, Practice Pear Test

Unit 4: Notebook Stuff (Done)

Unit 5, Tusklessness, Practice Exam

*Ask about getting the questions from Unit 6 test back*