Essential QUESTIONS / cell biOLOGY
1. How do we know how life began?
Today, is not completely sure how life began byt there are many theories. the most common theory and more accepted is the big bang ,According to this theory, about 15 billion years agothe Universe was nothing more than a very small speck of mass. This speck was probably no bigger than the head of a pin. Everything in the Universe, all the galaxies, stars, planets, and even the matter making up your body, was squished up tightly in this tiny space
2. How is the cell like a city?
The cell is a like a city because the nucleus of a cell governs the cell’s activity, so it is like the mayor or city council; just as City Hall uses plans or blueprints to guide a city, the nucleus uses DNA, the “blueprint” for living things. City limits set the boundary of the mayor’s authority, just as a cell wall or cell membrane provides the boundaries for each nucleus. Cities and cells need energy; a power station provides a city’s energy, while mitochondria provide a cell’s energy. Cities also require transportation, such as roads traversed by trucks and buses, to move goods. A cell has endoplasmic reticulum, which transports proteins around the structure.
3. How do cells communicate with one another?
Cell to Cell recognition , Chemical Signals and Hormones .Also Cells recongnize one another. Chemical signals may be released by 1 cell to influence the activity of another. Receptor Proteins (on plasma membrane) get messages from nerves or hormones to release a signal to perform an action.
4. Why is stem cell research a hot topic.
stem cell research is a hot topic because they are relatively new to the field, and with the help pf stem cells people are living better lives
essential questions / health and nutrition
- How do compounds/ molecules provide nutrition?
2. How are some topics in health/nutrition controversial?
Some topica in health/nutrition are controversial because One day you read an article about how oil is bad and eating fat-free food should be the way of life. But then a few months later you’re told that some oils are actually good for your health. This type of conflicting information can be extremely annoying. For example: caffeine has been associated with elevated blood pressure, increased heart rate, anxiety, poor sleep and digestive issues.I research and found out that consumming caffeine doesnt damage the whole body, it has its benefits also, mproves muscle coordination, strength (if consumed pre-exercise), increase energy expenditure and possibly help in burning calories.
ESSENTIAL QUESTIONs / species and communities
- What is the community made up of ? Living beings who live in a particular ecosystem form the biological community. Biological communities are formed by plants, animals, and fungi . Humans are also part of the biological community of ecosystems. We are intelligent beings and we have the responsibility to take care and protect the other members of the ecosystem. All beings of a biological community feed each other and depend on each other
- How do species interact with one another and their environment ? Species interactions can be categorized into one of four basic groups based on how the participating species are affected by the interaction. These include:
- competitive interactions
- consumer-resource interactions
- detritivore-detritis interactions
- mutulalistic interactions
- How can we build a sustainable ecosystem ?Sustainable ecosystems can survive and multiply without other organisms having to add or take out of the system.
essential questions / communities and ecosystems
- What roles do autotrophs play in the community? Pioneer species are those first species that colonize places where previously there were no living beings, like, for example, algae that colonize bare rocks. In general, pioneer species are autotrophs or those that maintain harmonious ecological interaction with autotrophic beings (like autotrophic bacteria, herbaceous plants, lichens). The pioneer community is formed of species able to survive under hostile environments. The presence of these species modifies the microenvironment generating changes in abiotic and biotic factors of the ecosystem undergoing formation. Therefore they open the way to other species to establish in the place by the creation of new potential ecological niches.
- Why is there a limit to the number of trophic levels in an ecosystem? The efficiency with which energy or biomass is transferred from one trophic level to the next is called the ecological efficiency. Consumers at each level convert on average only about 10 percent of the chemical energy in their food to their own organic tissue. For this reason, food chains rarely extend for more than 5 or 6 levels. At the lowest trophic level (the bottom of the food chain), plants convert about one percent of the sunlight they receive into chemical energy.
- To what extent are models useful representation of the real world? In my opinion every model is a representation of reality and is per definition abstract. The idea of a model is to capture in a finite amount of parameters the way a (part of) the world reacts. It will not behave exactly as reality, but should - within the boundaries set - provide a reliable estimation of the outputs.
essential questions / dna
- What makes us similar to one another? Human genetic variation is the genetic differences both within and among populations. There may be multiple variants of any given gene in the human population (genes), leading to polymorphism. Many genes are not polymorphic, meaning that only a single allele is present in the population: the gene is then said to be fixed.On average, in terms of DNA sequence all humans are 99.5% similar to any other humans.
- What makes us different from one another? No two humans are genetically identical. Even monozygotic twins, who develop from one zygote, have infrequent genetic differences due to mutations occurring during development and gene copy-number variation. Differences between individuals, even closely related individuals, are the key to techniques such as genetic fingerprinting. Alleles occur at different frequencies in different human populations, with populations that are more geographically and ancestrally remote tending to differ more.Causes of differences between individuals include the exchange of genes during meiosis and various mutational events. There are at least two reasons why genetic variation exists between populations. Natural selection may confer an adaptive advantage to individuals in a specific environment if an allele provides a competitive advantage. Alleles under selection are likely to occur only in those geographic regions where they confer an advantage. The second main cause of genetic variation is due to the high degree of neutrality of most mutations.